Everyone can look. But only a few can see.

My first thought is that those who can consistently and clearly see, quickly, are a very small subset of players.

Of that subset, those that can consistently and accurately execute are a much smaller subset.

That subset consists of the top pros.
 
jjohnson said:
...final focus ability is most important for execution under pressure. How often one's game completely collapses with weak knees, rubbery stroke and failed mental awareness at contact.
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"...weak knees, rubbery stroke and failed mental awareness at contact."

?!

What, do you think we're all a bunch on ingenues here who just fell off the turnip truck?

Lou Figueroa
most of us
can play some
 
lfigueroa said:
Seeing is overrated.

I know this from personal experience and, over the years, wearing glasses, contacts, and eventually having cataract surgery. I still know some old guys that can barely see the balls but know where they are and can shoot great.

Seeing well is great but you are overstating things. Good luck with your video.

Lou Figueroa
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If I explained it to you and you tried it I think you would be more agreeable. I won't do that. But I intend to make a video demonstrating the effectiveness of this "mental" thus unobservable technique. They say, seeing is believing. Thanks. Until then...
 
jjohnson said:
If I explained it to you and you tried it I think you would be more agreeable. I won't do that. But I intend to make a video demonstrating the effectiveness of this "mental" thus unobservable technique. They say, seeing is believing. Thanks. Until then...
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Show me : -)

Lou Figueroa
 
lfigueroa said:
The sport is littered with players who could play sky high.

I played Cecil Tugwell in Vegas and had him beat. He went into the bathroom, came out and could barely find our table, asked which pocket was his and shot lights out.

Lou Figueroa
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CT: RIP
 
lfigueroa said:
"...weak knees, rubbery stroke and failed mental awareness at contact."

?!

What, do you think we're all a bunch on ingenues here who just fell off the turnip truck?

Lou Figueroa
most of us
can play some
Click to expand...
Of course not. Recall your last biggest make or break shot that cost you the match. The one that you should have made. What happened and why? Pressure happens.
 
jjohnson said:
Of course not. Recall your last biggest make or break shot that cost you the match. The one that you should have made. What happened and why? Pressure happens.
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Pressure, shemssure.

It was bad mechanics, end of story. I'm not a pro and while I do the best I can sometimes shots go sideways.

I've played in exhibition matches against champions, the US Open against Efren, Pagulayan, Martinez, Parica, Appleton, etc, big money matches, tournament finals, etc.

Sometimes shee-at happens because you are only so good. Pressure has nothing to do with it.

Lou Figueroa
 
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Korsakoff said:
My first thought is that those who can consistently and clearly see, quickly, are a very small subset of players.

Of that subset, those that can consistently and accurately execute are a much smaller subset.

That subset consists of the top pros.
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And that, right there is what appeals to me about pool. You can know all you want, but unless you do it.. you aren't going to be effective
 
There is this fellow Efren Reyes people like to talk about. Somebody can refresh my memory as to when exactly he had his eyes fixed. Many of his great years, his eyes were bad. The balls generally don't move while you are aiming and the pockets definitely don't.

All the building blocks anyone needs to be a world champion are out there. You have to have adequate physical and mental abilities to be able to use the information, and it isn't all handed to you, you have to dig! You also have to have the willpower and determination needed to win.

Probably the biggest catch, you have to be open to receive information from wherever you find it and be able to sort what applies to what you are doing and what doesn't. The lightning reflexes needed in a lot of activities don't help a whole lot playing pool. Other things from those activities can and will help.

Some things come easier to some people than others. Allen Hall claimed that he ran the balls his first time ever on a pool table. After he told that story for years I heard the story of him having a toy table he had played on for years before that. Might be one reason for his super compact stroke.

Nobody becomes a champion without paying their dues. It might not be as obvious as some others and those blessed with talent may not have to work as hard, they still have to work. Talent can be a two edged sword too. It takes you so far, then it isn't enough to keep going further. Those that faced barriers long before have the knowledge and work ethic to keep moving forward. Those with tons of raw talent may not have these things, talent has been enough in the past.

Nobody is sitting on secrets not available to the rest of us. The secrets might be spelled out in a book about something that isn't even a cue sport, but they are out there.

Gold is where you find it. There are often a few ounces of gold to a ton or more of stuff dug up to sort the gold out of it. A lot of dross to go through for a little gold. I can't recall ever reading a totally worthless book that was supposed to teach something. Some books had tons of valuable stuff in them. Some only had one or two sentences that advanced my cause. Those one or two sentences could be as valuable as a whole book.

Right here on AZB I often read posts saying something can't be done. The people saying that haven't tried to do these things with the same dedication some others have put into learning these things. I put many thousands of hours into pattern reading. Granted that much of that pattern reading was on a checkers and then chess board, it still carried over and made learning to read patterns on a pool or snooker table much easier.

Spot shape is regarded by many as impossible. My spot wasn't a dot, more like a two inch spot. I spent five or six thousand hours from the time I started working on spot shape until I obtained that two inch spot on the vast majority of my shots. Sometimes my spot shape was much smaller when it needed to be, a quarter inch or less. Of course I knew I was going to need that ridiculously precise shape so I made sure I was shooting from a foot or two away from the object ball and not from the other end of a nine or ten foot table.

It isn't sight or any one thing that makes a winning player. If I had to pick one thing as most important it would be the six P's taught at the nuke. Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Last I knew they had shortened that to five P's in this PC world.

Hu
 
jjohnson said:
Everyone looks at any given pool shot in exactly the same way. Players to rail birds. But not everyone SEES that shot the same way. I'm only talking about the balls and the lay on the table, not how to approach how to shoot the shot (different matter.) Seeing ranges from total darkness to crystal clarity. This is one thing that distinguishes mediocre players from great players. Even if you have perfect physical sight, you may still not be SEEING the balls. SEEING the balls perfectly intuitively instinctively is a god given gift. Only the best players have this ability. But did you know that you can be taught how to consciously SEE the balls? "Knowledge is power." It is money, as well. There are some online instructions that "spill the beans" so to speak. The knowledge they reveal definitely can take your game to the next level. But even they will not tell you everything they know. You just need to read many of the posts here to get a glimpse of the attitudes of some people toward other posters. Do you think they would share anything that would enhance your competitiveness to the detriment of their own? And even the personable posters may be reluctant to share the "truths" that they have garnered over the years. Life's lessons usually don't come cheap.
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Well then you got guys like me, I'll share anything that works good for me, but I'm not going to say you will understand it through the written medium. In real life it's much easier to gauge if someone gets what you're saying and if not you can go about it a different way.

I posted this visualization that I use for kicks. It's probably nowhere near mathematically correct but it gives a consistent view that you can readily rely on if you practice it a bit. We all see things differently so it makes sense you sometimes have to adapt to how you see things. Basically by taking the mid line you can readily imagine a point (which may be on the rail or even in space) to kick. It may just be dead mirror system but I never did understand that too well. This allows you a mirror system but my subconscious does the heavy lifting. Without the reference I have no clue, but this gets my alignment correct.

Sometimes IRL I told someone simply cut where you're seeing in half and that works. Just because a system exists does not mean they are automatic without actually putting some head scratching work in at the table.
 
jjohnson said:
LOOK HERE - couldnthinkof01 and jason: neither of you have refuted anything I said. I said that there were instructions available that "spill the beans" that will raise your play to the next level. But that even they do not tell you everything. And I said that many bad attitude players and even personable players won't tell you everything. The former won't because they like taking your money and wouldn't think of helping you become a "dangerous" competitor. And the latter won't tell you everything because they feel they worked too hard too long to just give it away. I don't think there are any of the former that want you to beat them: ever, period. And I said many of the latter won't give it up either for their own reasons: but some do. If it's about the money, everything I said is true. And it is about the money for the professionals, hustlers and many smaller tournament players. And I said you may have perfect physical eye sight which you alluded to but I said even if so, you can still look and not SEE. How do you explain Efren, Earl, Ralf, Corey, Alex, etc. and here we are, most of the rest of us struggling? I say their eye sight is most probably perfect just like most of ours is. Why can't you make shots like them? I say one reason is because they know HOW to SEE which is the most essential and fundamental aspect of the game. My final contention is that you can be taught how to SEE as good as the pros mentioned above. But this is like Ninja secret. No one is just giving this knowledge away or even discussing it that I know of. Ah, that's his name: Sax Del Porto. I saw him and his wife in Kim Davenport's corner at a tournament many years ago. And I heard Sax mentored Cole Dickson in his earliest days. Yes, there are those who share. But only with very special pupils. Like Sax said to me: "You either got it or you don't." I was told many years ago by someone knowledgeable in the sport, that no one becomes as good a Cole so quickly without a mentor. Do you think these mentors share with just anybody? Don't kid yourself.
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Sorry for the double post but it's late at night and I'm feeling talkative.

The SEE. You see, I like to refer to it as FEEL. But at some point what you see visually clicks as SEE or FEEL. Keeping somewhat consistent helps, but I might get lambasted (and probably rightfully so) if I mention the fact that I look at different shots differently. There are many visual tricks to avoid optical illusions in this game. Your eyes are not always to be trusted unless you can eliminate optical illusions or visual distractions. Sometimes it's focusing slightly with a different eye or changing your vision center slightly depending on the shot. It would take a book to explain it all and it would sound like I was bat shit insane. Sometimes I look at a 2 rail bank differently depending on the spin. I'll be damned if I can put into words exactly what I'm seeing but feeling a shot a certain way, like spatial awareness mixed with eyesight.

A carpenter can hit a nail through feel, and generally does it perfectly. A beginner, not so much. Your tool must become your body, you must become one with the cue and table, balls etc. How do you put into words how a carpenter can hit a nail or a person can split wood without damaging the handle of an axe. Practice with the tool until it becomes an extension of your body... but good luck explaining it in words. Past a certain point the subconscious takes over and it's feel.

To get to the point you SEE you must practice and put in the dedication. I'm aware some people keep info tight to their chest, be it players or instructors, but to be honest I think if you take Occam's razor to it... it's probably that they cannot explain what it is they are seeing. I remember reading one of the late Monk's works and he said something in there like "he who has eyes let him see, or he who has ears let him hear." He seemed to talk into some of the mystic side of pool but that's the thing, some of this stuff can't be put into words though it can be learned. If you practiced what he was referring to in the book you began to SEE it. And a lot of times it's getting yourself to give up preconceived notions and actually try to see what the instructor is seeing. And a lot of times that takes dedication at the practice table.
 
couldnthinkof01 said:
You talking about pattern recognition?
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I'm not sure what he is talking about now after the "LOOK HERE" comment. I looked, but I must not be "SEEING".

I kinda think he is alluding to pattern play, but I'm not sure. If he is referring to pattern play and "people" don't want to give up their secrets, it is because the patterns are almost endless. It takes a lot of time to "give" up your secrets, not because they are not willing or selfish. Take the shot by Fedor for example


...you can't really teach that. Probably the average seasoned player would draw for position like JJ suggested. I think it is more likely to stay out of trouble than the shot he chose, but what a beautifully Fedor executed shot. Lesser players would try to break it out. I don't know what the "right" play is, but you can't argue with perfection. Back to the topic...the patterns in pool are cumulative. What I mean by that is one shot can determine if the last shot is difficult or not. Like the butterfly that flaps its wings in Asia and it causes a hurricane on the other side of the world. The patterns are somewhat intuitive, but they can also be taught. This is what the game is about and people SEE the patterns or they do not.
 
jjohnson said:
Of course not. Recall your last biggest make or break shot that cost you the match. The one that you should have made. What happened and why? Pressure happens.
Click to expand...
There are multiple factors that can cause you to miss a shot. Maybe there was a skid, maybe your speed was off, maybe you lost concentration. Pressure isn't the only one and bad mechanics is more likely. You can't just see it as black and white issue.
 
JFC, this thread may have set the all-time AZB record for just pure random bs. wow. A SHIT-TON of words to not really say a damn thing. Timothy Leary after a few tabs of orange window-pane probably made more sense. ;)
 
jason said:
I'm not sure what he is talking about now after the "LOOK HERE" comment. I looked, but I must not be "SEEING".

I kinda think he is alluding to pattern play, but I'm not sure. If he is referring to pattern play and "people" don't want to give up their secrets, it is because the patterns are almost endless. It takes a lot of time to "give" up your secrets, not because they are not willing or selfish. Take the shot by Fedor for example


...you can't really teach that. Probably the average seasoned player would draw for position like JJ suggested. I think it is more likely to stay out of trouble than the shot he chose, but what a beautifully Fedor executed shot. Lesser players would try to break it out. I don't know what the "right" play is, but you can't argue with perfection. Back to the topic...the patterns in pool are cumulative. What I mean by that is one shot can determine if the last shot is difficult or not. Like the butterfly that flaps its wings in Asia and it causes a hurricane on the other side of the world. The patterns are somewhat intuitive, but they can also be taught. This is what the game is about and people SEE the patterns or they do not.
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That was my interpretation as well. The pros ability to see and execute these types of shots in match pressure is the special piece to me.
 
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