Harold Worst 7 Rail Draw Shot - Fact or Fiction? Can anyone replicate this shot today?

lfigueroa said:
I saw Saygnier get, I think, eight rails during his exhibition up in Chicago.

He had the CB and the other two balls in the corner. He jacked up and masse'd the shot causing the CB to repeatedly dive into the corner, almost like it was fighting to get out. Of course then, when the follow wears off, the CB trickles out and makes the point.
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This is a standard Artistic Billiards (carom) shot. It even has its own name: "Jimmy". The requirement in the competition is 4 cushions. I imagine Sayginer has gotten 10 with a perfect hit. There is a video of him getting 11 cushions on two rails with a masse-draw shot.

But for a "flat" draw shot, I would bet against 7 cushions (as shown above).
 
bbb said:
does the rebound add distance?
ie an assist to the speed of the cue ball
which indirectly would give you greater distance which people might think was all from the draw but the rail gets an assist
i have no idea if any of the above is true.....😂😂
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By my definition, the CB has to be traveling with only draw when it hits the first rail (no carom speed), or it's not strictly a draw shot.

pj
chgo
 
Patrick Johnson said:
By my definition, the CB has to be traveling with only draw when it hits the first rail (no carom speed), or it's not strictly a draw shot.

pj
chgo
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Patrick Johnson said:
Only the rails hit after the OB matter to my definition.

pj
chgo
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Your first quote says the cue ball has to have draw when it hits the first cushion
Rail first it has draw when it hits the first cushion …yes?
 
garczar said:
Best 'drawer' of the cb i've ever watched was Mike Massey in his prime show days and i don't think even he could draw the cb six rails. What's more Worst played mostly in the slow cloth era so i'm not going for this pool lore.
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I think it is quite possible if the object ball was frozen in the corner, George Rood used to do a draw trick shot like that, but I don't remember how many rails , I made a diagram and it came back to me.
 
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1000BallRunner said:
I was recently reading Freddy the Beards Book - Banking with the beard - and he recalls a specific story where he witnessed Harold Worst play a 7 rail draw shot at a tournament during an exhibition (I am currently visiting family and dont have a copy of the book with me but I will post a picture as verification when I return).

I skimmed through some older threads where this was discussed and the consensus seemed that Beard never said this / this shot never happened. However, this is printed in his book, he undoubtedly at least wrote it.

So back to the question - is this shot possible? Is there anyone that can set this up and demonstrate? If Worst could do this back then on those table conditions - certainly a pro should be able to do this today (Imagine this mans stoke today.......). This shot seems ridiculous but would the beard really say this and it didnt actually happen?
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the lines are probably off a bit but this is what I think I saw, seems like about 35 feet or so to me, I think when the ball is frozen in the corner the cueball rebound helped so it was not as hard to do, It is still a wild shot, and I am pretty sure this was on the table that had cloth as thin as toilet paper. Rileys Billiards in springfield Ohio, sometime about 2001. Dr Cue was living in the back room yet and came out for a while but I don't remember if he saw the shot. The original post said the cueball was 5 feet away from object ball, I don't think it makes much difference , but the ball might get airborn from too close? move the cueball back to the side cushion line, for accuracy, I am 99 % sure he did not go rail first. That would not help imo. George would have been about 86 or 87. He was a heck of a man even at that age . I had always been thin and I got a small gut on me and my son had made fun of me , called me fat boy or something like that so I told him I would have a smaller waist than him in one year , I did . I weighed 180 pounds was 5'10 and wearing 29 inch waist pants I could get both thumbs in the waist band pulled up correctly , so I was actually 27 or 28 inch waist.. I was in the best shape of my life. I did about 1000 crunches 1000 pushups and pull ups every day ,
I could not find pants small enough to fit me. except in boys. I still could not keep up with George, he had endless energy and took a couple of handfulls of herbs every day, no man made drugs , herbs. He said he had started taking them in the 1950s. he always had a grocery sack full of them in his car. I sure wish I would have asked more questions about that. I just saw that Bob Jewett posted a similar shot, that was the path I am sure , not sure if it went in my way , or his,
 

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Some things that might help with the "Worst" shot are: Back then it was common for Billiard Table Cloth to be dry cleaned when changing it out. It would be cleaned, turned upside down and reapplied to a pool table. It was super thin and very fast. With his stroke, the draw shot might be possible. God I wish I could have personally seen some the the GREATS play.
 
book collector said:
the lines are probably off a bit but this is what I think I saw, seems like about 35 feet or so to me, ...
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I think the only way that path is going to work is with a thin hit on the object ball. That would make it not really a draw shot, although draw will help the distance.
 
Bob Jewett said:
I don't think I've ever seen a player hit the same cushion with draw more than twice. Maybe with masse? In any case,

This is what I think of as a legitimate 7-cushion draw shot, and I would certainly bet against on any normal table. (This is from Virtual Pool, where you can dial the speed up to 11.)

View attachment 798922
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If you managed up and down the long way, 3rail speed into the first rail, running english might carry the ball the rest of the way. Also worn cloth would be less likely to kill the ball.
 
even way back then they had stuff like silicone to make the cue ball fly. no one could do that on a regular pool table in a pool room with the house cue ball that had not been touched.

you dont think mike uses a special cue ball. and sayginer certainly doesnt use a house ball like all of us.

more than one person lost a bet about driving a golf ball half a mile. or throwing a peanut over a house.

i used to be able to scale a baseball card over a house. and a regular one of yours at that.
 
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book collector said:
the lines are probably off a bit but this is what I think I saw, seems like about 35 feet or so to me, I think when the ball is frozen in the corner the cueball rebound helped so it was not as hard to do, It is still a wild shot, and I am pretty sure this was on the table that had cloth as thin as toilet paper. Rileys Billiards in springfield Ohio, sometime about 2001. Dr Cue was living in the back room yet and came out for a while but I don't remember if he saw the shot. The original post said the cueball was 5 feet away from object ball, I don't think it makes much difference , but the ball might get airborn from too close? move the cueball back to the side cushion line, for accuracy, I am 99 % sure he did not go rail first. That would not help imo. George would have been about 86 or 87. He was a heck of a man even at that age . I had always been thin and I got a small gut on me and my son had made fun of me , called me fat boy or something like that so I told him I would have a smaller waist than him in one year , I did . I weighed 180 pounds was 5'10 and wearing 29 inch waist pants I could get both thumbs in the waist band pulled up correctly , so I was actually 27 or 28 inch waist.. I was in the best shape of my life. I did about 1000 crunches 1000 pushups and pull ups every day ,
I could not find pants small enough to fit me. except in boys. I still could not keep up with George, he had endless energy and took a couple of handfulls of herbs every day, no man made drugs , herbs. He said he had started taking them in the 1950s. he always had a grocery sack full of them in his car. I sure wish I would have asked more questions about that. I just saw that Bob Jewett posted a similar shot, that was the path I am sure , not sure if it went in my way , or his,
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Bob Jewett said:
I think the only way that path is going to work is with a thin hit on the object ball. That would make it not really a draw shot, although draw will help the distance.
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I'm sure it was on a 5x10 billiard table, the cloth was the flimsiest I ever saw being used, the ball was frozen in the corner, he hit the ball dead in the face and it came out of the corner like a rocket, and took a path similar to what I marked , it may have been a tiny bit different but not a huge amount , and like I said , I think it came in on the side of the object ball I showed.I know you play billiards , I don't , but that was real close to the shot.I don't think the angles would change that much due to speed, but I don't know, someone here should be able to at least get to the third rail, that should prove that with enough stroke the shot is possible, correct?
 
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book collector said:
the lines are probably off a bit but this is what I think I saw, seems like about 35 feet or so to me, I think when the ball is frozen in the corner the cueball rebound helped so it was not as hard to do, It is still a wild shot, and I am pretty sure this was on the table that had cloth as thin as toilet paper. Rileys Billiards in springfield Ohio, sometime about 2001. Dr Cue was living in the back room yet and came out for a while but I don't remember if he saw the shot. The original post said the cueball was 5 feet away from object ball, I don't think it makes much difference , but the ball might get airborn from too close? move the cueball back to the side cushion line, for accuracy, I am 99 % sure he did not go rail first. That would not help imo. George would have been about 86 or 87. He was a heck of a man even at that age . I had always been thin and I got a small gut on me and my son had made fun of me , called me fat boy or something like that so I told him I would have a smaller waist than him in one year , I did . I weighed 180 pounds was 5'10 and wearing 29 inch waist pants I could get both thumbs in the waist band pulled up correctly , so I was actually 27 or 28 inch waist.. I was in the best shape of my life. I did about 1000 crunches 1000 pushups and pull ups every day ,
I could not find pants small enough to fit me. except in boys. I still could not keep up with George, he had endless energy and took a couple of handfulls of herbs every day, no man made drugs , herbs. He said he had started taking them in the 1950s. he always had a grocery sack full of them in his car. I sure wish I would have asked more questions about that. I just saw that Bob Jewett posted a similar shot, that was the path I am sure , not sure if it went in my way , or his,
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Quesports said:
Georgie had a big stroke, actually it was phenomenal and we all saw him draw the cue ball 7 rails on many occasions.
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do i believe this- sure

did the mythic harold worst do it- sure

if you are freddy the beard
will your book have crazy stories- sure

is it possible to map the shot and
learn to make it a variety of ways- sure



but why? why?
 
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