So another Sunday, and another 6 hours of table time
So I found a house cue that I really liked last night... and don't laugh
It's one of the oldest looking, worn-out, dirtiest cues that they have, but it has a new tip on it and it's damned near perfectly straight
I thought I'd get smart and stuck the ugliest cue in the house behind the most worn-out looking table in the corner of the room. I figured my baby was safe until I got there and it was missing, only to discover someone else with their grubby hands on her
So I found a different stick and started doing what I always do to start the night and thats break and just try to sink as many in a row as possible
I was doing decently, pocketing 3 or 4 balls in row before I would decide to try a shot I knew was a problem for me but to try anyways... and I would always have a problem either getting the right deflection off the ball to roll to the next one, or just getting the right stroke to even pocket the ball on a sharp cut sometimes.
After 45 minutes or so the couple left that were in possession of my new-favorite cue and I got it back and went back to shooting. After an hour of playing 8-ball by myself (alternating between solid/stripe when you miss/scatch... it's not the greatest skill game, but I'm not the greatest player either, bear with me here
), a man named Kevin asked me to join him on his table and we started playing.
We started out playing a game of 8-ball that he won when I had one ball left on the table. After that I humored him and decided I was ready to get reemed in 9-ball
Now, it's not that I'm a horible shot maker... it's just that the whole play for position on a ball 3 turns in advanced thing just isn't in my bag of tricks just yet. I'm still in the mind-frame of "you have to sink this ball to move on to the next... concentrate on this one, worry about the next one after". So he gets the break in our first game of 9-ball and he decides it would be a great way to stat by running 4 balls, and combo'ing the 6 into the 9 for the game
Our next game he breaks, sinks one on the break, runs two balls and is stuck on the 4, so he plays a safe behind the 6, which are both hugging the head rail about 2" right of center table, while the CB is stuck on the foot rail about 1" to the right with just a fraction of the 4 poking out (if I knew how to use those fancy table diagrams you folks do, I would... trust me :/ ). So with 1/4 beautiful top right english and 3/4 of some very nice luck, I nut the 4 in the opposite corner and come 3 cushions back down to the foot rail for the 5.
Now the point of this isn't me actually pocketing the ball it's the fact I can almost guarentee after almost an hour of using that other cue... there would have been no way I would have pulled that off. I tried almost 2 dozen shots like that without another ball even in the way and I couldn't get it right.
We ended the night something like 2-5/6 (with one of my wins coming off of one of my best double bank shots ever
), but Kevin was actual very nice about me being a much lower player and even stopped the game a few times to show me how he would play it, and 80% of the time I'd do it almost exactly as he described on the first try. He was pretty good about getting the points across he was trying to make. Long story short, after he left I decided to see what would happen if I tried some of the same shots he set up for me with a different cue to see what would happen.
Now about 65% of the time I would make the same shots without much difficuly pocketing the ball, but I wouldn't get the deflection I was aiming for and would leave myself in a bad position moving on. After 30 minutes or so I went back to the Ugly Stick (my loving new name for her
) and I would pocket the shots and get the angle I wanted with much more consistency.
Looking back on the night I feel I was doing pretty decently on the whole, but the whole cue thing has started bugging me. Do you folks think that equipment plays that much of a factor into simple shot making (ok some of the shots i am using for reference aren't exactly simple, but as I said, even getting the right spin on the CB was hard at times using the other stick...), or is it more of my mind going into one of those "Wow, I bet I would have made that with the other cue" mentalities, that sets me up for when I'm simply getting better at the shots, that I believe it's the cue that I am using?
Now I've been told and, believe, that even if you play with the same worthless Cuetec cue every day that you will still become more consistent because you will be familiar with how the cue plays. My question is, does the equipment matter to the point of throwing off the ending angle of a simple 3-foot, 70 degree cut shot? Or is it my mind playing tricks on me?

So I found a house cue that I really liked last night... and don't laugh


I thought I'd get smart and stuck the ugliest cue in the house behind the most worn-out looking table in the corner of the room. I figured my baby was safe until I got there and it was missing, only to discover someone else with their grubby hands on her

So I found a different stick and started doing what I always do to start the night and thats break and just try to sink as many in a row as possible

After 45 minutes or so the couple left that were in possession of my new-favorite cue and I got it back and went back to shooting. After an hour of playing 8-ball by myself (alternating between solid/stripe when you miss/scatch... it's not the greatest skill game, but I'm not the greatest player either, bear with me here

We started out playing a game of 8-ball that he won when I had one ball left on the table. After that I humored him and decided I was ready to get reemed in 9-ball


Our next game he breaks, sinks one on the break, runs two balls and is stuck on the 4, so he plays a safe behind the 6, which are both hugging the head rail about 2" right of center table, while the CB is stuck on the foot rail about 1" to the right with just a fraction of the 4 poking out (if I knew how to use those fancy table diagrams you folks do, I would... trust me :/ ). So with 1/4 beautiful top right english and 3/4 of some very nice luck, I nut the 4 in the opposite corner and come 3 cushions back down to the foot rail for the 5.
Now the point of this isn't me actually pocketing the ball it's the fact I can almost guarentee after almost an hour of using that other cue... there would have been no way I would have pulled that off. I tried almost 2 dozen shots like that without another ball even in the way and I couldn't get it right.
We ended the night something like 2-5/6 (with one of my wins coming off of one of my best double bank shots ever

Now about 65% of the time I would make the same shots without much difficuly pocketing the ball, but I wouldn't get the deflection I was aiming for and would leave myself in a bad position moving on. After 30 minutes or so I went back to the Ugly Stick (my loving new name for her

Looking back on the night I feel I was doing pretty decently on the whole, but the whole cue thing has started bugging me. Do you folks think that equipment plays that much of a factor into simple shot making (ok some of the shots i am using for reference aren't exactly simple, but as I said, even getting the right spin on the CB was hard at times using the other stick...), or is it more of my mind going into one of those "Wow, I bet I would have made that with the other cue" mentalities, that sets me up for when I'm simply getting better at the shots, that I believe it's the cue that I am using?
Now I've been told and, believe, that even if you play with the same worthless Cuetec cue every day that you will still become more consistent because you will be familiar with how the cue plays. My question is, does the equipment matter to the point of throwing off the ending angle of a simple 3-foot, 70 degree cut shot? Or is it my mind playing tricks on me?