The distant rumblings and ramblings of a pool nut.

Wowser, this has came to be an interesting thread! My shop buddy was about seven feet of blue runner. Fortunately for him I had seen his belly when I first saw him a few years before. Blue belly friend of man and will play chase with you. Run at him and he will run, turn around and run and he will chase you! This snake had became my shop superintendent. I would be squatted down doing a brake job and he would come look over my shoulder to check it out.

Back in days of yore Beam was good sipping whiskey. Pass it around, drink it on down. My friends liked Jack in the black, I preferred the cleaner taste of green label. My friends thought I was too tight to pay the extra buck a bottle but it was a matter of taste. I also liked shine but two shots of that after I was already on my way would have me howling at the moon!

Boogie, your injury story reminded me of mine. Brakes failed on my Suburban and I crashed into a stationary big Dodge pick-up at about 35 miles an hour. That is a pretty high speed for the actual impact. Wrapped the entire front of the SUV around the engine. I had to kick my way out. Thirty miles offroad, hours before help would arrive, I took a handful of pills! As I told more than one surgeon to their annoyance, this was the best procedure ever done on my back! Cut mind bending pain I had been suffering for a year by about fifty percent!

Gonna give some advise although I don't recall it being requested: Unlock your damned knees! Better for your pool game, better for your body. Many pursuits used a locked knee years ago. None of them with the possible exception of usually one locked knee in pool still use locked knees. An unlocked knee is stronger and more stable. It won't cause all of the issues with knees, back, and other things that locked knees will either.

Damn it! I haven't even thought I wanted some whiskey in decades. Now I am thinking about how good some nice sipping whiskey went down. Room temperature was fine but sometimes I dropped a bottle of whiskey or rum in the freezer. Nice and cold, no ice required to dilute good alcohol.

Hu
 
Whew, found this just in time. I was about to take this to the NPR forum.
So if I was looking to run for President......
Ok first question. President of the Internet first?
Forgot how this is pool related. It was there....
 
Be the Competitor
Accept the Challenge
Make Him Earn It

My Trinity
Born in Trinity County
Go figure,
Oh the threesome, I mean hole E Trinity
 
My secret strategy: Never give a read.
The attitude.
Oh yes, I intended that.🤷 I love d 9 ball.
The signals....... I love Efren's head scratch.
Just like playing poker. Look how many pool players had greater success at poker. 🤷
 
The Whole E Trinity would be..... when I am crouched down retrieving the balls......and he wants to get Froggy. I come up to the Horse, wi 2 in the left and one in the right. The 3 round clip.
My best. Comes within 3.
 
The overcut to leave object ball mid rail and cue ball head rail. Efren did it to the level of freezing cue ball to nearest.
A handyman miss. Keeps them wondering.
 
.


Laying here in the predawn...

I woke up. Still black outside the blinds but sleep seems to be over. Kinda feel like a goody, um a snack, a glass of breakfast, OK, I'll just call it breakfast, that sounds legit. Gotta check my sugar first. Something went south first try, guess I will turn on the light. Sugar not great or bad but I'm piddling around on the net now. As usual I can burn an hour or two on the net easily. Look out the window again. Damn, the sun ain't doing it's thing this morning, it must have overslept! Eight and no sun.

This doesn't seem right even with the black thunderstorms that have been passing through pretty much daily for a week or two. Damned clock is on the fritz too, what the hell do you mean PM?

Gotta wind the clock back try to remember. Oh yeah, being naturally nocturnal I usually go to sleep at one or two, or when the sun creeps up. Great for pool playing, not so much so for coexisting with others. Got to go give them some blood this morning so I need to try to go to sleep by midnight. Of course my eyes are as wide open as if I had just gotten flashed by Dolly Parton come midnight. 3:30, maybe if I take my morning shower now I can take a nap afterwards. What, get up at 3:30YAM? My body prefers getting up at 3:30PAM! Now it pours on all the time to sleep signals! OK, third time I have changed the wake setting on the phone, I'll nap first.

Psych! Just a trick! Fricking eyes snap back open. Play this game until I get about a thirty minute nap. Step out into rain. Great, drive to the hospital in the rain. Naturally the fully enclosed golf cart shuttle is parked under the shed near the door a football field or two away from parking to stay dry.

Had some other things to do but they involved the left leg working and it has taken the day off. Crapola! Very little done and back to the house. I don't remember laying down but the predawn is gonna last a long time. It is 9:07PAM!

There was a time I thought old people were strange. I was right!

Hu
 
What would be the recognition from the green dealers to the equation of carbon dioxide vs wood repellence?
...it was my second, maybe third thought.
 
I've played around with aiming systems enough to know there is merit in most, if not all of them. I've also played around with them enough that I take some things from different systems. When I'm playing at top speed I just make shots without really thinking about them. I'm aiming but when I'm in the zone aiming becomes more visualization and feeling a good stroke than anything else. YMMV, and it probably will.

I would probably be more consistent by using a system on each shot, but my brain is so shit at focus that I just have to keep the momentum going in my favor while it's working. Thinking about aiming will get me out of stroke faster than anything. Visualizing the ball going in and praying that I have hit enough of the million balls keeps me sane and focused enough to finish the rack.

At times I wish I could do a brain swap with myself as a younger player with no knowledge and just stick with solid fundamentals and one aiming system. For most knowledge is power, but too much knowledge can be a curse. I've purposely stopped messing with systems outside of practice because I just can't keep everything from unraveling.

If I keep my fundamentals tight, stay down after the shot, keep my head quiet and unthinking I play my best. Misses still happen, but much less. One stray thought can ruin a whole rack. I can congratulate myself and miss, I can chastise myself and miss. Better to just play and leave the self talk out of it.

Honestly I don't get that upset about missing anymore, I get upset when my stroke was shit. I'd rather stroke perfectly and miss than pussy foot a shot and miss. The best result is a good clean stroke and making it, but beggers can't always be choosers.
 
boogieman said:
I've played around with aiming systems enough to know there is merit in most, if not all of them. I've also played around with them enough that I take some things from different systems. When I'm playing at top speed I just make shots without really thinking about them. I'm aiming but when I'm in the zone aiming becomes more visualization and feeling a good stroke than anything else. YMMV, and it probably will.

I would probably be more consistent by using a system on each shot, but my brain is so shit at focus that I just have to keep the momentum going in my favor while it's working. Thinking about aiming will get me out of stroke faster than anything. Visualizing the ball going in and praying that I have hit enough of the million balls keeps me sane and focused enough to finish the rack.

At times I wish I could do a brain swap with myself as a younger player with no knowledge and just stick with solid fundamentals and one aiming system. For most knowledge is power, but too much knowledge can be a curse. I've purposely stopped messing with systems outside of practice because I just can't keep everything from unraveling.

If I keep my fundamentals tight, stay down after the shot, keep my head quiet and unthinking I play my best. Misses still happen, but much less. One stray thought can ruin a whole rack. I can congratulate myself and miss, I can chastise myself and miss. Better to just play and leave the self talk out of it.

Honestly I don't get that upset about missing anymore, I get upset when my stroke was shit. I'd rather stroke perfectly and miss than pussy foot a shot and miss. The best result is a good clean stroke and making it, but beggers can't always be choosers.
Click to expand...

When I tried to fool with systems I would get on the table and try to use six different systems at once! The results were very ugly and very profitable to the opposing player. I finally settled on equal/opposite or some similar system of poke and hope. Funny thing, to this day I can't use fractional aiming, just not the way I see things. Likewise all the other systems you build a piece at a time, my mind didn't work that way!

I was a solid "C" student in first year algebra for much the same reason. I don't think I got a final answer wrong all year. Showing the steps was the problem. I could see the answer to begin with so I had to memorize all of the BS steps that weren't needed. I could usually remember a few steps out of five or seven. I would wing it on the other steps and my test papers would look like a dying chicken had flopped all over them when the red ink dried! My teacher told me I would need to know the steps when real world problems got harder. Over fifty years now and I am still waiting...

Hu
 
ShootingArts said:
When I tried to fool with systems I would get on the table and try to use six different systems at once! The results were very ugly and very profitable to the opposing player. I finally settled on equal/opposite or some similar system of poke and hope. Funny thing, to this day I can't use fractional aiming, just not the way I see things. Likewise all the other systems you build a piece at a time, my mind didn't work that way!

I was a solid "C" student in first year algebra for much the same reason. I don't think I got a final answer wrong all year. Showing the steps was the problem. I could see the answer to begin with so I had to memorize all of the BS steps that weren't needed. I could usually remember a few steps out of five or seven. I would wing it on the other steps and my test papers would look like a dying chicken had flopped all over them when the red ink dried! My teacher told me I would need to know the steps when real world problems got harder. Over fifty years now and I am still waiting...

Hu
Click to expand...
I can relate. I have a degree in Mathematics. Don’t ask me how. Since born, I have a memory like an Alzheimer’s patient. I have NO idea how I got a C in Calculus where recognizing the type of integral was paramount to solving the problem. Forget about Differential Equations. That was even worse. But I did well where I could depend on my ability to think things through rather than depend on memory.

When I was in elementary school, my parents and a well-intended nun teacher entered me in a debate/speech competition. To boost my confidence. How did that work? Yeah, no. I recited the first sentence of the 15-minute speech then froze up not recalling any more of it.

In my career I was blessed to be able to apply strong analysis skills to good effect where rote memorization was not emphasized.

I don’t know if my very poor memory affects my recall on HAMB and recognizing shots from stored memory, but I’m happy with my progress. So maybe there’s hope for my 66.8-year-old brain.
 
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