How's your speed control?
- Thread starter Bob Jewett
- Start date
If you think your speed control and banking are pretty good, check out this form of carom billiards. Carom is where Efren learned his ball control. Note how well they do short strokes and masse shots.
A few details about the game to aid your viewing: You have to make your cue ball hit both the other balls. You are not allowed to keep the two balls in the same area for more than two shots, so you can't just trap them in a corner. If a player runs out (250 in this game) from the break shot, the other player gets a chance to tie.
There is an issue with speed control and pool, most of the time you are not finding the same speed of cloth and cushions at any two rooms you may play at, so anything that someone gets used to in one place does not translate to another. It takes me like an hour of play to get the speed down to even passable levels when going from table to table.
Edit:My reading comprehension needs work
I love watching this.If you think your speed control and banking are pretty good, check out this form of carom billiards. Carom is where Efren learned his ball control. Note how well they do short strokes and masse shots.
A few details about the game to aid your viewing: You have to make your cue ball hit both the other balls. You are not allowed to keep the two balls in the same area for more than two shots, so you can't just trap them in a corner. If a player runs out (250 in this game) from the break shot, the other player gets a chance to tie.
I have tried and failed every time to nurse the balls down the rail or work them into a corner.
It looks so easy and is impossibly difficult. Any carom game is infinitely more difficult than pool. I feel it’s the most difficult of any cue sport. Any version.
Nice video, thanks Bob!
Best
Eric
The game is much more difficult than it looks. The cloth is so insanely fast that it feels like you could just blow on the balls and send them round the table. I really can't stress enough how sensitive the equipment is to minute tip placement changes and changes in speed! Before I tried the carom games, I always thought my speed was pretty good, but this game is brutally revealing of any deficiencies. At the same time, big draw shots are very demanding of power because of the heavier balls, so you need both big power and finesse to go with it, maybe not so much in balkline as is played here, but certainly 3 cushion.If you think your speed control and banking are pretty good, check out this form of carom billiards. Carom is where Efren learned his ball control. Note how well they do short strokes and masse shots.
A few details about the game to aid your viewing: You have to make your cue ball hit both the other balls. You are not allowed to keep the two balls in the same area for more than two shots, so you can't just trap them in a corner. If a player runs out (250 in this game) from the break shot, the other player gets a chance to tie.
It's also very easy to both overestimate the reactivity in one shot, and underestimate it in the next. Some shots seem to act in a familiar manner to a pool/snooker player, others seem to just take off without any sort of reasonable explanation. It's a challenging game for sure.
The most incredible speed control I've witnessed was Neal Robertson against Selby in The Northern Irish. With the black in the Jaws and the red 4 inches away on the foot rail with the white married to the head rail he hit the red and stopped just short of the black.
GentlemanJames
Well-known member
About 25 years ago, an older guy at the local Pool Hall took me over to the Carom table, after I asked him some question (which I cannot recall). He told me, if I really wanted to master the thing I was asking him about, I should do an hour or two on the Carom table; in addition to my regular work-out routine.
I was never so humbled in my life, as when I was over the green felt of the Carom table.
I felt crippled and blind. I tried to get a handle on seeing what he was trying to teach me, until I told him I just couldn't hack this and I was getting a headache (in addition to feeling totally humiliated and embarrassed).
Flash-Forward 25 years, and I am working-out at a different local room, and the one Carom table in the place is next to the pool table I was working-out on. I watched the Carom guy who was on that table practicing the same billiard shot, over and over and over and over, with incredible finish-position precision. After I wrapped-up my session, and was passing him on my way to the counter, he looked up at me, and I just smiled, bowing slightly from the waist, and I said to him: "fantastic work".
That's about as close to a Carom table as care to go near since my first experience way back when. - GJ
I was never so humbled in my life, as when I was over the green felt of the Carom table.
I felt crippled and blind. I tried to get a handle on seeing what he was trying to teach me, until I told him I just couldn't hack this and I was getting a headache (in addition to feeling totally humiliated and embarrassed).
Flash-Forward 25 years, and I am working-out at a different local room, and the one Carom table in the place is next to the pool table I was working-out on. I watched the Carom guy who was on that table practicing the same billiard shot, over and over and over and over, with incredible finish-position precision. After I wrapped-up my session, and was passing him on my way to the counter, he looked up at me, and I just smiled, bowing slightly from the waist, and I said to him: "fantastic work".
That's about as close to a Carom table as care to go near since my first experience way back when. - GJ
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Do you have trouble keeping count of your run during an inning? Once I get past 2-3 points, managing the balls takes so much focus that I just forget to count.
It helps to count out loud. I'm really bad at counting, too.