Russian billiards

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amateur

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Hi guys!

Have you heard about the relatively new cuesport game called pyramid? No? Neither have I until recently.

I always thought that snooker had the toughest playing conditions, but these russian billiard tables are just insane. Extremely small pockets, big and heavy balls, and of course...all of that on 12 feet.

I think the designers of this game went a bit too far...potting is just incredibly difficult with such small margin for error. The only thing that helps is that you can use any ball as a cue ball. Winner of the rack is the one who scores 8 points first. Sounds simple, but is it?

The best player at that discipline seems to be Evgeny Stalev, who also plays pretty good pool.

In the long run, I don't think that the game has a chance to become popular like pool, but is worth checking out...

Their top prize is just 4000$...no wonder Stalev goes to US to play some pool!

http://www.billiard-online.com/indexe.html

There are also some video clips there...and I thought snooker pockets were tough!
 
I found this website very, very interesting.

I was wondering how Evgeny Stalev was doing. He was a mainstay on the U.S. tournament circuit for such a long time. According to this website, just about a week ago on October 25-26, an international pyramid tournament "The Best of 16" took place in Moscow. The final match was played between Evgeny Stalev and Alexander Palamar of the Ukraine and resulted in the 9:0 win of the Russian player.

Looks like The Ukraine pool players are consistently better players in this particular Russian Billiards game than the Russians looking at the rankings, though.

ManlyShot
 
I was in Kiev for the 2003 World Artistic Pool Championships and we all went to a club after the tournament and they had about 5 or 6 Pyramid tables. I was playing with Mike Massey for a while and he told me that in 2002 he played in the Pyramid World Championships and came in 5th place - and that is with never playing before. All he did was practice for a month or two.

The game is a lot of fun. It is true that the pockets are much smaller, but you just need to pocket the balls differently. You need to use a lot of english in order to get them to hit the jaw and spin in. Also, if you hit the ball quite hard, it will compress the rail right by the pocket and force its way in. If I remember correctly, Mike told me that it was called 'crowning the ball in'.

The basic rules are simple. Any ball can be used as the cue ball and any ball can be used as the object ball. You score by having the cue ball pocket an object ball, or by having the cue ball carom off an object ball and go into a pocket. There are some detailed rules that I can't remember. It was about 3am in Kiev when we were at this club and we were all shot from playing in the artistic pool tournament.

Andy
 
I've wanted to try this game ever since I heard of it, unfortunately, I haven't seen a pyramid table yet so I guess I'll have to wait, sounds quite challenging also.
 
amateur said:
That Evgeny Stalev guy really seems to be quite cocky.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the article, everyone I have talked to that has met him said he is indeed very cocky.

" I have managed to win the world champion title even in America"

When he says this is he talking about pool or russian billiards?
 
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