The Basics

When I think about 3c professionals who started with small carom games; Saygıner,Zanetti and Caudron comes to my mind.

When you watch Saygıner and especially Zanetti,They have awesome speed control.They seem to make the 3-4-5 cushion shots nearly at the slowest speed possible .In the Zanetti's case ,the cue ball nearly is frozen at the final object ball ın a lot of cases.Zannetti's cue ball crawls to the final object ball.Both of them can play excellent position play.When they are very good,their 3c game has a small game flavor.

Interestingly,Caudron plays very fast and comparatively in higher speeds.Some commentators ascribe his speed to his balkline background .İn that game,they say the player's stroke must be in a fast /free flowing zone to score 100-150 points consecutively.

I presume that their speed control skills come from their small game background

In my humble opinion, a good pool player (who can run out tables in 8 ball and 9 ball now and then) does not need small games to start 3 cushion.
but a novice who started to take up a cue may benefit a lot if he/she starts firstly in small games.But alot of players today start directly in 3 cushion and become succesful amateur players or professional players maybe the reason is that they are very talented.

regards,

Timur
 
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Why not just start out playing Korean Four Balls? Wasn't that what Sang Lee started with? Its require carom, straight rail, nursing, masse, and 3 Cushion Billiard- all in one game!
 
billiardshot said:
Why not just start out playing Korean Four Balls? Wasn't that what Sang Lee started with? Its require carom, straight rail, nursing, masse, and 3 Cushion Billiard- all in one game!
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Well, I think, if you're talking about the U.S., the same reason people aren't playing balkline and so forth. Unless you're in a heavily Korean populated area, where/who are you going to play it with? They use larger balls, an extra ball, and smaller tables. Carom Cafe has some but when I was there for the SLI they were covered with posters and random stuff. Most people in this country, unless they're around NY, Chicago, some place like that, have trouble finding a single table to play on. Look on the USBA site of halls with billiards tables - what's the total number of public billiard tables nationwide - less than 50? Pushing the game to ever more exotic and rarer places isn't going to help anything. If billiards survives in this country at all, it's pretty much 3 cushion.
And it's a difficult game, yes, but you don't need to spend some Zen course of ten years mastering other games before you can even think about playing 3C. Like any game, there are some basics. If you can play pool competently, you can learn to play 3C competently: you have the basics of stroke, english, etc. down already, you play one-pocket, bank pool? even better, you're half way there. Learn the basic diamond system. Learn the plus system. Set up shots and hit them until you can do it consistently. Start playing some double the rail shots. Start playing tickies. It's an endlessly difficult and challenging game, but you learn to play it like you learn to play any other game, with practice. There's no mystery. Play 3C for a year and then play someone who only knows straight rail and see how much it helps them.
 
There are plenty more than 50 billiard tables around the country. Let's not get panicky yet. In the NY metropolitan area alone there are over 25 rooms with 3 cushion tables.

In California there are 70 rooms. In Florida, there are 19 rooms. There are plenty of 3-cushion tables out there (not enough, of course) but they are not spread out evenly throughout the whole country.

That's part of the USBA's job: to increase the popularity of the game. But we need help from the members if we are to succeed. If the members are relying on 2 or 3 people to do it, then good luck.
 
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