My thoughts on conventional shaft vs. low deflection shaft

[qbilder]

I'm a little newer to the forum so please excuse my ignorance.. The difference between swerve and squirt?? Is swerve what I call throw? Squirt is when the cueball is pushed to the right of the aim line when you use heavy left hand english? Is swerve how you have to compensate for how much further right the object ball goes after being hit by the cue when you use left english due to the 'throw'? Sorry confused..

I play a traditional maple shaft by Jim Buss. When I hit a hard left handed english shot, sometimes I have to compensate more for squirt than throw...

Yes, you are pretty much on it. Throw is a little different but what you call throw is indeed swerve.

Squirt is the cueball glancing off the tip in the opposite direction of the spin given.

Swerve is the curvature of the path the cueball follows. If it doesn't travel dead straight, then it' swerves. This what you are calling throw, and it's not just you because lots of people call it the same thing. It's not wrong, just different labelling for the same thing.

 

[Cornerman]

Fred, maybe you can see what I'm getting at from this quote of yours:
I'd be interested in hearing more detail if you're not already burnt out on all of this.

pj
chgo

I am burnt on this, but I might as well answer. I've got time

The story goes something like this:

I was like everyone else wallowing in the world of english, thinking that using outside english was easy and inside english was impossible. Then I learned about squirt (aka cueball deflection) from Grady in the early 90's or late 8o's. At the time I was actually paying attention in my engineering studies, and the deflection concept made 100% sense.

From that one short lesson and putting a basic understanding of collision into practice, my game immediately jumped from "I only have one kind of english" to "I can shoot any shot with english" because everything made sense. We have squirt. We have swerve. It's a collision with a lateral force with rotation on the cloth.

A decade + later, I tried my first LD shaft. For the blended shots of squirt and swerve (low and slow with english) I had to start thinking about each shot before I shot it because it no longer made sense. The side collision with lateral force with the rotation now had less lateral force consequence. Swerve dominated whereas there was normally a more equal mix. Not exactly equal mix, but a mix that had a baseline that made sense, so adjustments were simple. So, I thought that if I just kept on working with the LD shaft, I'd eventually get used to it. But, after a year and a half, I never did. In automatic mode (tournaments, leagues, and cash games), my body still automatically performed "side collision with rotation" in the way I originally learned. I never played my best pool with a LD shaft. Not in auto-pilot in real competition. Adjustments wouldn’t make sense. I could make the shots, but I never had the precision blend of speed and spin because my body just didn't think it was making sense to what it was used to. I was always fighting against my instinct. Adjustments weren’t automatic. Even after a year and a half. The day (and I mean the very day) I switched back to a normal shaft, my game jumped right back to where it started. I felt I threw away a year and a half, but I learned form the experience. LD shafts weren't for me.

So, this is just me. Maybe I'm unique in how I learned english, at what point in my life and what point of my pool playing. But, reading many of the posts, I see I'm not alone. Too many people report having the same issue with LD shafts... the swerve dominant shots aren't as easy. I think it simply boils down to what make sense to the individual, consciously or sub-consciously. And if you have to work at an LD shaft for a year just to get "as good" or in my case "not as good," then the answer for me is easy. And I point to the swerve dominant shots as the ones that made the difference. To me, it makes sense since LD shaft really address reducing squirt.

If I picked up an LD shaft in the days that I had difficulty making inside english shots, I might have a different view. But, I didn't. I was already very comfortable shooting inside english shots. I think that's the difference.

Fred

 

[Patrick Johnson]

The difference between swerve and squirt?? Is swerve what I call throw?

Squirt: when hit offcenter to the left or right, the CB goes in a straight line, but in a direction slightly different from where you point it (opposite the direction of your tip's offset). This happens on every sidespin shot.

Swerve: when hit offcenter to the left or right, after first starting off in the squirt direction, the CB curves in the direction opposite the squirt direction. Like squirt, this happens on every sidespin shot because the cue is slightly elevated on every shot, producing "downward sidespin" (in more technical terms: spin around a horizontal axis) - in this way it's just like what we call "masse" (mah-say), but on a smaller scale than usual.

Throw: when hit at an angle or with CB sidespin, the OB is "thrown" slightly off the line between the CB/OB centers by the friction of the CB's surface rubbing across the OB's surface (the OB is "thrown" in the direction the CB's surface rubs across the OB's surface).

pj
chgo

 

[Patrick Johnson]

Fred:
I am burnt on this, but I might as well answer. I've got time

Thanks. I remember that story, and enjoyed it again. It helps to remind me exactly where you come from on this stuff. All subjective preference, as far as I can tell, and all very reasonable to me.

pj
chgo

 

[Cornerman]

Fred, maybe you can see what I'm getting at from this quote of yours:
I'd be interested in hearing more detail if you're not already burnt out on all of this.

pj
chgo

I am burnt on this, but I might as well answer. I've got time

The story goes something like this:

I was like everyone else wallowing in the world of english, thinking that using outside english was easy and inside english was impossible. Then I learned about squirt (aka cueball deflection) from Grady in the early 90's or late 8o's. At the time I was actually paying attention in my engineering studies, and the deflection concept made 100% sense.

From that one short lesson and putting a basic understanding of collision into practice, my game immediately jumped from "I only have one kind of english" to "I can shoot any shot with english" because everything made sense. We have squirt. We have swerve. It's a collision with a lateral force with rotation on the cloth.

A decade + later, I tried my first LD shaft. For the blended shots of squirt and swerve (low and slow with english) I had to start thinking about each shot before I shot it because it no longer made sense. The side collision with lateral force with the rotation now had less lateral force consequence. Swerve dominated whereas there was normally a more equal mix. Not exactly equal mix, but a mix that had a baseline that made sense, so adjustments were simple. So, I thought that if I just kept on working with the LD shaft, I'd eventually get used to it. But, after a year and a half, I never did. In automatic mode (tournaments, leagues, and cash games), my body still automatically performed "side collision with rotation" in the way I originally learned. I never played my best pool with a LD shaft. Not in auto-pilot in real competition. Adjustments wouldn’t make sense. I could make the shots, but I never had the precision blend of speed and spin because my body just didn't think it was making sense to what it was used to. I was always fighting against my instinct. Adjustments weren’t automatic. Even after a year and a half. The day (and I mean the very day) I switched back to a normal shaft, my game jumped right back to where it started. I felt I threw away a year and a half, but I learned form the experience. LD shafts weren't for me.

So, this is just me. Maybe I'm unique in how I learned english, at what point in my life and what point of my pool playing. But, reading many of the posts, I see I'm not alone. Too many people report having the same issue with LD shafts... the swerve dominant shots aren't as easy. I think it simply boils down to what make sense to the individual, consciously or sub-consciously. And if you have to work at an LD shaft for a year just to get "as good" or in my case "not as good," then the answer for me is easy. And I point to the swerve dominant shots as the ones that made the difference. To me, it makes sense since LD shaft really address reducing squirt.

If I picked up an LD shaft in the days that I had difficulty making inside english shots, I might have a different view. But, I didn't. I was already very comfortable shooting inside english shots. I think that's the difference.

Fred

 

[jetlau3]

ah ha!

Squirt: when hit offcenter to the left or right, the CB goes in a straight line, but in a direction slightly different from where you point it (opposite the direction of your tip's offset). This happens on every sidespin shot.

Swerve: when hit offcenter to the left or right, after first starting off in the squirt direction, the CB curves in the direction opposite the squirt direction. Like squirt, this happens on every sidespin shot because the cue is slightly elevated on every shot, producing "downward sidespin" (in more technical terms: spin around a horizontal axis) - in this way it's just like what we call "masse" (mah-say), but on a smaller scale than usual.

Throw: when hit at an angle or with CB sidespin, the OB is "thrown" slightly off the line between the CB/OB centers by the friction of the CB's surface rubbing across the OB's surface (the OB is "thrown" in the direction the CB's surface rubs across the OB's surface).

pj
chgo

Thanks PJ. This makes a ton of sense and clarifies it for me. I don't know if I have ever figured out swerve though. I regularly compensate for squirt and throw on side spin shots but I never really compensate for swerve. When is swerve the most evident (hard or soft, long or short shots)?

On a hard side spin shot, I find that squirt over takes throw. For example, when cutting a ball to the left using left handed english... I sometimes shoot right at the object ball knowing that the ball will 'squirt' right and I will still cut the OB. However, when I hit the ball softly, I find that squirt is negligible and I have to compensate the other direction for throw or what I think is throw.. I aim further right (cutting the ball further left) and the 'throw' puts the ball in the pocket..

Does this make sense or am I actually confusing what I perceive as throw as actually swerve?

Easier applications of throw are when 2 balls are stuck together and right english hit on the ball 'throws' the OB left. This is evident because since they are stuck together, the cue ball has no room to 'swerve'..

thanks for interesting and enlightening responses guys..

PS I played a Predator Sneaky with a 314 for about a year a long time ago but I was still improving steadily and I played my best pool with the standard maple Buss shaft.

 

[Cornerman]

On a hard side spin shot, I find that squirt over takes throw. For example, when cutting a ball to the left using left handed english... I sometimes shoot right at the object ball knowing that the ball will 'squirt' right and I will still cut the OB. However, when I hit the ball softly, I find that squirt is negligible and I have to compensate the other direction for throw or what I think is throw.. I aim further right (cutting the ball further left) and the 'throw' puts the ball in the pocket..

In absolute basic terms, that's pretty much how I look at it also. Except I replace your term throw with swerve.

Does this make sense or am I actually confusing what I perceive as throw as actually swerve?

To combine both Pat's and Eric's answers to this question, because "spin throw" and swerve have a net effect in the same direction (i.e., left hand english throws the object ball to the right, but also because the cueball swerves to the left, the object ball is cut more to the right), they can be confused with each other. In my opinion, swerve is the bigger effect. I personally treat throw as neglibile, even though it isn't.

Fred

 

[Patrick Johnson]

Thanks PJ. This makes a ton of sense and clarifies it for me. I don't know if I have ever figured out swerve though. I regularly compensate for squirt and throw on side spin shots but I never really compensate for swerve. When is swerve the most evident (hard or soft, long or short shots)?

The CB swerves more when the shot is longer and/or slower (or when you use more sidespin or jack up more), but it swerves at least a little on all sidespin shots except the shortest and/or hardest ones. This is because your cue is at least slightly jacked up on almost every shot (because the butt has to be over a rail).

On a hard side spin shot, I find that squirt over takes throw. For example, when cutting a ball to the left using left handed english... I sometimes shoot right at the object ball knowing that the ball will 'squirt' right and I will still cut the OB. However, when I hit the ball softly, I find that squirt is negligible and I have to compensate the other direction for throw or what I think is throw.. I aim further right (cutting the ball further left) and the 'throw' puts the ball in the pocket..

Does this make sense or am I actually confusing what I perceive as throw as actually swerve?

You get both swerve and throw on almost every sidespin shot, but on most shots swerve is a much larger effect than throw (often even larger than squirt). You're correct that they both change the OB's path in the same direction, which can make it a little difficult to figure how much of each you're seeing.

Swerve is also much more difficult to cope with than squirt or throw because it's so variable - it changes with distance, speed (as we've already said), tip offset (like squirt), butt elevation and cloth/ball condition (type, newness, cleanliness, humidity). Between swerve, squirt and throw, if we could get rid of only one I'd choose swerve in a heartbeat.

pj
chgo

 

[Celtic]

Do you golf? Do you still use old style wooden drivers? The older drivers felt better and definitely sounded and felt better. The new technology allows me to go 40 yards farther and stay within the boundaries. Can you please explain to me how I will achieve less accurate shape with a LD type product? Preds/OBs do not come with guidance system.

That said alot of professional golfers are playing with blades, not oversized irons that simplify the game in a way similar to what a LD shaft does to pool.

Why do the pro's like Tiger stick to blades?

Because there is a tradeoff for the more demanding swing accuracy and a smaller sweetspot on the club. More feel and more capability to work the golf ball with a draw or fade.

For the hackers those oversized clubs are great, they have trouble enough keeping the ball in play and they do not play draws and fades, at least on purpose. They also don't get the butter sweet feel of a blade when you hit the sweet spot, they get the arm numbing jarring feedback of a blade when you miss the sweet spot, and the unwanted result of the golf ball going god knows where.

For the pros though, which is where this thread started off, those guys can control the more precise and demanding blades and make them do things on demand that are far more difficult, to impossible to do with a oversized iron.

It is not impossible to hit a fade or draw with an oversized club, just a whole lot harder, and you are going to get less return on a perfectly hit ball with the oversized iron then you will with a blade. That is why pros use the blades with better feel and control despite them being harder to hit accurately. They are getting control, a butter soft hit, and the ability to work the ball such that the easy to hit oversized iron does not allow.

Hitting a draw shot on a object ball 3 feet away and drawing back 2 feet for a window where you have about a 4 inch diameter to land or you are hooked, you want the control, the accuracy of the pot is not the critical issue. You want as much feel as you can get out of your shaft at that moment IF you are the type of player that relies on feel in their pool game.

As for you personally and how you may get worse shape with a LD shaft? I cannot claim that you yourself would, nor did I. I have no idea what kind of pool player you are. Some players are very technical and they play X amount of tip below center with Y speed stroke to get to Z. Some don't think like that, they play with a sense of feel and everything they do is subconsious. They hit the shot not thinking about where they are hitting the cueball or how hard, they are thinking about the spot they want the cueball to be and everything else is automatic and engrained in their heads because of the 10's of thousands of shots they have shot creating that muscle memory and subconsious cueball control.

You may be a technical style player. If so a predator is probably not going to affect you negatively on the shape play because you are not a feel player and you will simply get the added bonus of more accurate potting.

At the end of the day ALOT of pros use LD shafts and ALOT of pros don't. Those pros are going to do what works for them, someone who makes a living playing this game has likely used LD shafts at one time or another and they either decided they liked them and kept playing with them or they decided they did not and are playing with something different.

 

[enzo]

also, i think one of the huge advantages that often gets overlooked with these ld shafts is that when you go from one room, or even one table to the next, cueball sizes vary, weights change. since heavier cb deflect less than light ones, you will be dealing with less adjustments when it comes to this with an ld shaft. there is an old pool hall near me that has VERY old red circles, the circles are all gone and the cb's are all very light. this comes into play in a big time way im sure.

another rarely mentioned advantage is if i break my ld shaft, i have a new shaft the same day that plays pretty much exactly the same. that is unprecidented until now with these shafts.

 

[Nick B]

I still reject the fact that you get poorer "quality" of shape with LD type product. The feel you speak of is completely irrelevant to the physics.

Let's just assume the following:
1. Feel is the feedback that gets delivered to your hands and ears which is processed by your brain.
2. This occurs only after contact with cue ball and the input to the shot is finished.
3. It does nothing for me with regards to pocketing of object ball or final outcome of cueball

I can play proficiently with conventional and LD shaft. I started life as a snooker player and still play with ash. I find the LD shafts to be more linear to spin and thus I prefer them. That for me is the "majic"...linear response to speed and tip placement. I find conventional shafts to respond well to small tip or power inputs. If I plotted them on a curve I would get a non linear area (knee in curve) in the higher power/bigger spin quadrants. I find the LD shafts to be more consistent. The small trade off in "feedback" is inconsequential to my overall performance.

Next month when I'm in Calgary maybe you can show me how poor my shape is?


I acknowledge that most professional golfers still prefer blades and steel...but none to my knowledge still use wooden drivers.

That said alot of professional golfers are playing with blades, not oversized irons that simplify the game in a way similar to what a LD shaft does to pool.

Why do the pro's like Tiger stick to blades?

Because there is a tradeoff for the more demanding swing accuracy and a smaller sweetspot on the club. More feel and more capability to work the golf ball with a draw or fade.

For the hackers those oversized clubs are great, they have trouble enough keeping the ball in play and they do not play draws and fades, at least on purpose. They also don't get the butter sweet feel of a blade when you hit the sweet spot, they get the arm numbing jarring feedback of a blade when you miss the sweet spot, and the unwanted result of the golf ball going god knows where.

For the pros though, which is where this thread started off, those guys can control the more precise and demanding blades and make them do things on demand that are far more difficult, to impossible to do with a oversized iron.

It is not impossible to hit a fade or draw with an oversized club, just a whole lot harder, and you are going to get less return on a perfectly hit ball with the oversized iron then you will with a blade. That is why pros use the blades with better feel and control despite them being harder to hit accurately. They are getting control, a butter soft hit, and the ability to work the ball such that the easy to hit oversized iron does not allow.

Hitting a draw shot on a object ball 3 feet away and drawing back 2 feet for a window where you have about a 4 inch diameter to land or you are hooked, you want the control, the accuracy of the pot is not the critical issue. You want as much feel as you can get out of your shaft at that moment IF you are the type of player that relies on feel in their pool game.

As for you personally and how you may get worse shape with a LD shaft? I cannot claim that you yourself would, nor did I. I have no idea what kind of pool player you are. Some players are very technical and they play X amount of tip below center with Y speed stroke to get to Z. Some don't think like that, they play with a sense of feel and everything they do is subconsious. They hit the shot not thinking about where they are hitting the cueball or how hard, they are thinking about the spot they want the cueball to be and everything else is automatic and engrained in their heads because of the 10's of thousands of shots they have shot creating that muscle memory and subconsious cueball control.

You may be a technical style player. If so a predator is probably not going to affect you negatively on the shape play because you are not a feel player and you will simply get the added bonus of more accurate potting.

At the end of the day ALOT of pros use LD shafts and ALOT of pros don't. Those pros are going to do what works for them, someone who makes a living playing this game has likely used LD shafts at one time or another and they either decided they liked them and kept playing with them or they decided they did not and are playing with something different.

 

[Celtic]

I still reject the fact that you get poorer "quality" of shape with LD type product. The feel you speak of is completely irrelevant to the physics.

Let's just assume the following:
1. Feel is the feedback that gets delivered to your hands and ears which is processed by your brain.
2. This occurs only after contact with cue ball and the input to the shot is finished.
3. It does nothing for me with regards to pocketing of object ball or final outcome of cueball

If pool players were robots then yeah, feel would be a non-issue. Pool players are alas "not" robots. And the feel of the last shot is in your mind when shooting the next shot for a true feel player. When I take a shot with a predator I find the jolt and the common "tink" to be distracting compared to the low pitched instant sound my cue makes and the dulled single wave vibration that comes back up the shaft. About 5 shots into shooting with a predator or a cue with crappy feel it is affecting my whole game because I am now anticipating the crappy cue response. This is the EXACT same feeling I get when my tip is lose on my cue. Then I also get the same crappy feedback that is standard with a predator, and a lose tip is something that gets fixed right then and there.

Next month when I'm in Calgary maybe you can show me how poor my shape is?

We can play. 8-ball or 10-ball or 1-pocket, on a 9-foot. Just let me know when and I will call up some backers.

Or if you are going to the US Bar Box Championships this year we can play there.

I acknowledge that most professional golfers still prefer blades and steel...but none to my knowledge still use wooden drivers.

The blades are a prime example of trading accuracy with feel and workability of the golf ball. It is actually a very similar situation to the LD and non-LD shafts.

The wooden drivers don't exist for a variety of reasons, mostly arising from the weight of the material. I have a wood driver in my garage atm, it is microscopic and weighs a boatload. The drive, much like the break shot puts a premium on speed and power, not feel, so it is not a good analogy in this debate.

 

[Nick B]

Like I said I'm a snooker guy but One Pocket will work. You won't need your backers. I'll be playing out of my wallet. Shoot me a PM and we can work the details.

Thx for taking the bait.

If pool players were robots then yeah, feel would be a non-issue. Pool players are alas "not" robots. And the feel of the last shot is in your mind when shooting the next shot for a true feel player. When I take a shot with a predator I find the jolt and the common "tink" to be distracting compared to the low pitched instant sound my cue makes and the dulled single wave vibration that comes back up the shaft. About 5 shots into shooting with a predator or a cue with crappy feel it is affecting my whole game because I am now anticipating the crappy cue response. This is the EXACT same feeling I get when my tip is lose on my cue. Then I also get the same crappy feedback that is standard with a predator, and a lose tip is something that gets fixed right then and there.



We can play. 8-ball or 10-ball or 1-pocket, on a 9-foot. Just let me know when and I will call up some backers.

Or if you are going to the US Bar Box Championships this year we can play there.



The blades are a prime example of trading accuracy with feel and workability of the golf ball. It is actually a very similar situation to the LD and non-LD shafts.

The wooden drivers don't exist for a variety of reasons, mostly arising from the weight of the material. I have a wood driver in my garage atm, it is microscopic and weighs a boatload. The drive, much like the break shot puts a premium on speed and power, not feel, so it is not a good analogy in this debate.

 

[Celtic]

Thx for taking the bait.

NP, I am a silly little fish like that.

At least you wanted to play 1-pocket, I actually enjoy gambling at that game, most others just feel like work. 1-pocket always keeps ya thinking.

 

[RD3P]

Yes, you are pretty much on it. Throw is a little different but what you call throw is indeed swerve.

Squirt is the cueball glancing off the tip in the opposite direction of the spin given.

Swerve is the curvature of the path the cueball follows. If it doesn't travel dead straight, then it' swerves. This what you are calling throw, and it's not just you because lots of people call it the same thing. It's not wrong, just different labelling for the same thing.

Throw is cuball spin throwing the object ball off line when it makes contact with it....sometimes if you cant see a ball enuff...because another ball is in the way to cut it to the poket you have to Throw the ball torwards the pocket with english.....dependint on length of the table and how good your stoke is you can throw a ball quite a bit...

throw is also the reason why alot of people miss balls that are almost strait in...and then they say how did i miss that one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW2UFSSnyVM

heres another version of throw for frozen balls...alot of bangers always shoot this shot on the wrong side
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2HM2smEpE8

i just thought of why i dont seem to notice deflection....

its because the cueball deflects off line on contact and the swerve pulls it back to where i was aiming as it travels its path?

 

[RD3P]

heres a link on swerve where a commenter on the vid asks


"How does he make the ball go straight with side spin? this is my main problem in pool and i cant figure it out. "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNDGus7TlIg&feature=related

this is the problem some people have...they just cant figure it out i guess???? to me this above question sums up this whole thread...

heres where im coming from:
to me i dont understand why he cant figure it out because ive been playing since young age and my ability is mostely natural/instinctive because ive aquired it over such a long time and from a young age...i dont have to think about it much at the table....my dad always told me...just keep shooting the same shots over and over and over and youll figure out what it is you need to do...without really thinking about it. (WICH IS A BLESSING AND A CURSE)

since i play pretty what i would call mindless....my problem is focus...if my head isnt in the game (im thinking about something while playing) i play bad...
i dont really think about my shots....i see and feel them.

but one thing i do think about at the table is my patterns. ...i never really think about my stroke or where i need to make contact with a ball to make it....its all instinctive to me

 

[Patrick Johnson]

RD3P:
Throw is cuball spin throwing the object ball off line when it makes contact with it

That's right, but throw is also caused even without CB sidespin, on every cut shot. In both cases the CB's surface rubs across the OB's surface for a moment, and the friction from that rubbing is what causes throw.

pj
chgo

 

[KMRUNOUT]

JUMP SHOT. Let's see you shoot it with a low deflection shaft. I can make EVERY shot with my one-piece, low tech shaft with hard ferrules that I can with the hollow, wooden or plastic ferruled shafts. Anyone who has tried a jump shot with their playing cue with an LD shaft knows they jump like a turd. There is the odd shot where I have to hop over a little piece of the blocking ball, but do not feel the need to bring out the jump cue, as I'm much more accurate with my playing cue.

PJ, tell me how your ultra low deflection shaft jumps balls.......let me guess, one of your standard shots as well, right?

Agreed. A jump shot is pretty damn tough with a Predator. The whole point of a jump shot is to maximize squirt--you want the cue ball to squirt into the table as severely as possible. My seat-of-the-pants analysis says that the Predator shaft is getting out of the way of the cue ball too easily, thus eliminating much of the bounce. So this brings up some interesting questions:

--to what extent are cue ball squirt and jumping related?
--It seems like super stiff cues tend to jump better. Why would that be?
--Clearly weight seems to be the central factor in how well a cue jumps. Lighter certainly jumps easier. I wonder why this would be.

In any case, no doubt Predator doesn't jump that great.

KMRUNOUT

 

[KMRUNOUT]

Need I even go any further? You are debating something entirely different.

A masse by it's very nature is the ball being deflected in one direction while spinning in the opposite direction. The friction of the spin against the plane it's travelling is what reverses the direction of travel. The cue tip theoretically assumes greater mass due to the pinching energy of the cueball against the table. The spherical cueball "squirts" away due to it being more movable than the tip of the cue. Is that a satisfactory explanation of a masse for you? Well, while it does in part explain tip end mass = deflection, it has nothing to do with the shot I described.

The shot I described has a level cue & insistantly is not anything remotely similar to a masse. The defection angle of the cueball combined with the notion to continue forward is what forces the side spin of the ball to tilt on it's axis, thereby altering the spin direction of the ball & as such alters the path of travel the ball will follow. It is not masse, it's deflective swerve. The cue does not need to be jacked up any amount. The major differing tale is that the ball with my deflection shot is directed with forward spin & the masse has is directed with reverse spin. It's night & day difference. Regardless of the spin the ball has as it contacts the object ball, it's the directional force spin that i'm trying to point out is the difference.

Masse & swerve are not the same thing. Swerve is the curve movement the ball makes as it travels. Masse induces swerve due to reverse spin. My shot induces swerve due to forward spin. In fact, players even call it the "squirt" shot. Does this make any sense or am I spinning my wheels trying to explain it? Really, I cannot break it down to any simpler level wthout being on table & showing you, which i'll glady do if/when we ever meet.

Are you sure there would be any swerve at all if the cue ball were struck with a *perfectly* level cue, dead center from top to bottom? I don't think there would be. Don't forget that to do this on many shots, you need to remove the rails, or else you will not have a level cue. Very nearly level and level are also two different things. I think that the swerve people typically associate with squirt (the ball squirts one way then swerves back) is absolutely masse, only a little bit. This is because on almost all shots, there is a slight elevation to the cue. This causes the exact same principles as in masse to come into play on pretty much all shots with english. Is there something I am missing here?

BTW, qbilder, will you be at Valley Forge? I have heard a lot of great things about your cues and would love to check some out!

Thanks,

KMRUNOUT

 

[Patrick Johnson]

Agreed. A jump shot is pretty damn tough with a Predator. The whole point of a jump shot is to maximize squirt--you want the cue ball to squirt into the table as severely as possible. My seat-of-the-pants analysis says that the Predator shaft is getting out of the way of the cue ball too easily, thus eliminating much of the bounce. So this brings up some interesting questions:

--to what extent are cue ball squirt and jumping related?
--It seems like super stiff cues tend to jump better. Why would that be?
--Clearly weight seems to be the central factor in how well a cue jumps. Lighter certainly jumps easier. I wonder why this would be.

In any case, no doubt Predator doesn't jump that great.

KMRUNOUT

I could never get my Predator to jump very well, and I don't have much better luck with my custom low-squirt shaft either, but I'm not convinced low squirt is the problem - that just doesn't compute for me. I thought it might be the soft ferrule on my old Predator, but now I have a normal hard one on my custom shaft so that doesn't seem to be it. Maybe I'm just too white.

pj <- pretty damned white
chgo