Great Players' End Patterns

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CueAndMe

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I thought this might be an interesting thread. I'm transferring the last 4 balls from 4 great runs by 4 great players into cuetable format to show how varied these end patterns can get even when you're one of the best in the world. They aren't perfectly accurate duplications, but good enough to tell what they were doing. Balls are numbered 1 through 4, the 4-ball being the break shot. If you're up to it, feel free to add a layout of a player's run that you have. I'll be posting the Sigel 150 and out against Zuglan in 1992, Efren Reyes' 140 against Dallas West in 2000, and John Schmidt's 164 from his most recent DVD.

But I'll start off with the 10 racks from Irving Crane's 150 and out run against Joe Balsis:

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CueTable Help

 
Ooh, as much as I love and respect Efren I really don't like his straight pool play all that much. In my opinion his style of straight pool, at least what I've seen, is an aggressive 9-ball style of straight pool with many rails position, ultra thin cuts, lots of spin on the CB etc... He's great and with a little effort he could probably crush Mosconi's 526 without missing a beat, but I just don't like his style when it comes to 14.1. Please don't take that as me knocking on Efren though, just stating my preference. When I think straight pool I get images of Rempe, Mizerak, Sigel, Varner etc... Old school, baby!!!
MULLY
 
bluepepper said:
I thought this might be an interesting thread. I'm transferring the last 4 balls from 4 great runs by 4 great players into cuetable format to show how varied these end patterns can get even when you're one of the best in the world. They aren't perfectly accurate duplications, but good enough to tell what they were doing. Balls are numbered 1 through 4, the 4-ball being the break shot. If you're up to it, feel free to add a layout of a player's run that you have. I'll be posting the Sigel 150 and out against Zuglan in 1992, Efren Reyes' 140 against Dallas West in 2000, and John Schmidt's 164 from his most recent DVD.

But I'll start off with the 10 racks from Irving Crane's 150 and out run against Joe Balsis:
Click to expand...


Wow! Thanks! I started to rewatch that match again to look at the same thing. I have a hard time playing for stop shots on key balls with 4" pockets. It's good to know I'm in good company. Two out of ten for Irving Crane on buckets. Maybe the tight pockets will make me a better straight pool player after all if the ideal patterns don't show up any more frequently than this for great players on big pockets.
 
unknownpro said:
Wow! Thanks! I started to rewatch that match again to look at the same thing. I have a hard time playing for stop shots on key balls with 4" pockets. It's good to know I'm in good company. Two out of ten for Irving Crane on buckets. Maybe the tight pockets will make me a better straight pool player after all if the ideal patterns don't show up any more frequently than this for great players on big pockets.
Click to expand...


Agreed. With all the talk about triangle stop-shot end patterns, it's nice to see that even the best don't get that with a lot of frequency. I'm particularly interested in page 7, where it looks like Crane got a little funny on a stop-shot traditional key ball and wound up using it as the break ball instead. It's good to know he's human.
 
tsw_521 said:
Agreed. With all the talk about triangle stop-shot end patterns, it's nice to see that even the best don't get that with a lot of frequency. I'm particularly interested in page 7, where it looks like Crane got a little funny on a stop-shot traditional key ball and wound up using it as the break ball instead. It's good to know he's human.
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I would think going 4,3,2,1 would be easier.

Nobody does everything the same...

I just got the TAR Harriman-Schmidt 400 point match. I'll see if I can post a few of the last 4 ball outs.

Great idea!

SR
 
Mully, I agree that Efren may not be the typical straight pool player, but you'll be surprised with his end patterns. And this run was smooth.

unknownpro and tsw, that's what I was thinking. Crane was probably one of the most knowledgeable straight pool players ever and you can see that it ain't moonlight and roses all the time.

I think you're right SloRoller. I'll do it the other way around for the next one. Makes more sense.
 
bluepepper said:
I thought this might be an interesting thread. I'm transferring the last 4 balls from 4 great runs by 4 great players into cuetable format to show how varied these end patterns can get even when you're one of the best in the world. They aren't perfectly accurate duplications, but good enough to tell what they were doing. Balls are numbered 1 through 4, the 4-ball being the break shot. If you're up to it, feel free to add a layout of a player's run that you have. I'll be posting the Sigel 150 and out against Zuglan in 1992, Efren Reyes' 140 against Dallas West in 2000, and John Schmidt's 164 from his most recent DVD.

But I'll start off with the 10 racks from Irving Crane's 150 and out run against Joe Balsis:

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CueTable Help

Click to expand...

Ambitious venture, Jeff.

Very helpful stuff. Some of the patterns look standard and some look like he had to do a bit of work to get where he got.

I remember thinking as I was watching Sigel, (forget which match), that I thought he wasn't going to get a break shot, he had to cross his line, but his perfect cue ball speed cured a lot of ills in his pattern.

If you have a nice touch and can control the speed of your cue ball really well, I guess you don't need stop, stop, stop. Or even three shots where you are coming along your position line. You can come across the line and stop on it. For the rest of us mortals,....
 
dmgwalsh said:
Ambitious venture, Jeff.

Very helpful stuff. Some of the patterns look standard and some look like he had to do a bit of work to get where he got.

I remember thinking as I was watching Sigel, (forget which match), that I thought he wasn't going to get a break shot, he had to cross his line, but his perfect cue ball speed cured a lot of ills in his pattern.

If you have a nice touch and can control the speed of your cue ball really well, I guess you don't need stop, stop, stop. Or even three shots where you are coming along your position line. You can come across the line and stop on it. For the rest of us mortals,....
Click to expand...

I guess it is a little ambitious. Fortunately there's the fast forward button on the vcr and dvd player.
I agree with you about the great players and their cueball control being a fix-all for any poor judgments or unfortunate rolls.
 
SloRoller and anyone else interested in posting a layout, be careful clicking around center table. I've lost my work a few times in the past being diverted to sponsor pages. A couple tricks:

1)instead of clicking in the center table area, double click elswhere and drag the line to the center
2)use the "A" letter key to bend your line while you drag your mouse
3)when you've worked on a few pages, click the "copy url" link and paste it into a new browser window, and continue editing from there. That way, if you lose your work later, you can just refresh your browser and not have to start from scratch.
 
John Schmidt 164 from "Exactly How I Run 100's" DVD

In my browser the tables aren't coming up with all 9 pages again. Anyone else having this problem? I'll post this as a link as well until it's fixed. Edit: Wei fixed it.

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CueTable Help

 
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Going back to the recently posted run of Bobby Hunter, IMHO, offers several examples of what many consider classics patterns; one in particular, key ball in front of the breakball, and ball before the key ball along the opposite long rail is a favorite.
Bobby's play clearly demonstates "thinking backwards from the key ball" to find the most useful pattern; one can just see how he's thinking as the balls are removed. Coincidentally, this techinique was also corroborated by John Schmidt in a recent post.
 
Thanks for posting these. They give a lot of cause for thought.
John Schmidt 164 from "Exactly How I Run 100's" DVD ...
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I had remembered Sigel's 150-and-out as near-perfect. In looking at the two sets of "last few" patterns, I'm a little surprised. For these two runs, I like Schmidt's patterns a lot better.
 
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Bob Jewett said:
Thanks for posting these. They give a lot of cause for thought.

I had remembered Sigel's 150-and-out as near-perfect. In looking at the two sets of "last few" patterns, I'm a little surprised. For these two runs, I like Schmidt's patterns a lot better.
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My pleasure. I had remembered Sigel's as near-perfect as well, but I guess that was because he didn't have many problems to deal with. He only had a couple of tough shots. His cueball control must have been really sharp.

I think what these big runs with less than perfect end patterns are telling us is that when you can control your cueball, the end patterns matter less.
Although perfect end patterns would help anyone, they would probably help the player who struggles to control his or her cueball the most.

rikdee said:
Going back to the recently posted run of Bobby Hunter, IMHO, offers several examples of what many consider classics patterns; one in particular, key ball in front of the breakball, and ball before the key ball along the opposite long rail is a favorite.
Click to expand...

I'll have to go back and look at his run. Maybe at some point I'll post his patterns as well.
 
Bob Jewett said:
Thanks for posting these. They give a lot of cause for thought.

I had remembered Sigel's 150-and-out as near-perfect. In looking at the two sets of "last few" patterns, I'm a little surprised. For these two runs, I like Schmidt's patterns a lot better.
Click to expand...

It might be time to take a look again. I don't think he had too many tough shots. The five up top is the only one I remember. But his cue ball had to move around a lot, I think.

This is exactly what I was wondering about recently in a different context. I was playing a sort of scotch doubles 14.1 as a teaching aid with a better player. He had much better cue ball speed control and was more comfortable playing for positions or sequences that I had trouble executing. One thing it teaches us is that we should work on cue ball speed and control.
 
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bluepepper said:
In my browser the tables aren't coming up with all 9 pages again. Anyone else having this problem? I'll post this as a link as well until it's fixed.
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I'm having the same browser problem - it's only showing page 1 of the cuetable layout and won't click through to anything else. I wonder if it's a problem with the cuetable software?
 
I'm going to try to edit the layouts so that there are only 8 pages max again. I don't know how to take the 9th page from the first sequence and stick it first in the second sequence without having to place the balls and lines again. Any ideas?
 
tsw_521 said:
I'm having the same browser problem - it's only showing page 1 of the cuetable layout and won't click through to anything else. I wonder if it's a problem with the cuetable software?
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that's the same question I was going to ask. There is only one layout of 9 pages I managed to open. I'm on Firefox with all the latest Shockwave Flash updates. Problems seem to have arose after recent Cuetable renewal. So far I can only guess from discussion the tables have multiple pages.
 
Vahmurka said:
that's the same question I was going to ask. There is only one layout of 9 pages I managed to open. I'm on Firefox with all the latest Shockwave Flash updates. Problems seem to have arose after recent Cuetable renewal. So far I can only guess from discussion the tables have multiple pages.
Click to expand...

I'm using Internet Explorer. All the Cuetable layouts with multiple pages worked for me up until today. Doesn't sound like a browser issue.
 
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