This is meant as light humor, so here goes:
Imagine this, a tour golfer style bag with no more than 14 cues allowed during a match. You can have no more than x amount of cubes of chalk & only one single glove at any time.
You also can't forget the caddy errr "Cueddy"?
His or her, job is to wipe down your cue shafts & grips should they become dirty, sweaty or chalk fouled. Their duties also include cleaning the cue ball before each break, a quick brushing of the table before every break & racking the balls for their player.
However at no time during the match is the "Cueddy" allowed to communicate with their player unless a game has come to an end, or if it is before the break.
back to being serious:
Where does it end? We already have a break cue, a playing cue, a jump cue, a snooker cue etc etc...
What's next for the game, a "lag" cue? A "masse" cue? a cut-shot cue? a power draw cue? A 7ft table cue? A 9ft table cue? And, who knows what else......
Now with the crazy amount of cues you now must own, you have to have 3-5 of each, each with a differing hardness of tips.
I can see the future now, where everyone who walks into a poolhall is carrying what years ago would be called a dealers case.
One things for certain. If this comes to be, the cue and case manufacturers are going to love it.
Dopc.
Well, as a case manufacturer I don't know if I would love it. Already my toughest cases are the ones that people want tailored to their equipment. We are one of the few who takes on the challenges of dedicated equipment cases. I can only see that increasing with a plethora of cues. I doubt that we would make any more cases than we currently do though.
But to the question of where does it end?
I say why does it have to end? What's wrong with having a cue for every type of shot? Let's imagine a game with a 30 second shot clock, the player has 30 seconds to both select his cue and take the shot. Then it's your turn. As long as it is the player manipulating the inanimate object which in turns manipulates the balls and he can shoot in a reasonable time why should anyone care. For me the basic rule is as long as the implement doesn't harm the other equipment and as long as the use of it is not distracting to the other participants, i.e. pretty much the same as using a normal cue, then why care?
Guy wants to pull out a masse cue in the middle of a game to try to make a hero masse shot? Great go for it. Knock yourself out. Make the shot and you deserve it.
Would you play pool if I handed you a cue that was clearly crappy for drawing balls? Imagine if there were only two cues to use and one was good for most shots but the other one was terrible for spinning the ball. Would you even want to play if I handicapped you that way?
I mean all of us here spend time finding cues that feel good to us for general pool but how do you know if that cue is good for certain types of shots. Maybe you REALLY struggle with masse' shots with your cue and you think it's all your fault. What if I hand you my cue and you can make the masse shot you were just failing at? Now with ease. What would you think at that moment?
So my point is that if people want to invent or engineer cues that are cues but which make certain types of shots somewhat easier or more consistent then let them. Why punish that innovation with some quaint notion that it's more macho or more pure to play all shots with one cue? There are few sports where the individual participant is restricted to only ONE implement.
Sure in reactive sports like tennis the player can't switch racquets in the middle of a volley but they can certainly switch in between points and they frequently do.
In pool however there isn't any logical reason to restrict players from using any type of instrument that by itself does not take the shot. If so then we should ban every cue that claims to be more accurate, more powerful, creates more spin etc...