was just thinking about the break, how it compares speed-wise to other shots- anybody ever put a speed gun on regular pool shots? what'd you find?
speed of pool shots?
- Thread starter evergruven
- Start date
Ball has to be pretty dead before I'd hit it at break speed. Raw guess is most shots would be under 2 MPH. 5 MPH for sure.
I'd double your numbers and then maybe add a little to the high end. I bet the slowest shots will be 2MPH and the average shot closer to 10. But who the hell knows???
xX-Wizard-Xx
Well-known member
anyone ever thought about the speed of a player walking after a lucky shot vs an unlucky one
"A real man makes his own luck."
- Billy Zane, Titanic
I certainly don't. It's not something I've ever thought about.
Top speed for the hardest breakers was measured around 30 mph when they put a speed gun on them years ago. In today’s game with the tighter racks and the racking templates, most of your pro players choose to break in the mid teens to low 20s, mid 20s at the absolute tops. Cue ball control and figuring out the best spot to break from, speed, spin, and location to strike the 1 ball to make balls and leave a shot is far more critical than how hard you break them.
For most all other pool shots, on the pro level it is generally no harder than what they need to move the cue accurately around the table to where they need it, rarely more than 10 mph and a majority of their shots likely well under 5 mph. Whether new cloth or broken in cloth, pockets are always more more forgiving / accepting to easier paced object balls coming into them
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Dr. Dave must have a video on this,he hasn't missed much.
The meaning of life is wasting time
There was someone that did a very neat edit on a pool game, they tracked the balls at the table by speed with lines. If you know the length the ball is going, and you have a good video with good time tracking, you can calculate the feet per second or whatever you want. I did not save the video but I think it was posted on the Matchroom Facebook.
Theres only so much that can be discussed about a simple game like pool.
I've been on this forum for 14 years and most of the time questions are rinse and repeat especially with new members.
Evidently not. But to answer the question...
If you shoot a soft shot from the rail to just reach the far rail (about 100 inches of travel) the cue ball will start off at about 2 feet per second.
If you shoot harder, these are the approximate initial speeds required:
2 lengths (a normal lag shot) about 4.2 f/s
3 lengths -- 7.9 f/s
4 lengths -- 14.5 f/s which is about 10 MPH
This depends a lot on how bouncy the rails are. The above is for a table that requires break speed (around 20MPH) to get five lengths, which seems to be typical of pool tables recently.
At the low end of the speed range, a ball that travels only two diamonds starts at one foot per second.
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The break app needs sound and a hard enough first hit on the cueball to make a significant peak. And you need to hit another ball (the rack) with enough speed to create a second peak. I suppose someone could just try it and see.
Zerksies
Well-known member
That's why I said do some spot shots
I believe medium soft to medium firm speeds are around 5-12mph, with normal being in the 7 to 10 range. Soft would likely be 2 to 4mph. Firm would be greater than 12 but less than 20, which is a good break speed.
This is just based on timing a few shots from YouTube.
This is just based on timing a few shots from YouTube.
10 MPH gets you four lengths up and down the table. Would you call that medium firm?