Idea for Training Software

[nrhoades]

I'm a fan of position/zone diagrams on paper, and I like thinking about all of the "triangles" to make a run out, and the cue ball path to get into position. I'm not that great at it yet, so I need practice.

So what I do is go to CueTable.com, open a new 9-Ball table, hit the Break button, and take balls 1-5 off of the table. I then print out the page and try to draw position zone triangles. Once I get better I can add more balls.

The problem is that it is annoying to print out each page, and it is a waste of paper.

Would there be interest in a computer program in which one draws position zones. This could even be a game.

There are pool games out there (Virtual Pool being one of the best) but it becomes irritating to play after you miss a shot because of tiny mouse movements when you know you could have made that shot in real life.

The idea of this game is to take shot making for granted and just pick positions for all nine balls. When you are done, a simulator will calculate the shot physics and English required to put the ball into the next zone, as well as add a little speed noise. Entering a position in the wrong way, or crossing a position, becomes a higher risk to make position on the next ball. If the cueball lands outside one of your zones you lose.

The idea is to isolate shoot from the positioning part of your brain, and maybe it'll be a good training tool. Maybe it could even be a SmartPhone app, something to do while you're bored, since it doesn't require precision.

I don't know if its worth the effort.

The low tech alternative is to just randomly draw balls on a small white-board tablet.

Would any of you use such a thing?

 

[Jude Rosenstock]

I'm a fan of position/zone diagrams on paper, and I like thinking about all of the "triangles" to make a run out, and the cue ball path to get into position. I'm not that great at it yet, so I need practice.

So what I do is go to CueTable.com, open a new 9-Ball table, hit the Break button, and take balls 1-5 off of the table. I then print out the page and try to draw position zone triangles. Once I get better I can add more balls.

The problem is that it is annoying to print out each page, and it is a waste of paper.

Would there be interest in a computer program in which one draws position zones. This could even be a game.

There are pool games out there (Virtual Pool being one of the best) but it becomes irritating to play after you miss a shot because of tiny mouse movements when you know you could have made that shot in real life.

The idea of this game is to take shot making for granted and just pick positions for all nine balls. When you are done, a simulator will calculate the shot physics and English required to put the ball into the next zone, as well as add a little speed noise. Entering a position in the wrong way, or crossing a position, becomes a higher risk to make position on the next ball. If the cueball lands outside one of your zones you lose.

The idea is to isolate shoot from the positioning part of your brain, and maybe it'll be a good training tool. Maybe it could even be a SmartPhone app, something to do while you're bored, since it doesn't require precision.

I don't know if its worth the effort.

The low tech alternative is to just randomly draw balls on a small white-board tablet.

Would any of you use such a thing?

I actually thought something like an RPG type game would be cool. Like you said, something that would not rely on mouse-movement for shotmaking. The only thing I would advise would be having a reasonable success/failure rate built in. That is to say, if the shot is relatively short, the player should almost always make the ball. If the shot is incredibly difficult, the player should almost always miss. The result of each shot (regardless of difficulty) should vary (even slightly) each and every time the shot is played.

I think then, the average gamer simulate professional pool just like how I can simulate professional baseball when I play MLB 2012 for PS3.

 

[nrhoades]

The FastFiz C++ library from Stanford University includes methods in injecting noise, or "human error" into the execution:

"The base noise model used will be consistent with past competitions. Each of the five action parameters will have a random perturbation added to it by the server before execution in the game. This is done to simulate imperfect execution skill on the parts of the agents and because the physics simulator itself is deterministic. Each perturbation is drawn from a zero-mean Gaussian distribution with a specific standard deviation for each parameter."

The five parameters that launch the cue ball into motion are:

azimuth angle of cue stick
elevation angle of cue stick
impact velocity of cue tip
horizontal distance from center of cue ball
vertical distance from center of the cue ball

The human error, or "random perturbation", is realized simply by adding a little white Gaussian noise to all five parameters.

This will decrease the odds that the simulator makes a really long shot, or a really tough cut shot; two situations which are the result of BAD POSITION.

A GOOD POSITION will be makable with the same amount of noise because you're nice and close to the OB.

Choosing the right position for the next shot is also correlated to noise, because speed control and English variations are less critical when going three rails compared to one, for example.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/billiards/tournament.html