QUOTE]Originally posted by Celtic
Jump cues are a crutch for people who have no kicking skills. The jump cues built nowadays are so designed to that specific purpose that a monkey could learn to jump with one. Go to the expo's or the booths during the VNEA and BCA and you can watch the salespeople teaching a person to jump over a full ball two inches away in 5-10 minutes. The salespeople of course are awesome at jumping due to doing it so often yet the majority of them cannot play the rest of the game nearly as well, they are like the guy at the fair that tries to sell you 3 balls for 5 bucks, "all ya gotta do is throw em in the basket, see how easy it is!".
(John) I respectfully disagree with you. While jump cues are indeed used as sort of a crutch by some players I know personally hundreds of players who have awesome kicking skills and use the jump cue as an additition to their arsenal. Of course the salespeople can do the jumps - they have to be able to demonstrate the product accurately and compentently. When I decided to make and sell jump cues I was forced to start practicing diligently with it until I became so proficient that I could do almost any jump shot and answer any question. I also worked up a set of shots that would show the use of the jump shot in game situations that come up fairly routinely. And yes, teaching someone the basic technique can be done in as little as one minute if you have a good stroke to start with. I have often spent up to an hour teaching people to jump who could otherwise play fairly good pool. I have also been unable to teach others while my friends were able to teach them in a few minutes. It is untrue to state that it's all the cue and anyone can do it immediately. I personally have demonstrated the cue to thousands of players and had thousands try it. It is a fact that unless a player already has some idea of how to jump that they will not be able to jump balls accurately or at all with just a jump cue and no instruction. And, I for one can play the game with or without the jump cue. In my demonstrations I often do jump/kick shots and I also caution would be buyers about the dangers of thinking they are buying a "magic wand". Now as good a player as I am, and I am pretty good, I have constantly been amazed at what shots and with what ease pro-caliber players are able to do with a jump cue. If these shots are not indicative of 'taking the game to a new level' then I don't what is.
(Celtic)Learning to kick well enough to survive against good competition is an art and has tons of factors that must be learned, it takes years to get good at it and is never mastered. Learning to jump instead with a jump cue takes a fraction of the time, a very small fraction at that. A guy can be profficient at jumping balls in a matter of minutes once shown the right technique. It is not a stroke that takes a long time to learn as the jump cue does pretty much all the work.
(John) Learning to kick well takes time to master. Learning to kick is something that any half-decent player can learn in a few minutes. I have stood and watched Tom Rossmann teach people to kick in a matter of minutes. Some of those players will use Ron's teaching as a crutch and try to get by with the info learned there while others will use the information as a platform from which to explore the finer points of kicking. Saying a jump cue does all the work is like saying the diamonds do all the work when someone kicks a ball.
(Celtic) For all you people that think jump cues are fine and they should be legal I ask you what about shaft jumps? I remember when there was no rule against taking your cue apart and using the shaft to dart jump the cueball, a person could get over a ball as close as one inch from the ball. They changed the rules and cues now have to be a certain length, 40 inches I believe. They can change those rules again and say a cue must be at least 55 inches long and you must shoot with the same cue you took the first shot after the break with. The reason for having a break cue is totally different to the reason for having a jump cue, while one just protects the main shooting cue from damage and adds little to no advantage to the actual game the jump cue totally changes strategy and the way the game is played. I dont see the "well you should outlaw break cues as well then" arguement as valid in the slightest.
(John) It was not the shaft jumps that caused the rules to be changed. The jump cue rules were changed because of jump rods that barely resembled pool cues and were in fact harming the equipment. Jump cues now have evolved to be as effective as pool cues at adding controlled spin to the cueball with the added feature of increased "jumpability". I personally have ran three racks of nine ball and two eight and outs in one-pocket using just a Bunjee Jumper. The rules of nine ball and eight ball are such that a jump cue is a neccessary tool. You talk about intentional safes and I ask you then why a player should be rewarded when he plays an unintentional one? Why should the incoming player be imited in their options? Furthermore some full length pool cues jump better than others do so shouldn't we all be playing with 19.5 ounce 13mm Cuetecs so that we can insure that noone has the slightest equipment advantage?
(Celtic)The kicking game is a very interesting part of pool and should not be destroyed by cues (snip) ". Yeah thats great, except for the jump cues that are being built now are able to jump a ball from 2 inches away, who knows how good they will be in 10 years with even better technology. Right now a person has to play a GREAT safety to force someone to use the rails instead of pull out the jump cue. Why should getting out of safeties be so much easier then putting a person into one? There should be a balance but there is not, playing safe has gotten alot harder then it once was while escaping safeties is now alot easier. I dont think this shift is a good thing for pool at all. You just took most of the "Chess" component of pool out of the game. Jumping over balls is not "chess", it is the slamball jumping off a trampoline version of pool and cheapens the game.
(John) I believe that you have very little evidence that the kicking game is in any danger. There was a time that leather tips were new and innovative and allowed those that chose to use them a whole new arrray of shots to choose from. Actually playing safe has gotten easier with one foul, ball-in-hand rules. With two-foul rules the incoming player could push out on any shot instead of being forced to make a good hit. With one foul it's easy to duck behind a bunch of balls knowing that your opponent will have to kick at the balls. It was a lot harder to play knowing that you had to actually OUTPLAY and OUTSMART your opponent in two-foul pushout nineball. As for cheapening the game, I say that any increase in the range of shots that can be made adds value to the game and increases it's depth. How cheap is a perfectly executed jump-three rail kick shot?
(Celtic)That brings me to my most important point and somthing I loved about pool. The game was basically the player and his cue. People used one cue and learned to master as large a variety of shots that would help them defeat their opponent. (snip) The jump cue changed this alot and took alot of shots out of the players repitoire. (snip)
(John) Celtic, I mean you absolutely no disrespect when I ask you if you have studied the history of billiards? Players of pool and billiard games have historically used many many types of specialty cues for different games and different shots. Billiard players often have a masse' cue made especially for that shot. The jump cue takes nothing away from the game and conversely adds to it. Jumping balls is a skill that must be mastered to compete effectively under today's rulesets. The only thing a jump cue does is allow the skilled player a greater range of shots that can be played.
(Celitc) (snip) If you want to jump then learn to use your normal playing cue to do it. If you cannot jump with your normal cue because it is too close or because you lack the skill then relize that the banks can be used, or maybe you should learn to masse, this is what pool is all about, learning these tough techniques to keep yourself in the game. Learn to walk without your crutch. [/QUOTE]
Well, again I respectfully disagree with you because I have studied the history of the game and I have been and still am involved in the selling of jump cues. There is no such thing as the "purity" of the game. Billiards has been evolving for hundreds of years and will continue to do so. There was time when the game was played on a wooden bed framed by slats and the balls were pushed around with pooper scoopers. Was the game at it's purest then? There was a time when leather tips were not used and a long time after they were used that someone thought to put chalk on them. There was a time when thousands of people and mutli-million dollar machines were not employed to provide perfectly flat playing surfaces of slate. And so on and so on........ Now there is a fledgling part of the industry that makes a living building and selling jump cues which do no harm to the other equipment and add to the game by allowing players to do even more than was possible before the advent of the jump cues. Tens of thousands of players welcome these tools just as the majority of players welcomed leather tips and chalk. I hope that someday you may come around and see that jump shots using jump cues are more skill than gimmicry. But if you don't then chances are that you will lose a few games to someone who knows what they are doing with a jump cue and that you win far more from those that don't.
All the best and good strokin'
John