How Can I Practice On This?

[3kushn]

It's getting close to tournament season for me and turning up the practice dial. My problem is the only 3C table in
town that plays anywhere close to tournament conditions is my table but I'm not at home a lot.

Setting up shots is required practice but so is competition. Public equipment are for the most part never clean.
Tournaments are played on new cloth and new balls, and are cleaned after each match.

How do the pros deal with getting ready (or staying ready) under these circumstances. Do I just ignore it, forget
about winning a practice game, or just make the adjustments and play the shots the table will allow me to play and
forget the others.

For me it's similar to getting ready to play tennis by practicing ping pong.

 

[Bob Jewett]

It's getting close to tournament season for me and turning up the practice dial. My problem is the only 3C table ... Public equipment are for the most part never clean.
Tournaments are played on new cloth and new balls, and are cleaned after each match. ...

The way Harry Sims made the carom tables at the old California Billiards in San Jose play more or less like new was to use silicone spray. I think he applied it to the cushions. This is not a completely satisfactory solution for a lot of reasons, but it can approximate new-cloth behavior. An alternative is to wax/spray the balls.

As for the dirty cloth, you can clean it yourself if they will let you. If you use a vacuum cleaner on someone else's table, be careful not to pull up the cracked plaster in the joints.

One way to get new cloth on public tables is to arrange a USBA qualifier for the Nationals (which will be in Louisville next to DCC this year). If you run a qualifier, Simonis is offering a discount on the cloth, and for each 6 players in the qualifier, the USBA will pay for half the cost of the cloth for one table. The cloth provided is top-of-the-line Simonis 300. Yes, it is a lot of work to organize a qualifier, but it is a good way to improve playing conditions and maybe attract players to the room. If you have questions or need help about running a qualifier, please contact me. It's possible to run a qualifier on just one table.

Bob Jewett
President, USBA

 

[3kushn]

Thanks Bob,
I'm aware of silicone and furnature polish and have heard that Rain-X also works and Slip Stic is supposed to be coming out with a new product that sounds very interesting.

Most, not all places, I play will not allow me to use any of these stop gaps stating that they have gotten complaints from some of the players, probably pool players. This is not a dig on pool or the players but as you know, with a some of exceptions, table and ball conditions are more critical in 3C than pool. Few systems work well with dirty equipmemt.

I'm resigned to the fact that I can't teach pool hall owners that it's in they're best interest to clean the tables and balls. Cloth and balls last much longer if they do this, not to mention more fun to play since many of the shots aren't taken out of the arsenal. Can't figure out why that doesn't matter, but it doesn't. Simply a fact of life.

The rooms I frequent in 5 states usually change cloth reasonably often but since no cleaning takes place but maybe weekly, the cloth starts playing bad in a week or so. By 4 weeks they may as well have never changed it in the first place.

My question is, are there any work arounds to this for tournament prep. The only option I can think of is turn my basement into a mini billiards hall/ private club so I can get some competition on a reasonably decent playing field.