Schmidt or Crane?? - best 14.1 shot in a match

[av84fun]

And don't forget the difference in equipment.. especially the cloth.. the balls open much easier on break shots today than they would decades ago. That's why older straight pool players had a more conservative approach to breaking the balls.. they didn't want to get stuck in the pack. I've watched videos of Ray Martin and 95% of the time he'll break out say 5 to 8 balls with a 10 to 7 ball cluster in the middle.. it was too risky to try and open em all up. Today the top straight pool players will exclusively fire into the pack on the break shot unless they have a really bad angle. The balls spread wide open or many times open with few problems giving them a huge advantage to running more balls in a single inning. The drawback is the possibility of scratching but I'm guessing that it's not such a drawback since these guys today have no trouble running a 100 balls and hitting the break shot with speed.

Good point! IMHO the slow cloth back in the day was easier over all (for the same reasons that fast greens/downhill putts) are more difficult in golf.

But you are right that breaking out clusters would have been more difficult due to the slower cloth.

Regards,
Jim

 

[CueAndMe]

Good point! IMHO the slow cloth back in the day was easier over all (for the same reasons that fast greens/downhill putts) are more difficult in golf.

But you are right that breaking out clusters would have been more difficult due to the slower cloth.

Regards,
Jim

I have recently found that faster cloth for me is easier, simply because the balls break open so easily without force. You have to get used to a much softer game, but once you're acclimated, it's smooth sailing. Maybe it really isn't fair to compare the old equipment to the new. I now realize that the conditions ideal for running a lot of balls are fast cloth, low humidity, clean balls, loose pockets, and talent.

 

[alstl]

It is pointless to argue which is better. They are both great players and champions. On the Crane shot, Balsis looks at it before he played safe and he didn't see it or didn't think it went.

I probably wouldn't have seen the Schmidt shot either but I know Balsis didn't see the Crane shot, and Balsis was a great player.

 

[SmoothStroke]

Water under the bridge

i take back 100 times harder.i just meant it was harder i did not think it would be taken literally.i was kind of teasing jh because he said crane shot was harder.

The shot was a great shot, More importantly so, executed with your back against a wall, safety did not look like much of an option. Well done.
Sometimes we judge a book by the cover and most times we are wrong.
Not meant to be disrespectful just an opinion formed judging from what I read.

 

[bagofpaper]

Good point! IMHO the slow cloth back in the day was easier over all (for the same reasons that fast greens/downhill putts) are more difficult in golf.

But you are right that breaking out clusters would have been more difficult due to the slower cloth.

Regards,
Jim

that's an interesting point.. so you're saying the slow cloth is easier to control the cb while playing straight pool if I'm getting what you mean by "easier over all (..".. I found this to be especially true when I moved from exclusively playing on bar boxes with old worn cloth and/or dead rails to well maintained 9 ft tables with simonis. Also, reminds me of John Schmidt having speed problems in his 100 ball run with commentary dvd because of the lighting on the tv table. He kept getting out of line rolling two extra inches here, 4 inches there etc.. made his run much harder than it could've been.

Anyhow, I forgot to say holy moly John that was an absolutely amazing shot! Sometimes when you have no easy safe you've got to fire at something like that..takes some mighty stones to go for it in a match like that..

 

[Williebetmore]

IMHO the slow cloth back in the day was easier over all
Regards,
Jim

Jim,
While the situation in golf is clear (faster is harder because of the rolling terrain), I think you will find that every older straight pool player will disagree with you on this point as it applies to pool. If you check out Jim Rempe's videos on Accu-Stats (How to Run a 100) he summarizes quite succinctly the feeling of the older players.

The slow cloth required an accurate and powerful stroke to move whitey around the table. He states that he spent his whole life developing such a stroke; and when they switched to the Simonis, such a stroke was no longer a requirement or an advantage.

In addition, the difficulty in separating the clusters was magnified several fold on the slower cloth. The reason the old masters played such a tight game, dislodging a few balls at a time from the pack was in part due to the difficulty in getting them apart. Even a full speed hit did not always separate the balls well. As Jimmy states, nowadays you just touch the pack and it falls apart. Such players as Nick Varner have totally changed their 14.1 strategy to accomodate to the easier conditions. As Nick said, "there ain't no soft breakers winning any straight pool tournaments now."

In the days of 5 x 10 tables with tight pockets (remember that pockets were not enlarged to current standards until they made the switch to 4 1/2 x 9 tables), slow cloth, and mud balls straight pool was very much more difficult. Just a fact.

P.S. - not to mention that the slower cloth had a "nap", which had to be analyzed and allowed for when using slow rolling shots, banks, and long shots.