Expand'n my Library

Roadking

Roadking

sweet william
Silver Member
Thinking about expanding my pool book library and would like fellow AZer's opinions and reviews of these 4 books.
1) P.Capelle: A Mind For Pool.
2)R.Givens: The Eight Ball Bible.
3)J.Koehler: The Science of Pocket Billiards.
4)F.Beard: The Gospool of Bank Pool.
I'm 100% sure on #4 (I allready have banking with the beard,it's one of my favorite's) but would still like to here others opinion's.
 
1. Decent book. Mostly for beginners or league players who need help focusing on the right things during their matches. All of his books are good, I don't think any are great or of much use to people with a lot of experience.

2. Recent thread on AZ about eight ball books picked this one as the best. Worth having around, author did a good job.

3. Good book. I don't know too many people who use the info in it very often though. Rail shot chart that tells you to hit 0.030" before the object ball,etc...still, I own it and like it. Dr. Dave's stuff probably covers all this and more at this point.

4. Worth it for the pics and stories alone. Not quite as much banking stuff as the first one, but still well worth getting.
 
1) While I love Capelle's instructional books for 8 & 9 ball, "A Mind for Pool" fell a little short of the pocket for me. The book is well written and hits on all the basic concepts of competition, training, and life-long learning; but for some reason it just didn't invoke the same "paradigm shift" in thinking that his other books did. Call it a victim of the high standard set by its sister books.

2) The "Eight Ball Bible" is widely regarded for its explanation of the esoterics of playing on a bar box and using an over-sized cue ball, but I'm wary of the hype that precedes it. There IS some good stuff in here about the "big ball", but the book doesn't forage too much new ground in the areas of position, safety play, and kicking systems. There is an oddball section on straight-rail billiards that's meant to teach the subtleties of cue ball control, but I'd figure it fails in that it's unlikely that a bar-table player even has seen a 3 cushion table, let alone has access to one! In the end, it's a good book; but the "bar table" elements alone aren't worth the extra purchase if you already own one of Capelle's or Byrne's books.

Good luck and good reading!
 
Which books would you recommend for a more advanced player? If theirs even any out there.
 
Just my two cents . . .

I've got several pool books . . . only two that I continually go back to: Bryne's Book on Pool & Billiards and Ray Martin's 99 Critical Shots in Pool.

Unless you like collecting books and reading, I'd suggest you take the $ and get a guy like Scott Lee or others on AZB to give you a couple of lessons. A book can't see what you do - your set-up, habits, thoughts on position play etc. etc. etc. It goes a long way.
 
Your probably rite about taken lessons. I'm pretty much self taught and my biggest problem is speed control. 80% of my play is on bar boxes,that's why the8-ball bible caught my eye. But if it's mostly about heavy cueballs I don't need it. I thought maybe The science of pocket billiards might have something usefull in it. I would rate my play at B-. I have the two books you mentioned and I like them,also the illustrated principles of pool and billiards was very helpfull as was banking with the beard. Also my defense needs work. I have a habbit of trying to run my balls out and then getting hooked on my last ball or the 8-ball, then the other guy runs out or defense's me too death. I was told "If you can't run out you better figure out when too play defense". I am getting better at that.
 
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