The Toughest Shot in Billiards

Here is a shot I heard about but never made or saw. According to the story....

There was a road player who would set up this shot as a proposition. Cue ball in the corner area, ball on the diamond frozen to the short rail. Cut it in, no side rail. It's a rail-first shot, like the 90-degree "cut" shot. He asked for a certain amount of time to do it, such as half an hour.

I would pay to see this shot, but not as much as he was said to get people to bet. The story continues that this was the only shot he shot.

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markjames said:
russian billiards
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It would be only slightly harder if they boarded up the pockets. But if you're going to scratch the white off the yellow, that's about a 10 minute shot. If you are going to shoot with the yellow -- and I've seen players use any ball on the table as their cue ball in some forms of the game -- it's a little harder.:eek:
 
Bob Jewett said:
Yeah, it's clickbait, but it got me and I figured you ought to get some, too. That kept coming up in my Ebay search for billiard books, so I finally broke down and bought a copy of the book it's in. The book purports to show the various hardest whatevers in various sports such as the hardest hole in golf. Here's the book, which is actually pretty interesting:

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And here is the shot, which is surrounded by a few pages of fairly good discussion:

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and by a curious coincidence, here is the shot being made in a video which someone posted to the carom group today. The shot is at 16:48 but the rest of the video is pretty interesting even if you don't speak Flemish.


I suppose this brings up the question: which single shot (that can be made in under an hour) do you think is the hardest? I guess we have to include all cue sports. Steylaerts makes the shot above look like child's play.
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In my mind, making a spot shot from anywhere behind the line on a 3 1/2 x 7 ft bar box without the cue ball touching a rail is about as tough as it gets. I presented this shot one afternoon to 4 of my pool playing friends & they took turns trying it & I left to go home around 9pm and no one had come close & when I stopped in the next morning (all night bar in Vegas) about 8am, on my way to work, there were ten people taking turns & still no one had done it but I was told that two people came very close. I have done it one time & one time only! An old road player named Paul Baker from Des Moines,Iowa showed me the shot back in the early 70's. I know that this shot is irrelevent to " tough shots" but then again, you can't deny that it is indeed "a tough shot" !
 
In my mind, making a spot shot from anywhere behind the line on a 3 1/2 x 7 ft bar box without the cue ball touching a rail is about as tough as it gets. I presented this shot one afternoon to 4 of my pool playing friends & they took turns trying it & I left to go home around 9pm and no one had come close & when I stopped in the next morning (all night bar in Vegas) about 8am, on my way to work, there were ten people taking turns & still no one had done it but I was told that two people came very close. I have done it one time & one time only! An old road player named Paul Baker from Des Moines,Iowa showed me the shot back in the early 70's. I know that this shot is irrelevent to " tough shots" but then again, you can't deny that it is indeed "a tough shot" !
 
u12armresl said:
One of the Canadian snooker players named Frank came through Indy and had his hands full on the golf table. Kinda thought he was stealing, ran into a guy who knew how to play golf really really well.
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I think that might be Frank Jonic, otherwise known as "Bionic Jonic" for his preference to play while enhanced. ;)
 
measureman said:
The toughest shot is when you are gambling with no money in your pocket and it's hill hill and you have a shot on the 9 to win the set.
The 9 gets bigger and the pocket gets smaller.
Been there and done that.
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“You don't know what pressure is until you've played for $5 a hole with only $2 in your pocket."...Lee Trevino
 
straightline said:
Mike Massey could do this on an 8 footer, one handed.
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Mike is an acquaintance of mine & although I have never seen him do this personally, I definitely believe that he could do it,even one handed,he is an incredibly talented human being ! I am also sure that he could also do it on a bar box,which is somewhat tougher than a 8 or 9 footer.Jus' Sayn'
 
mick hodapp said:
In my mind, making a spot shot from anywhere behind the line on a 3 1/2 x 7 ft bar box without the cue ball touching a rail is about as tough as it gets. I presented this shot one afternoon to 4 of my pool playing friends & they took turns trying it & I left to go home around 9pm and no one had come close & when I stopped in the next morning...
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If that is with a bar ball, it's not surprising no one could do it. On a 4.5x9 with a cue ball that weighs the same as the object ball, you can stop the cue ball about 10 inches from the cushion on a standard spot shot -- object ball on the foot spot, cue ball in the kitchen.
 
Razor said:
Ah yes, thank you. That name is a blast from the past. I probably haven't seen Larry play in 20-25 years, maybe longer - time flies. Didn't he give up the game entirely to focus on art or something? Or am I thinking of someone else? (could have my stories/people all mixed up, been away from the pool scene for several years now but spare time due to covid has me interested again). Hope he is doing well... Thanks.

Edit: to stay on thread topic, some of these guys like Larry York that many probably have never heard of, went about their daily business and life, and probably also made some of the The Toughest Shots in Billiards, many times unheralded in the beautiful and glorious poolrooms of days gone by... We had many great and talented players in every corner of this great country. I surmise we still do, just not as many. The stories about them and the shots they could and did make are an interesting foray in to the great history of our game.
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Hey Razor, Larry is the greatest shot-maker I have ever seen and his originality was Efren'esque. Guess that's how he got the nickname shortside. Guy could play 4 rail shape into a few inch area where you would have a hard time getting using one rail. So many stories. And that daily golf game wow.
 
I liked the bank shot where Eddie Taylor would put a ball in the way and bet he could still bank a ball cross side. The impeding ball blocked enough of the path that you couldn't get by it. Taylor would elevate his cue and shoot at the object ball, making it jump off the side rail and over the blocking ball. The object ball went right over the other ball and flew directly into the pocket when it came down. The first time I watched him do this, everybody just laughed when the ball flew into the pocket, even the guy who was betting against him.
 
mick hodapp said:
Mike is an acquaintance of mine & although I have never seen him do this personally, I definitely believe that he could do it,even one handed,he is an incredibly talented human being ! I am also sure that he could also do it on a bar box,which is somewhat tougher than a 8 or 9 footer.Jus' Sayn'
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Ask him. It was a jump shot and the cue ball only caromed a foot or so. Maybe it's doable like that on a smaller table. It's one of those shots that I never dreamed of even trying. Only saw him that one time but IIRC people in the audience were goading him to do that particular shot.
On spot shots, I've heard of drawing into the rail above the side pocket. Never seen that one.
 
Bob,
This is one of the most interesting threads in a long, long time.
(I enjoyed ALL the videos, entirely.)
Dammit, now I’m on the hunt for another book!
Thanks!

Will Prout
 
Here is the toughest shot I've ever made on a 12-foot snooker table. There is a situation in snooker where you have this exact shot but you would normally play to the other pocket or play a safe (respotted black rule). This is about a 1-hour shot if you're in stroke.

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If you got consistent at this it would be a devastating psychological play in a snooker match. Assuming your opponent is bothered by playing crazy people.
 
Bob Jewett said:
Here is the toughest shot I've ever made on a 12-foot snooker table. There is a situation in snooker where you have this exact shot but you would normally play to the other pocket or play a safe (respotted black rule). This is about a 1-hour shot if you're in stroke.

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If you got consistent at this it would be a devastating psychological play in a snooker match. Assuming your opponent is bothered by playing crazy people.
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Coming back from a 7 year layoff, this was part of a set of drills I had.
I found 6:00 draw, higher than medium speed gave me my best results.
I would back cut it from the green and the yellow spots....I favor a hair of right when I haven’t been playing...
...cutting it to either pocket cured me of that.
 
u12armresl said:
One of the Canadian snooker players named Frank came through Indy and had his hands full on the golf table. Kinda thought he was stealing, ran into a guy who knew how to play golf really really well.
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I think Bionic Frank was from Canada.

I used to play golf on a snooker table and I had a dream about a 5 railer in the side pocket out of the same corner imagine the object ball is near the 4 hole and you are going to 3 , you cut bank off the foot rail side rail head rail long rail and then bottom {5 hole corner} rail to go to the 3 ....... or on the opposite side out of the 5 hole to go to the 6.
I actually set it up and made it , if I remember correctly it only took a couple of tries. Most of the time you would just lag the ball, but there were times when I needed to move the cueball somewhere and this was a great shot to do it with.
I thought I was a pretty good player until I got to Phoenix and watched Cary Ames play. It was no contest, but he treated the rest of them like that also lol. He would go 4 or 5 rails all the time and kick his ball in the side pocket when you thought it was out of play , I never saw anything like it in my life.
 
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