Position Play vs Shotmaking

Dan White

Dan White

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
File this one under "food for thought." I attended the Mike Sigel 4 hour clinic last Sunday and I thought I would share this one observation. I don't think (and I hope I'm not) betraying any confidences in discussing this. Take this as an advertisement for taking a lesson from Sigel and you'll learn a lot. (I mean you'll learn a lot besides how great Mike Sigel is :p - as they say, if you can do it, it ain't bragging!)

So anyway, here's the shot. Forgetting the strategy of what balls to hit in this situation what do you think of the 1 ball as diagrammed. Does this strike you as a low percentage shot? Would it concern you to shoot it? Sigel's answer below:

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Sigel said he'd never, never shoot the 1 ball in the side. It's TOO HARD. Unfortunately in a group setting you don't always get a chance to expand on a point that's been made. What I took from this is that if you play proper position, and have some clue where your cue ball is going, then you don't need to take shots even of this modest difficulty level. You should be able to get yourself easier shots than that. Now the diagram is from memory, and the 1 could have been a bit more of an angle than I showed it, but not much more. It caught my attention exactly because it wasn't that difficult a shot.

So for everybody worried about how to bang in that 6 footer, it might be better to figure out how to make it a 2 footer instead! I know I'm preaching to the choir, but somebody has to say it once in awhile.
 
This reminds me of the saying " good players make great shots but great players make good shots"

The key to being a great player is cue ball control, and yes I think this is a lower percentage shot, that I would not want have to shoot with regularity in a match.

Of course great players, are also excellent shot makers, but they rely on their position skills first.
 
Yep! I just watched this video of Efren smoking Dallas West in 14.1, starting off with one of the easiest looking 142 ball runs ever made. It wasn't easy, obviously, it just looked that way because he had the whitey absolutely on a leash; virtually every shot was a hanger, he nudged the clusters just enough and hit every window/alley he needed to to get out. Total discipline to keep from overcooking anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F-ZRteOuhI
 
I realize the diagram is from memory, but I cannot see a shot that, taken everything into account including a scratch possibility or leaving oneself another awkward shot, looks higher-percentage in this particular layout (the 11 is about the same in difficulty and may be fraught with positional peril so one would really have to be there in person and have a close look at it; the 13, 14 and 15 appear to be blocking each other; the 2 is off-angle and doesn't appear to guarantee perfect shape on the next ball; uncalled-for combos are a no-no; and the 9 is ridiculous in any game other than rotational or game ball). In other words, one might as well shoot the 1 if one feels comfortable doing so - I believe I would (I almost never miss a shot of this nature - of course, now that I've said that, I'm sure I'll miss the very next). Having said that, if there were indeed a higher-percentage shot, I'd go for it. Also, I do not believe Mike ever misses one of those, so I must question his use of the term "hard" - indeed, a little superiority thinking may be coming into play here: did he indeed mean hard, or rather hard for the intended listener?

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti
 
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It would have been good to ask a follow-up question, because the statement on its own seems false. I mean, suppose the one is his key ball -- we can also suppose that the situation was left by an opponent's miss -- and the rack is at the other end of the table, with a perfect break ball on the side of the rack. All he has to do is play the 1 in the side and come 3 cushions at medium speed to have an ideal break shot.

So, the choice is between this cut and going into a series of safeties with no really good safety to start with. I wonder what Mike's choice would be.

I think the general rule is that if you are faced with a 50% (or 60%, if you are conservative) shot or an uncertain safe play that gives you no better than a 50-50 chance of the first open shot, you may as well go for the shot. An exception would be if the score is lop-sided, and then you may want to adjust the threshold percentage for taking the shot.
 
Another interesting facet to the Efren-West 14.1 game was that Efren ran 142, then Dallas played intentional safeties got Efren to lose something like 30 points in the process...which could have been enough to give Dallas a shot at running out past him; of course, Efren still ended up winning by something like 150-2...what a game!
 
Bob Jewett said:
It would have been good to ask a follow-up question, because the statement on its own seems false. I mean, suppose the one is his key ball -- we can also suppose that the situation was left by an opponent's miss -- and the rack is at the other end of the table, with a perfect break ball on the side of the rack. All he has to do is play the 1 in the side and come 3 cushions at medium speed to have an ideal break shot.

So, the choice is between this cut and going into a series of safeties with no really good safety to start with. I wonder what Mike's choice would be.

I think the general rule is that if you are faced with a 50% (or 60%, if you are conservative) shot or an uncertain safe play that gives you no better than a 50-50 chance of the first open shot, you may as well go for the shot. An exception would be if the score is lop-sided, and then you may want to adjust the threshold percentage for taking the shot.
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Agree wholeheartedly! My questions would be, 1) what would Mike shoot instead, and 2) is his percentage for a shot of this nature anywhere near below 90%-plus? I highly doubt the latter.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti
 
I think I get the idea here, Dan. Mike is taking note of the fact that straight pool runs, at the highest level, are not about shotmaking, but about avoidance of tough shots.

No run I know of brings the point home better than Mike's run of 150 and out against Zuglan in the 1992 US Open at the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC. I had a front row seat for that one, and outisde of the shot he made to get started after Zuglan's passable beak, Mike, in my view, shot only one difficult shot. Mosconi, in attendance that legendary night, had high praise for Mike's technique.

As Bob Jewett points out, and Sigel would agree, if he had little choice or if the shot had a big payoff, Sigel might shoot the one in the side.

Mike Eufemia (believed by many to have run over 600 balls) was a good friend of my father's. Eufemia, who played straight pool for hours every day, claimed that he could go a month at a time without having to shoot a bank shot. Like Sigel, Eufemia played position acurately enough to avoid tough shots nearly all of the time.

Sigel is selling something good here, and that's playing position with a lot of ambition. Like his mentor, Irving Crane, he hated tough shots. Even though Sigel and Crane shot tough shots from time to time, stylistically they were far less inclined to shoot them than the two most renowed shotmakers of Crane's era, Jimmy Caras and Luther Lassiter.

Take Sigel's advice to heart. Be choosy in your striahgt pool position play.
 
The shot on the 1-ball is 50 degrees (yes, I measured), which I would think a good intermediate player would hit with reasonable consistency (>50%) and would be worth going for. If the CB can be sent along the tangent line softly, there would seem to be a number of balls that could be sent to the lower-left corner pocket after going one-rail.

However, if the angle were to be increased to 60 or 65 degrees the shot percentage and hope of controlling the CB diminish rapidly (for me, anyway). So, sending the CB uptable might be the better choice, especially since there appear to be limited shot options if the CB is near the head rail.
 
I think maybe I should have put a couple of easier shots on the table along with the 1 ball. It should go without saying that Sigel would shoot the 1 if it were his only shot. But, since I just scattered the other balls around and pretty much left nothing but the 1, I confused some people.

What I took out of this situation is that the 1 in the side is considered too risky to mess with if you have other good options. He could have said, "Oh, the 1 ball is a hanger. If you can't make that 100% of the time then you'll never run 100 balls." It wasn't like that. In fact, he doesn't like the shot and apparently will make additional maneuvers in order to avoid shooting it.

Bob mentioned the 50/50% shot. Sigel agreed with this. He said you you can either play a safety or go for the hard shot, always take the shot. This is only in situations where the safety is just as hard to make as the shot. If you try for the safety and fail, then by definition you've left a shot. If you go for the hard shot and miss, you might still leave him with nothing to shoot at. Of course I have to think if going for the shot also meant scattering the balls everywhere, then you'd think twice before shooting it.
 
Dan White said:
I think maybe I should have put a couple of easier shots on the table along with the 1 ball. It should go without saying that Sigel would shoot the 1 if it were his only shot. But, since I just scattered the other balls around and pretty much left nothing but the 1, I confused some people.

What I took out of this situation is that the 1 in the side is considered too risky to mess with if you have other good options. He could have said, "Oh, the 1 ball is a hanger. If you can't make that 100% of the time then you'll never run 100 balls." It wasn't like that. In fact, he doesn't like the shot and apparently will make additional maneuvers in order to avoid shooting it.

Bob mentioned the 50/50% shot. Sigel agreed with this. He said you you can either play a safety or go for the hard shot, always take the shot. This is only in situations where the safety is just as hard to make as the shot. If you try for the safety and fail, then by definition you've left a shot. If you go for the hard shot and miss, you might still leave him with nothing to shoot at. Of course I have to think if going for the shot also meant scattering the balls everywhere, then you'd think twice before shooting it.
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That makes sense, if I had other reasonable options I wouldn't shoot the 1 ball if I didn't have to. Though it has more to do with control than anything. I'm not concerned about missing the ball but there is a lot that can happen with the cue ball imo.

As for scattering the balls everywhere on a miss, I think it's still a similar concept to the 50/50. It's risk vs. reward, if you miss yes you give your opponent a nice start, but if you make it you could be off and running. Whether it's worth trying is entirely a personal thing as shotmaking ability and comfort with difficult angles vary greatly from player to player even within similar skill levels.
 
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Dallas West would say "Fight for every inch!" Even so, high runs free from any hiccups at all are exceedingly rare. Chances are one is going to run into some sort of difficult situation or will have to shoot at least some semi-awkward shot - as e.g. in Mike's 150-and-out against Rempe during the 1989 U.S. Open: there was at least one bank shot, plus at least one time where he hardly opened the stack at all and got terribly lucky to have left himself a dead one etc. Runs of that nature aren't so rare among top players - they're trying their best to keep it simple, and on average manage to do so better than the rest of us, but it remains a fact that they're also better at "surviving" those critical moments. In fact, to me, what keeps a top pro from the amateurs is that he or she will need to take only one tough shot to put themselves back on track - not a whole succession of tough shots all resulting from a single problem earlier in the run.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti
 
I will give a definitive answer to this question right after I solve the problem of which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Dave Nelson
 
acousticsguru said:
Dallas West would say "Fight for every inch!" Even so, high runs free from any hiccups at all are exceedingly rare. Chances are one is going to run into some sort of difficult situation or will have to shoot at least some semi-awkward shot - as e.g. in Mike's 150-and-out against Rempe during the 1989 U.S. Open: there was at least one bank shot, plus at least one time where he hardly opened the stack at all and got terribly lucky to have left himself a dead one etc. Runs of that nature aren't so rare among top players - they're trying their best to keep it simple, and on average manage to do so better than the rest of us, but it remains a fact that they're also better at "surviving" those critical moments. In fact, to me, what keeps a top pro from the amateurs is that he or she will need to take only one tough shot to put themselves back on track - not a whole succession of tough shots all resulting from a single problem earlier in the run.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti
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Agree with you here David,

for sure you have to be first a good shotmaker- and later you ll finetune your game with knowledge and structured practice.

lg
Ingo
 
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