DrCue'sProtege said:
was wondering if you posters ever get completely and totally fooled by a shot during a game? last night i hit what i thought was a perfect shot, and the cue ball just died off the rail and i was about 3 feet short of the position i wanted.
sometimes i even wonder, out loud, if the Laws Of Physics apply to my table or not. every now and then this happens, where you just scratch your head and wonder how that could have possibly happened that way.
just wondering if i am alone in this respect?
or do you other posters know the feeling?
DCP
Contrary to what you may want to believe (I know I do), pool is not set in a vacuum. There are variables that will occasionally arise that unfortunately, no matter how good a player you are, are going to affect position & pocketing.
The skid, for example, is a players worst nightmare. Although dirty balls can often be the contributing factor, it isn't always the case. If you don't know what a skid is, you'll know by the sound of it. It usually happens on a soft hit and instead of a clean single-click sound you'll hear from two balls colliding, the skid will have a trademark rattling noise. Some sort of abrassive material (chalk, dirt) has caused the cue-ball & object ball to "stick" for an instance. It can happen with all but the sharpest of angles and will wreck havoc on pocketing the ball or the position (often times, both).
Another is the dead/lively rail. Rails are the greatest variable in terms of table equipment and their characteristics can easily change overnight. I once saw Jeanette Lee hit a rather lively rail and miss position by over 6 feet. It literally looked as though the ball picked up speed from hitting the rail (which is supposed to be physically impossible). I immediately said, "Welcome to Corner Billiards". It really wasn't her fault. The tables were so bad, nobody knew where their cue-ball would end up.
Lastly, there is the cloth factor. A lot of rooms do not take care of their tables as well as we'd like them to. Tables can go years without getting reclothed and occasionally, you have a table that YOU THINK is Simonis 860 but isn't. In the World Summit of Pool 2003, I missed position against Nick Varner by over 2 feet on a table that was in dire need of reclothing. I actually drew-back too far. After closer examination, I realized I was playing on billiard cloth. Every match played on that table was the same story. It looked like 860 until you paid close attention to the rate of deceleration.
These are all variables that are difficult to accommodate for simply because they all fall outside the realm of what we believe is normal. As stated earlier, pool just isn't in a vacuum though I really wish it were. I think we'd all be happier and saner.
Jude M. Rosenstock
so it must be the table.
