Pool play that irritates you!

ShootingArts said:
The solution is simple, shut up and play two balls in advance! When I was a young man young ladies sought me out as a mixed doubles partner. I left shots even a banger could make and only had to tell them to hit the shot soft, medium, or hard to give me shape.

The thing that annoys me that everyone including top pros do sometimes is stay at the table to evaluate their safeties. The shot is over, you know you aren't shooting again, get out of the way! I have even seen them checking the shot for the incoming player. Go sit your ass down!

Hu
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Workin w the ladies like that sho nuf is fun!!😂
 
garczar said:
Damn, after reading all this i don't know why the fk i even go to the 'hall anymore. ;) Seriously most cats ARE cool but it takes just a couple with the jerkoff moves mentioned here to ruin it. To me its pretty simple: no fones and be ready when its your turn. if it takes more than two minutes to figure out a shot you need to find a new activity.
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Amen brother!!
 
Not much really bothers me. I used to really HATE slow players. Then I realized that was a weakness on my part and I overcame it. Although I will say there are guys I won’t match up with in 1 pocket anymore because of their “overly deliberate manner of play”, not because it bothers me, but because the return in winnings from them isn’t worth the time invested to get that cash.

There are things I find distasteful, I have a few younger regular customers that have “cell phone disorder” while playing. While distasteful, I realize their being distracted by their phone addiction only makes my job easier, so be it 😁.
 
HawaiianEye said:
Excessively slow play.
Not paying attention to the game.
Table huggers who won't sit down or get away from the table when they aren't shooting.
Getting down and then getting up and down and looking at the shot 20 times before shooting.
Carpenters who try to use their sticks to measure out and map out every shot they shoot.
Basically, everybody who puts more emphasis on everything but the game at hand.
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At our state BCA tournament I was watching a match between my matches where 1 player was a "carpenter". I found it fascinating, game was 8 ball, he used his cue and laid out the cue ball path for every shot right up to the 8 ball before ever taking a shot, it took him a couple or 3 minutes to do this but then he quickly shot every shot he had planned out and the cue ball followed the exact path he had laid out with his cue before ever taking a shot.
 
fastone371 said:
At our state BCA tournament I was watching a match between my matches where 1 player was a "carpenter". I found it fascinating, game was 8 ball, he used his cue and laid out the cue ball path for every shot right up to the 8 ball before ever taking a shot, it took him a couple or 3 minutes to do this but then he quickly shot every shot he had planned out and the cue ball followed the exact path he had laid out with his cue before ever taking a shot.
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Not sure if I hate this or want to watch this for hours
 
Poolplaya9 said:
That absolutely can and does happen a good bit.

Sometimes though the shot is a lot easier than the new player believes, and they don't know that yet because they rarely shoot that shot and instead always avoid it and just choose another option. If they would actually shoot it more often they would often find that their success rate is higher than they falsely believed it would be, something the better player knew. They would also often find that they could have learned the shot pretty quickly and easily had they not been avoiding it, and that it wasn't nearly as hard as it seemed, something the better player also knew.

One of these days you are going to look back on a lot of shots and think "I can't believe I used to think X, Y, or Z was difficult when they weren't. They just looked more difficult to me than they actually were and so I had a mental block against them. Of course I was going to struggle with shots I would refuse to shoot, because that is how you learn shots, by shooting them, and by shooting them a lot, which is the exact opposite of what I was doing by trying to always avoid them. It was a catch 22 that I was stuck in, don't shoot them because they are hard, but they only stayed "hard" because I was rarely willing to shoot them so of course I wasn't learning them."

Also it is sometimes the case that even if you are low odds to execute whatever the shot they are telling you to do, when all the factors were considered (such as your chances for getting an unintentional safe out of the shot, your chances for getting back to the table again, how many balls you and your opponent each had, how favorably the balls laid for you and opponent, your opponents relative skill level, etc) it still gave you the best option for ultimately winning the game over the choice you were wanting to make. You just couldn't see it, or even understand it once they explained it to you, because you simply lacked the experience to be able understand that the shot they wanted you to take was actually going to give you the best chance to ultimately win, whether it was on that turn or another.

Also always try to keep in mind that whether or not you win on that turn at the table is 100% immaterial, like seriously, you literally don't even consider that, yet more inexperienced players are unable to look ahead and calculate the odds a shot will ultimately help you win like an experienced player can. The only thing that is ever important--ever--is what shot gives you the best chance to ultimately/eventually win that game with all things considered, no matter how many turns it ultimately takes, and inexperienced players are just incredibly poor at being able to do that with any accuracy at all.
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This is an excellent post. Really well put.
 
Briantime said:
Great post. As a newer player I have had a lot of timeouts called when I am playing by well meaning teammates. Often suggesting I do something I am not capable of pulling off. I get it. When you are good at something, it's very hard to remember what it was like to not be good at it.
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Thanks. As I said it is hard. The situation of the better player asking you to do something you can’t is real and why some great players are bad at giving a time out.

But the inverse is often true as well, as was very well stated in the other reply to your post. Often the lower level player doesn’t take good advice or approach it with the right attitude. “Why are you giving me a timeout now, I can make the 10b” when the coach is thinking about the fact that when you make the 10b you are opening up the only problem for your opponent and you won’t have a shot at the 8b afterwards.

Or, maybe the shot you think is too hard isn’t really that hard if you think “my coach said he trusts me to make it” instead of “why is he telling me to shoot that shot, I know I will miss it”.

A good coach/player relationship requires BOTH parties to do their part. And it won’t always work even then - sometimes the coach gets it wrong, sometimes the advice is perfect and the player fails to execute.
 
fastone371 said:
How about the guy that grabs the chalk and chalks his cue as he is walking away from the table after a miss, with the only piece of community chalk.
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I had to laugh at this because I see it all the time! When I was very young I did this to an experienced player. He looked me stone dead in the face and said "Son, I promise you'll never miscue while I'm shooting." I have never forgotten and will occasionally use this line myself.

True story: I was playing in a chip tournament a couple weeks ago and we had one piece of chalk on the table. A guy (who I've known for years) on the table next to ours misses an easy shot, turns around in frustration and angrily picks up the chalk off our table, chalks his cue, then proceeds to carry the chalk to his chair at the next table over. I just stared at him the whole time and finally said "Dude, REALLY?"
 
fastone371 said:
At our state BCA tournament I was watching a match between my matches where 1 player was a "carpenter". I found it fascinating, game was 8 ball, he used his cue and laid out the cue ball path for every shot right up to the 8 ball before ever taking a shot, it took him a couple or 3 minutes to do this but then he quickly shot every shot he had planned out and the cue ball followed the exact path he had laid out with his cue before ever taking a shot.
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I can do that by looking at the table.
 
Renegade4006 said:
- When my opponent is wearing ear buds and after repeatedly trying to get their attention I have to physically contact them to let them know what I'm doing (8-ball pocket, odd combo, watch for legal ball contact, etc.). Turn them down or take them out.
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Yeah I think it’s funny that you can’t get the attention of some players no matter what you try, but take a casual glance at their girlfriend’s ass and they’re in your face in a flash 😎
 
Frosty said:
Not much really bothers me. I used to really HATE slow players. Then I realized that was a weakness on my part and I overcame it. Although I will say there are guys I won’t match up with in 1 pocket anymore because of their “overly deliberate manner of play”, not because it bothers me, but because the return in winnings from them isn’t worth the time invested to get that cash.

There are things I find distasteful, I have a few younger regular customers that have “cell phone disorder” while playing. While distasteful, I realize their being distracted by their phone addiction only makes my job easier, so be it 😁.
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Many many years ago I found a table that always had cheap action going, twenty-four/seven. One of the players was Joe. Old Joe or Gentleman Joe in recognition of the old sport coat he wore. He might have owned the place. If not he lived nearby or had a bird dog in the place. Every time I came in Joe was either there or not far behind.

Joe beat me like a drum! I beat guys that beat him but Joe was slow. He was in his seventies, maybe even eighties. Everything he did was slow. S L O W. Really really slow. Glaciers raced across the countryside compared to Joe. He was slow getting up, he walked very slow, I don't think he ever hit a ball fast enough that it lost contact with the bevel going in a pocket. Joe didn't stall but it could still be ten or fifteen minutes of hell while he slowly ran out on you.

This went on for months. Joe was probably up a hundred games or more on me. A challenge table, no ducking anyone even if I was inclined. I finally said enough already and gave things some thought. I would shoot until I missed, then while Joe was shooting I would sit with my ass on the edge of a bar stool. When Joe would miss I would rush to the table, shoot too fast, miss a shot I shouldn't or miss shape, and the torture began again.

His old sport coat was magic. A portable distillery. No hard liquor sold in the place but Joe had a never ending supply of half-pints of Old Crow in that coat. He could take two minutes just stopping for a swallow of whiskey. I could tell from the smell that some was whiskey, only many years later did I wonder if some was tea.

Finally, after months of Joe owning me, I hit on a plan. No more edge of the seat, when Joe shot I was a mildly interested observer. I sat deep in the bar stool or chair, only paid enough attention to the table to know when it was my shot. When it was my shot I took my time getting up and despite Sailor's advice, nonchelated over to the table. Joe never beat me again. However, when I came in he might play me once if his money was on the old nine foot table, he wasn't playing me more than once or twice. I thought I was gonna give Joe a whupping and get my money back, maybe some of his. Nope! Joe's pocket was like a bank vault.

It would probably have pissed him off to know but when I list my mentors I always include Joe. While he wasn't a deliberate mentor, Joe's natural slow play taught me how to deal with slow play. Anytime I caught myself getting impatient playing anybody I just slid my butt deeper in the chair. Made sure I had to reset before I could get up out of the chair and I didn't rush to do that! I don't know what happened to Joe or that old bar with no name just a small neon beer sign in the window of an old place in the piney woods but learning to deal with Joe made me quite a few thousands over the years I played pool.

I am still not a fan of slow play but I don't let it annoy me. Been fifty years or more since Gentleman Joe taught me that. Cheapest lessons I ever had!

Hu
 
straightline said:
Those timeouts should be the shooter's call. Period. Might improve the breed.
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Really? In my experience newer players have no clue when to call a timeout. They usually wait until they have messed up and hooked themselves, at which point there isn’t much the coach can do.
 
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