Super fast rails, what is the appeal?

Superstar I feel your pain.

We have gold crown ones with new rails and tournament blue Simonis that is very slick. It's still humid here so the room owner has AC and dehumidifiers running in the room. Cloth played super fast there this week. Rails were boingy. Cueball control was impossible on anything hit over medium speed. After a 6 hour gambling session I lost by 1 set. Not sure playing with such conditions helps my game. Second guessing speed and rebound of the rail is tough when it's playing differently on every shot.
 
2strong4u said:
Superstar I feel your pain.

We have gold crown ones with new rails and tournament blue Simonis that is very slick. It's still humid here so the room owner has AC and dehumidifiers running in the room. Cloth played super fast there this week. Rails were boingy. Cueball control was impossible on anything hit over medium speed. After a 6 hour gambling session I lost by 1 set. Not sure playing with such conditions helps my game. Second guessing speed and rebound of the rail is tough when it's playing differently on every shot.
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There was a table at Bufflos just outside N.O. that had the AC vent up on the wall blowing out. One long rail played totally differently than the other one.
 
A lot of good input so far. I would like to make it absolutely clear that I by no means want a return to dead rails and shag carpet. What is wrong with how a normal Gold Crown banks? Nothing, thats what!

I played on a table the other day where a normal cross side bank banked a full diamond short! That's unheard of to me! I scratched on two shots that should never even have been near the pocket, the spin didn't take and the ball got kicked out from the rail at 100mph...I simply do not understand what the point of this is.

The players who suffer are the ones that know how to use the rails for position. On tables like that you have to play stun and one rail. God help you if you have to go around the table, because the angles are not anything like a normal table. After a while you learn how the table works, but certain shots just cannot be done, period. You simply cannot get long enough...

"It makes the game more difficult, so it's better for the pros". That's absolute rubbish. What it does is to make the pros game more similar to an amateur. They have to settle a lot and avoid certain shots. They can still play great of course, but some of their skill and knowledge goes unused. The same goes for the stroke. A pro can stroke the ball straight at any speed, but that will never get tested on a table like that.
 
peppersauce said:
I don't really like or dislike it. I'm kind of neutral I guess. The fast cloth and fast rails change the game for sure though.

There are two sides to every coin. No you don't have to have a big stroke to move the CB around the fast tables BUT you had better know how to control whitey. Precision becomes extremely important as well as being comfortable shooting soft drag shots and seeing the position routes that allow you to kill a little speed off the cue ball. People can say what they want about how easy fast conditions make the game but that's just not true, IMO. It presents its own set of challenges.

And before anyone jumps on me and says I must not know what it was like to play on the old tables, you're very wrong. I started out on 9 and 10 footers with nap cloth and dirty balls and played on them for years before I ever heard of Simonis. Everything can and must change though and I'm not so sure it's for the worse.

A few years ago one of my buddies told me he knew of a tournament in a little hole in the wall joint that paid pretty good and wasn't on bar tables. The only thing, he said, was you have to fade the equipment. Old 9-footers with nap cloth and dirty mismatched balls. :D He had no idea what he did by bringing me there. I snapped it off easily 4 weeks in a row before the guy running it told me not to come back.

For me, it seems easier playing on the old equipment and cloth.
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I hear you & agree with much of what you say & we could nitpick back & forth.

But, to your last sentence & the paragraph before, was it easier or was it that the competition was just not as good on that type of table as they might be on the other equipment. You have that experience & stroke & perhaps they do not.

I hope you can see & understand my point.
 
Straightpool_99 said:
A lot of good input so far. I would like to make it absolutely clear that I by no means want a return to dead rails and shag carpet. What is wrong with how a normal Gold Crown banks? Nothing, thats what!

I played on a table the other day where a normal cross side bank banked a full diamond short! That's unheard of to me! I scratched on two shots that should never even have been near the pocket, the spin didn't take and the ball got kicked out from the rail at 100mph...I simply do not understand what the point of this is.

The players who suffer are the ones that know how to use the rails for position. On tables like that you have to play stun and one rail. God help you if you have to go around the table, because the angles are not anything like a normal table. After a while you learn how the table works, but certain shots just cannot be done, period. You simply cannot get long enough...

"It makes the game more difficult, so it's better for the pros". That's absolute rubbish. What it does is to make the pros game more similar to an amateur. They have to settle a lot and avoid certain shots. They can still play great of course, but some of their skill and knowledge goes unused. The same goes for the stroke. A pro can stroke the ball straight at any speed, but that will never get tested on a table like that.
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...:thumbup2:...
 
fastone371 said:
That is unusual, it is the Red label Diamonds that are the ones that play so fast and springy, Diamond fixed this problem on the Blue label tables, which are the newer tables, and the rails slowed down quite a bit. Maybe they did not have Simonis on the Red label you played on. The Reds I play on with worn Simonis easily go 6 1/2 rails on a soft/medium break stroke. I break at 21-22 MPH, it doesn't take that much to go 6 1/2 full table lengths.
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How can you tell if it's a Red label Diamond or a Blue?
 
Wheels33 said:
How can you tell if it's a Red label Diamond or a Blue?
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There is a small Name 'plate' on the head rail with the different colored backgrounds.

That said, some rails have been changed out on certain tables so the name plate is not a guarantee of what the rails are.
 
ENGLISH! said:
There is a small Name 'plate' on the head rail with the different colored backgrounds.

That said, some rails have been changed out on certain tables so the name plate is not a guarantee of what the rails are.
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Good to know. Thanks!
 
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