I live in GC country, the places around me have gold crowns with stock pocket sizes, 4 7/8 or 5. I wish they were 4.5.
Do you think these pockets were too large?
- Thread starter skip100
- Start date
My local room has 4-5/8" and a few creep to a tad larger. However, (what literally everyone in these pocket size threads forgets) it's the facing angles and shelve depth on those local tables make them play tough for the less than accurate potter.
My home table is 4.25" but the 141 facings and not 'diamond-ish' selves make it play fairly forgiving.
Small pockets should stay. Players are better these days. Buckets only favour bangers. Circus shots happen on 4-4.25"... They're just not for the faint of heart anymore.
My home table is 4.25" but the 141 facings and not 'diamond-ish' selves make it play fairly forgiving.
Small pockets should stay. Players are better these days. Buckets only favour bangers. Circus shots happen on 4-4.25"... They're just not for the faint of heart anymore.
WobblyStroke
Well-known member
Ye the facing angles and shelf depths are huge factors. I play in one room that has rather huge pockets at 4-7/8 but the corners spit out anything down the rail with pace unless it's absolutely perfect. Another room has a wide range of tables allowing one to play on any TV table from the last 20 years pretty much and some have very tight pro standard pockets. But these tables are set up perfectly and the tight pockets are indeed more forgiving than the huge ones.
As for pool you either have a bunch of good players in your place or you're full of crap. Tables like that would not do well in your average US poolroom. Also, don't knock PB if you haven't played. Great game, lots of fun to play. In my area a LOT of players play league/tournament play. They are building a state-of-the-art training/playing facility too. More fun/accessible thn Chinese8ball for sure.Depending on where I am playing, most halls here have 4.25" standard. 4.5" is mostly found in the bar. There is only one Hall I have been to that had 4 x 4.5" tables (sat lonely amongst three rooms worth of Chinese-8 tables).
The hall I go to the most often has 16 x 4.25" and then also has 4 x 4.125" and one Diamond 4" - the other branch of this company I go to sometimes has 16 x 4.25" 4 x Chinese-8 and one Diamond 4" - I haven't been to their 3rd store.
I think 4.25" is pretty much the standard here (and can be seen across at least three chains that operate in the city, and some smaller halls), and 4.5" gets treated with a bit of a disdain... People here do have a very different idea of what 'good' looks like, or what 'hard' is. They also are much, much quicker to adopt the most popular, or newest things (MR break box, grey cloth, black balls etc etc)
Pickleball makes me want to vomit. How on earth that ever became popular is anyone's gue....oh wait, it's not a guess. It's middle-class morons lapping up expensive tat- I guess in the past, pool is to snooker, what pickleball is to tennis...Although, I wouldn't put it in the same category now.
Thanks for adding your perspective, definitely see what you are saying in some areas. It's a really complicated balance between; what is watchable? to who is it watchable? is it playable? to who is it playable? is smaller making progress? to who is it progress?
Where did you grow up? I wish I grew up somewhere with access to 9ft pool tables and snooker, I feel I probably would have gravitated towards it much earlier.
Rack running is good for pool. Fair is the thing that comes to town once a year. Learn to lag and break better if you don’t like the electric chair. Bigger pockets make for faster games and more entertaining play. It seems the ardent fans and sweaters are the loudest voices for tighter pockets. Wonder why? Add games to the set and leave the pockets alone. Would we have been treated to the magician in an era of 4 1/4” pockets?
Let snooker be snooker and let pool be pool.
Let snooker be snooker and let pool be pool.
agree 100% here.
Just to get technical, I always advocate jawless pockets. No throat, just a 3" opening give or take, across the corners - like those disc carom tables in the Philippines. The pockets will take anything that hits the aperture and nothing that hits the cushion noses - maybe some slack with the tits. Side pockets can have a bigger opening, maybe 3.5" I haven't checked. The cushions would be backcut to allow full angular access.
This doesn't preclude "rack running". It _will_ exclude the hacks and phonies and as I said, once the pros are shooting tight lines, the tight pockets will be part of the allure of pro pool.
Yeah, what-the-fk-ever. These will never exist so why keep dreaming about 'jawless' pockets?? I'd like to have Brad Pitt's looks AND bankroll but guess what??? That ain't never gonna happen. Seeing a trend here?
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The snooker attitude is starting to bother me. If your father thinks pool is no skill I think he should come to the US and find bar table events on stock Valley tables. Find some Midwest guys and match up. My guess is your father or you would miss balls. Valleys play easier than they did back in the day when they needed the big cueball.
I had the opportunity in the last few months to do a clinic with Darren Appleton. He is a decent player from a country that knows something about snooker. He pointed out that pool wasn’t snooker when discussing a particular point on technique. So refreshing. No judgment on either game, just pointing out differences.
I respect snooker, but as I said I am getting more and more tired of the snooker guys defecating on other games or tables with bigger pockets. Not everything should be like snooker. Snooker is not the be-all end-all of cue sports. One pocket tests more areas of the game. The carom games test skills that snooker doesn’t. I assume the few English Billiards players wonder why people prefer snooker, but I don’t know that and am just guessing.
So do I think that bucket pockets are ideal? No. But I’d rather see players develop a stroke and learn to cheat pockets and move the cueball and have fun than force everything into a tight pocket bunt fest. Maybe that is a false choice. After all Mizerak could play a little snooker. Not top snooker of course.
End of rant. And I am not anti-snooker or being personally critical of you. I just don’t see why some of the snooker players can’t accept the fact that it takes skill to be a top bar table player even on the largest pockets. It’s fine to prefer something else, but other games with other playing conditions require/test/ develop other skills.
Agree 100%. BTW 'snoobs', your lily white game of snooker allows: A. fluke/luck/shit shots AND B. CHICKENSHIT no-rail safeties. These two things alone should tell you to STFU about snooker on a 99% pool forum. There is a 'Snooker' sub-forum on AZ btw so please use it. Rant over.
roger this 1000%. Cheating-the-pocket is a KEY part of playing pool. Tight(under 4.5" corners) basically remove it from the game resulting in exactly what you mention: a snoozefest of cinch-pool. Snooker and Ch8b are great if that's your trip but leave pool the fk alone. We're good. Believe me.
Willowbrook Wolfy
Going pro
4” would’ve been rough. Maybe that would be in the too tight realm. As already stated it takes away too many shots. But if they were playing 8 ball the tight pockets make blocking pockets a lot easier and that mightve been interesting.
From experience tighter pockets don’t really do much. Once you hit a certain level you can aim balls wherever you want to. So where I used to play had 9footers and the pockets were standard gold crown. My table at home was a 7 footer with nappy cloth and buckets. Then the money table at the hall had triple shimmed pockets around 4-3/8. Maybe a tad smaller.
The 4-3/8 table wasn’t much harder to play on once I got good enough. The banks were a bit tougher but that was about it. You had to be more accurate was all. You could still rocket balls down the rail if your stroke was good enough on those tight pockets. That shot used to get wows from the lesser players. Idk why because it was anctually an easy shot back then. I used to play a semipro level player on it and we would sometimes rocket a lot of em just for shits and giggles. typically the better the player the more accurate their shots. I wasn’t a semipro level player but my stroke was dead on back then. Every once in a while a ball would rattle but not as often as you’d think.
In all honesty I prefer practicing on a table with larger pockets. With the larger pockets it easier to practice pocket aiming. At least I think so. You are able to set up a shot over and over and have a 5” window to aim to different sections of. The smaller the pocket the less variance you can work on. It’s nice when the ball falls. It builds ones confidence. To practice for the tighter pockets just focus on making shots to center pocket. Then when you hit a tighter pocket table you won’t even really notice much difference.
From experience tighter pockets don’t really do much. Once you hit a certain level you can aim balls wherever you want to. So where I used to play had 9footers and the pockets were standard gold crown. My table at home was a 7 footer with nappy cloth and buckets. Then the money table at the hall had triple shimmed pockets around 4-3/8. Maybe a tad smaller.
The 4-3/8 table wasn’t much harder to play on once I got good enough. The banks were a bit tougher but that was about it. You had to be more accurate was all. You could still rocket balls down the rail if your stroke was good enough on those tight pockets. That shot used to get wows from the lesser players. Idk why because it was anctually an easy shot back then. I used to play a semipro level player on it and we would sometimes rocket a lot of em just for shits and giggles. typically the better the player the more accurate their shots. I wasn’t a semipro level player but my stroke was dead on back then. Every once in a while a ball would rattle but not as often as you’d think.
In all honesty I prefer practicing on a table with larger pockets. With the larger pockets it easier to practice pocket aiming. At least I think so. You are able to set up a shot over and over and have a 5” window to aim to different sections of. The smaller the pocket the less variance you can work on. It’s nice when the ball falls. It builds ones confidence. To practice for the tighter pockets just focus on making shots to center pocket. Then when you hit a tighter pocket table you won’t even really notice much difference.
Willowbrook Wolfy
Going pro
What I find odd is the bar I play in has around the same size pockets. I’m trying to figure out if they are the tournament pockets or league pockets from Diamond. The tournaments are supposed to be 4.5” and the league 4.75”. There are a couple at 4.5” but most are in the 4-9/16-4-5/8” range. Maybe they have shimmed league cuts. Idk. A few people said they are tournament cut but I’m not sold on it. Pretty sure Diamond has better QC than that.
You want pool to take it's place in the now world, it's gonna take extraordinary skill. As it is, the only thing happening is the dog show keeps asking for higher pay.Yeah, what-the-fk-ever. These will never exist so why keep dreaming about 'jawless' pockets?? I'd like to have Brad Pitt's looks AND bankroll but guess what??? That ain't never gonna happen. Seeing a trend here?
Personally, I don't think there's anything more boring than watching a top pro run a wide-open rack. There's zero excitement because something very weird would need to happen for them not to get out. Plus, it's often difficult to differentiate a top five pro from a top 50 pro.
I say keep making the table tougher until running a rack is impressive, not boring. I want to see them sweat and stress. I want to watch their expressions when they miss. I want to see them play more safeties. I want to say "WOW!" when someone fires in a tough shot that others would duck on.
Having all that been said, if all tables played that tough, it would probably serve to discourage new / beginning players. Look at the popularity professional poker has. I believe it's because you don't need to dedicate your life to being competitive against professional players like you do in pool.
I say keep making the table tougher until running a rack is impressive, not boring. I want to see them sweat and stress. I want to watch their expressions when they miss. I want to see them play more safeties. I want to say "WOW!" when someone fires in a tough shot that others would duck on.
Having all that been said, if all tables played that tough, it would probably serve to discourage new / beginning players. Look at the popularity professional poker has. I believe it's because you don't need to dedicate your life to being competitive against professional players like you do in pool.
Flakeandrun
Well-known member
I agree with you. My dad hammers me on the regular at snooker, and I've probably taken a handful of frames from him in my lifetime (that weren't gifts). But pool is a different animal all together (competitive pool that is). I've been chirping on for a while to him about the real reason he won't play me
Been watching some Mizerak lately, I'd fancy my chances on the snooker table, but naturally get crushed at pool (no pun intended lol)
Flakeandrun
Well-known member
There are a bunch of good players in my place. Like, exceptionally good. I've learned so much playing at the store I currently play at.
I played a little PB with some friends, just not sure why so much money is pumped into something so lame. I guess the 'accessibility factor' with regard to playing, but is it entertaining to watch? ...meh. You like it, others like it. So that's what matters eh? It's funny to hear 'state of the art' in the same breath as PB. I think Chinese-8 is pretty accessible... but then I am in China
Iwishiwasrich
Well-known member
What the hell does enbiggening mean? I don't think that is a word. Lol
enbiggening - the act of sizeration in the positive direction