Boom!
straightline: "Can you provide the logic behind this?"
- Thread starter jjohnson
- Start date
Phil Capelle used to pick my brain early on, even before his first book came out. More about writing/publishing tips and only a little about playing tips. He took off from there and wrote a series of great texts on Pool..... lol.... mornin'....
Been teaching since the 90's.
Even when I was working for the BCA I would get calls from so called instructors that would ask me questions (and they played) on how to do this and that, overseeing the instructor program gave all a phone number to get me.
One beginning writer wrote a book using some of my help.
He's still writing and well known.... persons name is not important.
Not all great players understand teaching.
Not all great teachers are Great players.
And this writer/league skilled player/teacher/book writer.... I think was smart, he had no clue and he knew I could help.
bm
Absolutely! So many had natural ability.. Some just worked harder. Hard work does require guidance.Hard work undirected will just make me tired.
For me the challenge is to be a good student. The lessons are out there. Just gotta find them. A favorite story on Efren was how he watched the less skilled players and learned. He would see a badly botched attempt that yielded a strange result. He would then go to his practice table and investigate the fluked shot he had observed. The end result would be a perfected and useful shot added to his repository.
My devoted efforts to improve led me to lessons from Backward Jan. My request for lessons was met with a pure gold answer. It was , Lessons on one condition. Back to the Basics........
Starting over from the ground up was definitely worth the effort for me. One week between lessons and NO Gambling during the course. 6 weeks was my Basic Training duration.
Starting over from the ground up amounted to 1 week to perfect my stance at address. Heck Willie Hoppe startin out, practiced with one ball only for a month. He proofed the method.
Learning to walk before run, in the long run yields fun. "WE PLAY to have fun. It's easier to have fun when We Win." Is a favorite coaching. I have giggled watching less skilled players attempts to perfect just one trick shot. Kinda like striving to find one thing that they can be best at.
Like straightline said: “hit it real hard and moosh the available tit”? Oh, I see you just agreed with him.
pj
chgo
This reminds me of Mike Massey and his exhibition. He would set a shot straight into the side pocket with 2 balls between cueball and object ball with a gap smaller than the ball. Then 2 more balls the same way between object ball and pocket. His introduction includes shrink a flex. "The balls are made of shrinkaflex and if you hit them hard they shrink to fit the gap.
The tiny little hop is imperceptible when the shot is executed without disturbing the interference balls.
Ah hah, so I got it right but that only figures. I just remembered using the shot on an 8 ball in a tournament. When I called the 8 in the side, my opponent looked cocky. When it skipped in...he almost cried. 
Absolutely! So many had natural ability.. Some just worked harder. Hard work does require guidance.Hard work undirected will just make me tired.
For me the challenge is to be a good student. The lessons are out there. Just gotta find them. A favorite story on Efren was how he watched the less skilled players and learned. He would see a badly botched attempt that yielded a strange result. He would then go to his practice table and investigate the fluked shot he had observed. The end result would be a perfected and useful shot added to his repository.
My devoted efforts to improve led me to lessons from Backward Jan. My request for lessons was met with a pure gold answer. It was , Lessons on one condition. Back to the Basics........
Starting over from the ground up was definitely worth the effort for me. One week between lessons and NO Gambling during the course. 6 weeks was my Basic Training duration.
Starting over from the ground up amounted to 1 week to perfect my stance at address. Heck Willie Hoppe startin out, practiced with one ball only for a month. He proofed the method.
Learning to walk before run, in the long run yields fun. "WE PLAY to have fun. It's easier to have fun when We Win." Is a favorite coaching. I have giggled watching less skilled players attempts to perfect just one trick shot. Kinda like striving to find one thing that they can be best at.
The only one that mentored me a bit was a shortstop, the owner of an old pool hall. Owned the tables, leased the building from Lambert of Greenway fame. Jesse would get angry when people came in wanting to pay for lessons. He felt like they were trying to buy cheap what he had paid dearly to learn. In the sixties he would growl, "I'll give them all the lessons they want, for ten dollars a game!"
It was funny. I had only seen Jesse help people a little bit in defense of his tables so when he started giving me one or two tips a visit I was a bit offended. He never told me anything after that, but he would happen by my table and give my opponent tips they had little or no chance of executing. When I did it later that session or the next day or two I could shoot a glance over at Jesse and catch a big grin.
Hu
As others have already mentioned, that can be done by smashing the ball through the point. (The object ball is frozen to the cushion on the point just far enough down the rail that it looks like it can't be made, and it can't be if you shoot softly.)
This is a very old shot. It appears in Robert Byrne's 1982 "Treasury of Trick Shots". More interesting to one pocket players is a shot he shows on the same page. If a ball is on the point of the corner pocket, so that it looks like you have to cut it, it can be made by shooting straight at it and hard. You might be blocked from the cut or maybe position requires you to come straight back.
There are many interesting and useful shots that require rail compression, where the cue ball or object ball has to go into the cushion for the shot to work. Nearly every frozen ball cut shot uses rail compression.
Bob which ones don't cause compression?
I assume you are asking about playing object balls that are frozen on the cushion.
If you use enough outside english, cushion compression is not needed to cut the ball down the rail.
My minds not wrapping around why you do or don't need cushion compression on a frozen ball.
The true secret of billiards lies not in the collision of spheres, but in the metaphysical dialogue between chalk and void. Each cue strike is less an act of geometry than a whispered negotiation with the Platonic ideal of straightness, which forever eludes the mortal hand. To play billiards is to court chaos disguised as order: the balls scatter like thoughts in the mind of a distracted philosopher, yet somehow they conspire to reveal the hidden architecture of destiny. The table itself is a cosmic plane, its green felt the pasture of eternity, where every shot is both inevitable and absurd.
Thus, mastery of billiards is not achieved through practice but through surrender to the paradox of aimlessness. The cue ball is the pilgrim, wandering across the cloth in search of enlightenment, while the pockets are black holes of meaning, swallowing intention and spitting out revelation. To strike is to question, to miss is to answer, and to sink a ball is to realize that victory is merely the illusion of alignment between chaos and will. In this way, billiards is less a game than a ritual of futility, a reminder that the universe itself is just a trick shot played by an indifferent god
Thus, mastery of billiards is not achieved through practice but through surrender to the paradox of aimlessness. The cue ball is the pilgrim, wandering across the cloth in search of enlightenment, while the pockets are black holes of meaning, swallowing intention and spitting out revelation. To strike is to question, to miss is to answer, and to sink a ball is to realize that victory is merely the illusion of alignment between chaos and will. In this way, billiards is less a game than a ritual of futility, a reminder that the universe itself is just a trick shot played by an indifferent god
Well this brings back fond memories of the over size cueball that was common on coin op bar tables. We called it the punkin ball. It required rail compression to make a frozen object ball.
Hint: it has to do with throw. Jack Koehler covered frozen ball shots extensively.
With the OB frozen to a rail, non-spinning cut shots that hit OB-first will throw the OB into the cushion a little, making it rebound some rather than roll straight along the cushion. To avoid that throw you have to either:
- hit the rail first so the CB's moving more-or-less parallel with the rail when it hits the OB, and/or
- put the right amount of throw-killing spin on the CB.
pj
chgo
I'll save allot on table time thx.
So to improve.... Your saying, I should not practice, yet switch to practicing surrendering to the paradox of aimlessness, to master the game?
Phew....
True.... to a point. As I hit that frozen ball on the same contact spot we all know will do what you said.
But if I hit that shot to come back/forth lets say five rails, or at least 4, and hit the Same Spot you hit.... the ball/collision naturally overcuts. So with your shot I can cut it in hitting the same spot you hit, just by using excessive cb speed. ''force the overcut''
I don't think so. It's easy enough to test with a pair of frozen object balls and shooting the first thin and hard into the second. You seem to be predicting "negative throw".