trick shot question

drdunc33

New member
How do the trick shot artists get two balls to stack on top of one another? Sorry if that is a stupid question, but I am just getting into billiards. Thanks!
 
Some use doctored balls (hole drilled in one) or some use a little metal ring... i think correct me if im wrong.
 
thanks for the response; I assumed that it was some sort of ring that was placed between the balls, but I was watching a trick shot competition on ESPN the other night and they showed a shot where two balls were stacked. They showed the shot again in slow-motion and I didn't see any ring fall off the balls or onto the table, so I started to wonder how the guy got the balls to balance.
 
drdunc33 said:
How do the trick shot artists get two balls to stack on top of one another? Sorry if that is a stupid question, but I am just getting into billiards. Thanks!

They put a dimple in one of the balls. I did know a guy in the poolroom who could actually do it for real though. You can also put a sprinkel of chalk on the ball on the bottom when no one is looking and put the next ball on top, then gently blow away the exess chalk. Then grab up the balls and show them to whoever is looking they can see there are no holes or dimples. People will look at it and wonder how you did it.
 
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It is Easy - Try It!

drdunc33 said:
How do the trick shot artists get two balls to stack on top of one another? Sorry if that is a stupid question, but I am just getting into billiards. Thanks!

Moisture & Salt.

TY & GL
 
macguy said:
They put a dimple in one of the balls. I did know a guy in the poolroom who could actually do it for real though. You can also put a sprinkel of chalk on the ball on the bottom when no one is looking and put the next ball on top, then genetly blow away the exess chalk. Then grab up the balls and show them to whoever is looking they can see there are no holes or dimples. People will look at it and wonder how you did it.

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Sorry, nobody can do it for real, it's a physical impossibility to balance two perfect spheres on each other, trust me, it can not be done and I make a living doing this shot every day.
In the early 30's a guy got in Ripleys by stacking 4 billiards balls on top of each other on the table. The next year a guy got in ripley's stacking 4 pool balls on top of each other. They used Ivory balls, which have a vein down the middle. On one ball, they plug the vein with a core of ebony so it will stand out from the white. The poles in time begin to shrink as this is nothing but an elephants tooth and bone. When they got little craters at the pole then the balancing act was then and only then possible.

I have won bets I could stack pool balls in some places. People thought I could not do it and had to use my gaff balls. A lot of tables like the Gandy's have nails that hold the pockets in. The nails in time will loosen and the nail head comes out and begins to put nicks or little holes in the balls. You find a couple of balls with the best nicks, line them up and bingo, they stack.

FL stacked 4 pool balls on top of a bottle on the premier of the Ripleys TV show, jumped a ball, knocked out the bottom one, the top ball fell to take its place, probably one of the top 5 hardest shots of all time. He did it on the first snap and the entire shot and set up took him l minute and 3 seconds.

The artistic players with a file simply file off a little flat spot on the ball which can be very hard to see from a distance. You always file the numbers, that way you have the exact north and south pole to go by. This is very difficult to do and FL has a set of wood blocks he puts the balls in that locks then down insures an exact and level file.

Yes, now and then a player will put a small washer between the balls to stack them but that is not the way to do it having it being seen flying in the air.

TRICK SHOT THE BOTTLE SHOT

7 pages 11-5-04 CR, all rights reserved. Published in DC, Bpn, czm, upp, rsb.

http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/~wei/pool/preset/9ball.html

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If you do not know how to open the Wei table diagram instructions are at the end.

Put a bottle on the table, put an 8 ball on top of the bottle, and or, balance a 9 ball on top of the 8. Shoot a cue ball into the one ball, pot it in the side, leap the cue ball up into the air and hit the bottom 8 ball out from under the 9 which falls to take the place of the 8 and balance on the bottle cap. Jaws drop; people can not believe their eyes. The shot works like pulling the table cloth out from under the dishes real fast and none of them move.

The set up: The Wei table does not give me to tools to draw this well. Draw a line from the right point of side pocket C to the left point of side pocket D. Place the 2 on the long rail with its left edge on that line. Now place the 2=3=CB, cue ball & 4 ball in the center of that line. They are all now going off in a slight angle left. In front of the 4 ball place two chalks back to back that is marked A and a 10 ball. All of these are on centered on a line to the left point of side pocket B and all of them are frozen to each other.

Draw a 2nd line through the middle of the 10 going into the left point of the top left far corner pocket. Freeze the 5 to the 10, 2 chalks back to back marked as B and the bottle on the chalks. All of these are centered on the 2nd line and frozen to each other. The crude yellow large circle is the bottle and you then put an 8 ball on top. If you have shaved balls place the 9 on top of the 8.
The distance from the right edge of the bottle and the left edge of the 10 is 4 l/4”.
Now remove the 2-3-4-5 and the 4 pieces of chalk. Tap in and mark the locations of the CB & 10, place a pencil mark around the front edge of the bottle because it will get knocked over and you want it in the same place every time.

http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/~wei/pool/preset/9ball.html

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HOW TO MAKE THE SHOT:
I do not use my meucci PP-4, it nor a predator do not jump well. I use a stiff cue, my custom Schuler with the strong #5 Bangkok birch shaft. Triangle tip. I use a 3 finger closed looped rail bridge. You may see old photos of me making this with an open hand bridge and the shaft flying loose and that is a problem. I later learned I could make the shot with less angle and hang on to the shaft with the closed loop and apply more power this way. I can jump over the top of both balls if I wish to. I can put a ball up into the light fixture. I jump like a deer.

I jack up as much as possible to have a sharp angle down. I hit center ball, perhaps a half tip below that. I hit it hard with a stab jump stroke. I have a built in angle off of the 10 now aimed into the left point of the far side pocket. I alter my aim so to pot the 10 in the far side pocket marked A. I place a shaft where the red line is, then place 10 coins from the shaft up to the edge of the side. I have some nice foreign coins that are gold the size of quarters and they show up real nice on the light blue simonis 760 I show on. You can use nickels. I announce the 10 ball will fly over the shaft and the coins to pot in the air into A. It does that any way and the shaft and coins are just window dressing to make the shot greater than it is. I create the angle to pot the 10 and hit the ball on top of the bottle. My cue ball now flies up into the air left to hit the ball on the bottle. You should practice with just one ball. If you keep hitting it and knocking it off and its headed down that line to that corner pocket then when you add the top ball it will fall as well. It you hit it pure, the 8 ball goes in the top left corner marked B. This is very difficult to do, make the 10 and the 8 and drop and balance the 9 on the bottle cap that is a perfect shot. That is very rare. That is a DF12 and had that rating in the TASA world.

I faced just that shot in the 1995 TASA world trick shot championship. It was a 2 day final match against Rick Wright who is a great player and once came in 4th in the US Open 9 ball championship. On day one I came out hotter than a brand new Puerto Rican credit card and I was making everything on the first snap. Rick was cold and intimidated by my perfect play and was missing and making shots on the 3rd snap. I had a huge lead at the end of day one after 45 shots. It was a 72 shot contest and the final day was mostly DF 9-l0 and 11’s, Artistic’s hardest shots. My tip was really wearing down to the ferrule and I changed it that night, huge mistake. I was using Lepro at the time and I guess I got a bad tip, they are known for that.

The 2nd day I can’t hit my butt with a broom and am missing everything. Rick the champion he is see’s me in total panic and makes his move and begins smoking everything and comes roaring back. Too late I figure out the problem and change shafts but it takes time to get me back in the groove. By then Rick is now even with me and has taken a slight lead. The championship I could not lose is now slipping away. 5 shots remained the 5 hardest shots in Artistic, all DF11’s. Both of us made the first 3 of them on the first snap. The bottle shot came up on the next to the last shot. Rick made it on the 1st snap. Because he had a lead, if I made it on the 1st snap and claimed the 33 points, I was eliminated. TASA gave a bonus point, or 3 extra points on the first snap if I made both balls, the 10 and the 8. I faced that shot to stay alive and made it on the first snap. It was one of the greatest shots I ever made under this level of pressure and it was so unexpected I figured it to crush & gut Wright and I would take him on the final shot, the Agony and the Estacy 5 rail 2 shot masse. We alternated shots and I went first. This is my signature shot and I make it a lot on the first snap. Wright makes it, but I had never seen he make it under 10 snaps ever and we played a lot together. I made it on the 3rd snap. For Wright to win the world title he had to make it on the 1st or 2nd snap and I figured I had him in the bag. Rick made it on the 2nd snap to defeat me. I could not play any better than I did down that stretch and that was the greatest artistic finish ever. My memories of that great bottle shot 2in2 will always remain with me and help diminish the pain of losing the title I had in my hand and let get away.

Props. You need a bottle, drink bud long necks. Empty bottle, put cap on, wack away. That is what we used during the 95 world event. When I made the 4 ball bottle shot that got me into Ripley’s believe it or not which published on 8-16-95 and that shot ran world wide and was seen by 100,000,000 people. That was on the long neck bud. When I made the 4 ball bottle shot for a live crowd on the Ripley’s prime time premier show on the first snap I was using the larger Tea bottle then. That shot was seen world wide by 500,000,000 people. I look back now and go, how in the hell did we ever make that shot on that little cap, simple, we did not know any better.
tHE 2ND PART FOLLOWS BELOW THIS.....
 
tHE 2ND PART FOLLOWS BELOW THIS.....[/QUOTE]

Today I got to the 7-ll store and buy Arizona diet green tea. I pour the tea out, it sucks, but the bottle is beautiful with oriental designs. The glass is thick and beer bottles now not being reusable are very thin. Both the Tea and bud are the same height which was critical for me, 9” tall. The base of the tea is 2 ¾”, bud 2 l/4, and tea tips over less. The cap on the bud is l”, tea, l l/2”, a 50% bigger target to hit. Mike Massey uses a shorter Snapple bottle. He has trouble getting the cue ball up which is why. It’s your show, use any bottle you like.
I now fill the bottle with sheet rock mud and seal the cap. It now weighs 2 lbs, does not tip well when impacted. I take clear plastic shipping tape and cover the entire bottle which cannot be seen just in case I do bust or crack it, no liquid or glass can not get on the cloth and end the show. When I travel and fly and have luggage weight restrictions I use an empty bottle, when I check in the hotel I empty the ash tray out side of its sand and fill the bottle.

Now Set a ball on the top of the lid and then pound the top until you make a nice crater in the lid, then when the ball drops and does not hit perfectly it will catch and drop in the hole. Put a little dab of rubber cement in the crater and let it dry, then its sticky and a half miss might then catch and hold, my little inside secret I share with you.

Table are making the pockets now lower and I hate leather, they are rounded at the top and the 10 is flying in at warp 7 at 1 to 2” off of the table bed hard and it can hit that side now and go right over the top and nail a fan. I move every one away from that pocket. I get some pockets that just will not hold the shot. Two solutions. A, have a piece of heat and air duct metal that is cut to fit the back of the pocket and can be bent in a circle to fill up the back of a pocket and rise 3” above it and that will catch the shot. B, set up the shot off of the short rail and shoots the 8 up table. Put a rack next to the pocket in case the object ball does get down there it will pot.

The balls, I use a 2 on the bottom and one on the top, or 8 on the bottom and 9 on the top. I tell people, snooze and you lose, and this shot goes faster than the eye can follow. You can’t see it go down. Just remember, 9’s on top, 8’s on bottom, if the 9 ends up on the bottle cap, the shot worked.

You need several sets of these shaved balls as back ups because the punks steal them on you. After the shot they must be put up and never left lying around or they grow legs and walk. Everyone wants to know, how can you balance on ball on top of the other one and I answer, simple, cheat, gaff the balls. Byrne showed how to do this on his video tape and blew the secret, a violation of code, the magician never reveals the secrets, we should have had vito wack him, just kidding, we all love Bob.

You file a small flat edge on one side of the one, one side of the two, place the flat areas together and they balance on each other. Put a towel around the ball, put it in the vice and try and hand file it, good luck, that is tough. Practice on some old Junker balls first. I have a wood frame built that a ball drops into and then when I file it the file is perfectly flat. Always file on the center of the number that is the only way you know where the north and south poles are on the ball. Make the flat area small so it can’t be seen when the ball falls off the bottle and rolls around.

It is a physical impossibility to balance two perfectly round spheres on top of each other. In 193l a man got into Ripley’s for doing just that, balancing 4 billiard balls on top of each other. The next year a man got in for doing same with 4 pool balls. Every year 1 million people try to get into Ripley’s for doing something that is impossible and nobody else can do, only 365 make it every year. I was in 5 times, 5 years in a row, a Ripley’s record. Back then they were using Ivory balls which are a tooth with a vein down the middle and as the ball shrinks in time, the north and south poles tend to sink in and create places where the balls would balance on each other. Let me find a room that has the pockets nailed in and I will show you a lot of balls with chips in them, little small chunks out of them. The balls keep hitting the nails going in the pockets because the nails keep working out. I can always find two balls I can match up two chips and balance. That messes with some people when they do not know what and how I did that using their house balls.

THE HISTORY OF THE BOTTLE SHOT.

At the turn of the 20th century it was common to jump a ball over a mans top hat, you shot into a OB which went no where and sailed over the hat and that brought the house down. The jump soon became a Japanese thing. The used really large and tall fat beer bottles. They shot into a red ball, ramped up into the air to hit and knock off a white from the top of the bottle. The great Yamada taught this shot to the Katsura sisters in the late 20’s in Tokyo. In the late 30’s, Willie Hoppe does the same shot in a movie, but jumps 4 ‘ to knock a red sitting on a chalk on top of Buster Keatons hat off, his jaw was on the rail. The great Gargini of Argentina made this his signature shot in the 50’s and all this was on billiard tables with no pockets. Pool was about to get into the act.

In the 60’s Weenie Beenie Staton ramps up off of a pool ball, pots in it the far corner, flies the cue ball up and knocks a ball off of the bottle and pots it in the opposite corner, a 2in2 in the long corners. I did it on video tape and I can tell you that is a serious tough shot.

Next they figured out it was easier to make the first ball in the side and that shot never missed and the distance the 2nd ball had to travel was 3’ less, live and learn, shots do evolve with experience and different people trying different things. Some where in the 70’s, somebody got the bright idea to set two balls on top of the bottle and he was trying to knock off the top one and came in short and by accident knocked out the bottom one and the top ball fell and the guy wet his pants. The modern bottle shot was born by total accident and nobody knows who did it. We think it was a young American teenager. Usually this is some nobody and he shows the shot to a touring star coming in town and he grabs and steals the poor guys shot who has no voice or appeal in the matter. In this field, it is a very long line of thieves.

Soon this became Yoshi Kimura's signature shot. He put two bottles next to each other and made top balls drop, a spectacular shot and idea. I have that one on my video tape also and I am pretty good at it but I do not do it live as I view it as too high risk. In the early 90’s he put several bottle shots on his video which was widely seen. The PBT 9 ball tour then on TV every week had its pros do a trick shot during commercials and Kim Davenport made the 2 ball bottle shot and astonished every one.
In 1993 Kimura and me, both at the exact same time, both made the first 3 ball shot and neither one knew the other one was working on it and we are co inventors of that. We knocked out the two bottom balls and dropped the top ball. We both also knocked out the bottom and top ball and dropped and stuck the middle ball, a much harder shot.

In early 95, I made the first 4 ball shot and nobody including Kimura could figure out how I did it. You knock out the bottom 3, drop the top ball. The problem is they all come down on top of each other like a building implosion and you have to figure out how to make them separate to make a path for the top ball to come down, this is the secret making 3 balls racket off of each other in 3 different directions. When I made that first 4 ball shot I had been shooting it for 8 solid hours trying to figure out why it failed. I finally made it which was captured on tape and is on my main video tape. I did it back to back for a 2nd time and made all 3 bottom balls, including the ramp ball in 4 different pockets, a perfect shot. The only 2 balls left on the table were the cue ball and the 9 on top of the bottle. In the last decade I have never even got close to doing that again.

In 97 I made a 5 ball bottle shot, another invention and world record. On the Ripley’s set on 10-14-99 I made the 4 ball shot in practice on the 3rd snap and on the live shoot the next day I made it on the 1st snap and the set up of the balls and the entire shot took 62 seconds. My shot mechanic on the shoot was Willie Smith and he was a TASA world amateur champion and touring artistic star who I had been working with for years. I showed Willie the entire inside secrets of how it worked, why it worked and why I could do it and nobody else could. In 2000 Willie became the 2nd person to make the 4 ball shot, in 2001 he became the 2nd person to make the 5 ball shot and early in 2004 he became the first person ever to make the 6 ball shot. He balanced 6 balls on the bottle, knocked out the bottom 5 and the top 6th ball fell and stuck and he has that on tape, a world record. Who’s up to do seven? Records are made to be broken.

:D :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :D
 
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