my first 50 ball run!

[wigglybridge]

my first 50+ run, and on video! November 6, 2014.

many, many thanks to all who have helped me along the way: David Sapolis, whose videos i feel so fortunate to have found in my first searches on youtube 5 years ago, and which revealed the inner beauty of 14.1 to me. Dan White, who recently helped me get serious about position. and (unknowingly) Duke Laha, whose 154 ball run video showed me just How lightly you can hold the cue. Mike Grosso's how-to videos, which i've watched dozens of times.

there are many others who gave me a gentle nudge in the right direction, and i appreciate all of you.

but most of all, to Steve Matthieu, who has spent many, many hours of his own time selflessly trying to bang sense into my head. he is one of the smartest and kindest people i know.

the actual run starts at 2:30, after a miss into that &*#$*#^ rock-hard side pocket...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q93hrFKSMTw&feature=youtu.be

 

[sparkle84]

Excellent run Bob. Very happy for you.

 

[stevekur1]

my first 50+ run, and on video! November 6, 2014.

many, many thanks to all who have helped me along the way: David Sapolis, whose videos i feel so fortunate to have found in my first searches on youtube 5 years ago, and which revealed the inner beauty of 14.1 to me. Dan White, who recently helped me get serious about position. and (unknowingly) Duke Laha, whose 154 ball run video showed me just How lightly you can hold the cue. there are many others who gave me a gentle nudge in the right direction, and i appreciate all of you.

but most of all, to Steve Matthieu, who has spent many, many hours of his own time selflessly trying to bang sense into my head. he is one of the smartest and kindest people i know.

the actual run starts at 2:30, after a miss into that &*#$*#^ rock-hard side pocket...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q93hrFKSMTw&feature=youtu.be

That's awesome....Congrats my good friend Bob, I can't wait to watch it later !!!

I knew you always had it in you !!!

I guess I better start filming my sessions again now that you tied me on a video run !!!

-Steve

 

[wigglybridge]

yeah, Steve, but yours doesn't take FOREVER, like mine!

seriously, you need to lay in supplies before watching this thing...

 

[Pushout]

Congrats!! I'm well aware of the work and dedication that it takes to reach that milestone:thumbup:

 

[sparkle84]

yeah, Steve, but yours doesn't take FOREVER, like mine!

seriously, you need to lay in supplies before watching this thing...

It was long because you were giving a lot of thought to various situations and coming to good decisions for the most part. Whenever watching videos I'm always thinking about what I would do in the presented situation. This is the 1st video of yours I've watched where your shot selection was a strength instead of a weakness.
Hopefully you're beginning to see what needs to be done. A couple things I've stated numerous times is that attacking problems will force you into better shot selection and playing harder position on easy shots will make things easier later on. When
you shot the 11 ball at 23:00 is a good example of both concepts. You needed to get to the 4 ball to break the 2 balls near the rail and that's what you did.
That particular rack you had plenty of open balls and could have shot a few off before getting to the 4 but many times you won't have that luxury. Sometimes if you don't get to that 4 ball immediately your run will end so whenever these situations arise take the opportunity to practice them and they'll get easier and easier. Both to recognize and to execute.

 

[stevekur1]

Very nice shooting Sir !!

I am really enjoying watching your run while i am at work on my iPhone, I am about half way through it and had a thought that I didn't want to forget. Your game is becoming quite measured and precise.

I may need a spot from you !!!

Nice thought process you are working. Who cares if the pace is a little slow. You are doing a great job of getting the job done.

I like how a few times you elect to shoot a tougher shot, to get yourself on a better line to solve the situation.

Keep up the great work !!!

-Steve

 

[alstl]

Nice run.
----------

 

[sfleinen]

Just got the chance to view this last night, and a hearty congrats to Bob!!

Isn't that such a great feeling to break through a plateau? It makes it all worthwhile...

-Sean

 

[michael4]

excellent, you put in the work and deserve it :thumbup:

 

[Colonel]

Excellent job, now we want 75

 

[sjm]

Well done, sir.

 

[NitPicker]

Wow! That's about double the run from a few weeks ago isn't it? Impressive and inspiring!

 

[Vahmurka]

congratulations! And thanks for sharing your experience, it is really inspiring for those who are still on the road to their personal goal of running a 50... then it becomes a hundred... and it never ends, as if that goal constantly moves to the horizon and we keep chasing it.

 

[wigglybridge]

thank you all for sharing my excitement!

the run came as a surprise. i knew i had run a couple of racks, but didn't realize until i played it back later that it was a 52. that was probably a good thing.

i can hardly wait to get back at it. unfortunately, i'm also now in my busiest season as a recording engineer, and it was even a stretch to squeeze in the time for this one, although i'm trying to make sure i at least do a few drills every day, and mostly succeeding. actually, this one happened when i had a spare hour after dinner, and i'd had some wine -- maybe that helped calm me down!

this was, as pointed out, a Big jump over where i'd been recently, stuck around 28-29. i put the change down to a few reasons:

(1) i'd been working for the previous 2 months since i got my table set up again on my fundamentals, and with some video i discovered a couple of major stroke flaws that were the cause of my inconsistency: shooting Great for 10-15 balls and then dogging a seemingly unmissable shot. the biggest of these was that my right arm wasn't vertical, and was doing a crazy-complicated dance during my stroke. but also i've long had a flinching habit going on -- not enough to be visible to others, but i could feel it, and in slowmo video i could see it twisting my body very slightly; this was definitely causing both outright misses and loss of position. also, that old bugaboo, gripping the cue at impact, which i finally shook over the past month. those things not only helped my pocketing, but made it possible, for example, for me to get reliable and much more dramatic draw effortlessly.

(2) fixing the fundamentals made it possible for me to hear and act on Dan's advice that my position play sucked. previously, comments like that were useless because i couldn't act on them; i just couldn't hit the ball accurately enough to get reliable results with the cue ball. being able to finally productively do position drills was a giant breakthrough, and suddenly doing position drills became Fun!

(3) doing the position drills made me refocus even further on pocketing accuracy: the better the position got, the more obvious it was that it was dependent on very high precision pocketing. they both kinda fed on each other in the couple of days before this run. and i remember very distinctly the last drill i did before this run, where i threw the balls on the table and tried for each one to pick a difficult path, rather than the normal path, And to focus on watching the object ball to see what part of the pocket it went in on Every Shot, as a conscious tool to keep me from watching the cue ball and missing the shot.

(4) i very intentionally reminded myself at many points in the run to not miss easy shots. i think i have Gerard Soriano to thank for repeating that advice in a recent thread here. again, it helps to hear things over and over, because you need to be in the right place with your game to take advantage of certain types of advice.

(5) there's a moment at 12:30 in the video where i'm pondering whether to shoot the 11 ball into the side and go into a cluster; it was a shot that i felt squinchy about, that it was missable. but i thought to myself "if Steve Matthieu were here, he'd never let me wimp out of opening that cluster asap", and i also remembered his advice that i had to step outside my comfort zone to get to the next level. so i went for it, and that was probably the best shot choice i made in that rack. and in general i focused on going into clusters early throughout the run.

and now, lunch is over; back to work!

 

[driven]

yeah, Steve, but yours doesn't take FOREVER, like mine!

seriously, you need to lay in supplies before watching this thing...

I guess I should grab some popcorn before I turn it on.
Good shooting, 50 is a lot of balls
steven

 

[NitPicker]

thank you all for sharing my excitement!

the run came as a surprise. i knew i had run a couple of racks, but didn't realize until i played it back later that it was a 52. that was probably a good thing.

i can hardly wait to get back at it. unfortunately, i'm also now in my busiest season as a recording engineer, and it was even a stretch to squeeze in the time for this one, although i'm trying to make sure i at least do a few drills every day, and mostly succeeding. actually, this one happened when i had a spare hour after dinner, and i'd had some wine -- maybe that helped calm me down!

this was, as pointed out, a Big jump over where i'd been recently, stuck around 28-29. i put the change down to a few reasons:

(1) i'd been working for the previous 2 months since i got my table set up again on my fundamentals, and with some video i discovered a couple of major stroke flaws that were the cause of my inconsistency: shooting Great for 10-15 balls and then dogging a seemingly unmissable shot. the biggest of these was that my right arm wasn't vertical, and was doing a crazy-complicated dance during my stroke. but also i've long had a flinching habit going on -- not enough to be visible to others, but i could feel it, and in slowmo video i could see it twisting my body very slightly; this was definitely causing both outright misses and loss of position. also, that old bugaboo, gripping the cue at impact, which i finally shook over the past month. those things not only helped my pocketing, but made it possible, for example, for me to get reliable and much more dramatic draw effortlessly.

(2) fixing the fundamentals made it possible for me to hear and act on Dan's advice that my position play sucked. previously, comments like that were useless because i couldn't act on them; i just couldn't hit the ball accurately enough to get reliable results with the cue ball. being able to finally productively do position drills was a giant breakthrough, and suddenly doing position drills became Fun!

(3) doing the position drills made me refocus even further on pocketing accuracy: the better the position got, the more obvious it was that it was dependent on very high precision pocketing. they both kinda fed on each other in the couple of days before this run. and i remember very distinctly the last drill i did before this run, where i threw the balls on the table and tried for each one to pick a difficult path, rather than the normal path, And to focus on watching the object ball to see what part of the pocket it went in on Every Shot, as a conscious tool to keep me from watching the cue ball and missing the shot.

(4) i very intentionally reminded myself at many points in the run to not miss easy shots. i think i have Gerard Soriano to thank for repeating that advice in a recent thread here. again, it helps to hear things over and over, because you need to be in the right place with your game to take advantage of certain types of advice.

(5) there's a moment at 12:30 in the video where i'm pondering whether to shoot the 11 ball into the side and go into a cluster; it was a shot that i felt squinchy about, that it was missable. but i thought to myself "if Steve Matthieu were here, he'd never let me wimp out of opening that cluster asap", and i also remembered his advice that i had to step outside my comfort zone to get to the next level. so i went for it, and that was probably the best shot choice i made in that rack. and in general i focused on going into clusters early throughout the run.

and now, lunch is over; back to work!

Some truly good insights there. Thanks for sharing your journey.

 

[Dan White]

Sorry for the belated reply, Bob. Nice job! Thanks for the recognition, but it wasn't necessary. I think you already knew those things, you just hadn't worked on it so much yet.

 

[elvicash]

Congrats wiggly