how to deal with vastly different tables/felt/rails

bhayhurst

bhayhurst

New member
For people who practice on terrible tables and compete on nice ones, or pros that have to play in a ton of different environments: how do you deal with it?

I just moved to a new city, and in the part of the city where I live (South Side / Southern 'burbs), the pool halls are terrible. Bad... everything. Cloth. Rails. Balls. Dirt.

On the North side of the city, there are some really nice pool halls. Well maintained tables, beautiful. It's a pool-playin' town! (Note: I'm not gonna say what large American city I'm talking about -- let you figure it out?)

It's way too long of a drive to go to the nicer halls to practice, so I'm forced to run drills on the lesser tables near me. Tournaments (and my once-a-week 14.1 league) are, of course, in the nicer halls. Therefore, I practice on crappy tables and compete on nice tables, and it's killing me -- my speed control is wrecked; I hit the ball way too hard. My draw/follow is out of touch, etc. (We've all played on crappy tables -- y'all get the picture.)

With all that said, here's my question:

For people who practice on terrible tables and compete on nice ones, or pros that have to play in a ton of different environments: how do you deal with it? Do you have a method to get wired-in on speed control and amount of spin? If so... what is it?

I'm imagining something along the lines of this:
When I start on the table before the tournament, I do the following shots to determine the speed of the table: shot a, b..., shot e. The way that I score the speed: if 100% is how hard I hit the ball on my practice table, what percent do I have to hit to get the same results on this table? Then I do these shots to determine the qualities of the rails...

Pros have to have some methodology in this regard, right?
 
Improvise, adapt, and overcome. Experience on many tables, different conditions, and variables is skill learned over time.🤥
 
Silicone or waxing the cue ball on the crappy tables might help even out the speed difference some.
 
Learn to use the quirks of a table to your advantage. Always, as in always watch the other players at the table and how balls are ‘clicking’, balls slightly veering off, balls getting hung up at pots, rails reacting, etc. You want to play the guy who is staring at his cell phone and missing all of this.

For those with a home table. I switch out balls every couple of days whether playing American Pool or Snooker. I don’t want to get too used to one set and then get on a table where the balls just aren’t reacting as expected.

Also ‘risk’. Shot selection. I’m less likely to try a bank shot on poor cloth with chipped balls and unpredictable rails. I can thread a needle at 12 feet in my home snooker table but might opt for a safety on an unfamiliar table.

Don’t be the guy muttering ‘that should have went in’ or ‘I never miss that at our pool hall’.
 
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Every golf course is quite different, but playing on good equipment as opposed to crummy equipment is life.
I have to drive an hour one way to play on good equipment.
So, being retired, I built a 16x20 pipe structure over a slab of cement then closed it up. 16K included table.
No building permits needed in my cow town of 3,700 people for an out building.
 

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As to the original question. For me it took a large grain of salt. Not sure if that's the right one.
I played $5 tournament s every night of the week. Experience ing different conditions nightly. So me hooked was often self inflicted. My solution was, learn to kick. ;) Different cloth, pockets, rails, cue balls all led to miss calculations. So doing the Efren by scratching the head became easy for me. Still by maintaining a good attitude I did well.
 
A starting place is to try shots that you have had trouble with on strange tables.

Some suggested shots are in the Video Encyclopedia of Pool Practice DVD 5. Here is the listing in the outline:

31. Checking out a Table
166. lag shot​
167. maximum spin reaction​
168. stop shots​
169. draw shots​
170. maximum throw​
171. multiple-rail position shots​
172. rolling-CB kick adjustment​
173. 3-to-1 fast-speed reference bank check​
174. Plus System benchmark shot​
175. Corner-5 System benchmark shot​
176. slow-roll “roll-off” checks​
177. full check-out routine​
 
gregcantrall said:
As to the original question. For me it took a large grain of salt. Not sure if that's the right one.
I played $5 tournament s every night of the week. Experience ing different conditions nightly. So me hooked was often self inflicted. My solution was, learn to kick. ;) Different cloth, pockets, rails, cue balls all led to miss calculations. So doing the Efren by scratching the head became easy for me. Still by maintaining a good attitude I did well.
Click to expand...

The other factor that seem to have influence on how ball act & reacts are temperature & humidity in the ambient air of the place you are playing.
 
You need to show up at least and hour early and hit balls around by yourself until until you adjust. We have a similar situation here but its east and west side and when I show up to a hall with faster tables for a tournament I always show up really early.
 
Follow and rolling balls are much more consistent on different conditions. Rely on draw on strange cloth and you will probably come up short or overshoot by two feet. Thinking in multiple rail (or less rail) routes on different tables can also be helpful. Have a super fast table? Use another rail if possible.

So while there is still much adjustment, I'd say try to build your game more on naturally rolling balls instead of stun and draw. You will still need them, but they shouldn't be the focus of your game on strange equipment.
 
I normally carry 2 shafts with different tips for slow and fast conditions. Other than that, just try to adapt
 
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