Weak kickers with jump cue jump from "C" to "B"

Johnnyt

Johnnyt

Burn all jump cues
Silver Member
First off let me say that I'm not talking about the SVB's, or the Earl's and the Efren Reyes's of the pool world. I'm talking about "C+" up to "A" players that don't kick well.

Over the last 9 months I've had a dozen or more of these type players over to play. Most were a lot younger than me and kicking wasn't a very strong part of their game. I tell everyone that I don't allow jump cues on my table because someone's ball left the table and broke the sliding glass door. This is a lie and most knew that when I use to match up I always would say no jump cues allowed. I knew back then that it gave me some advantage with some players, but I never realized how much.

The 4 guys that could and would beat me over 50 % of the time couldn't come close to beating me w/o their jump cues. I even 3 fouled a few of them. These were mostly 9-ball or 10-ball races to 7-10.

What I'm trying to say here is I never knew when I said no jump cues how big an advantage I was getting from the weak kickers. A big part of the old game of pool has been taken away from the guys that spent hours and hours practicing kicks and good safes. You perform a very good safe now and a guy that couldn't hit it in 3 tries kicking gets his jump cue out that took him a week to learn how to use and hits it with no problem. I know I'm old and sour on jump cues…I'm just venting. Johnnyt
 
Johnnyt said:
First off let me say that I'm not talking about the SVB's, or the Earl's and the Efren Reyes's of the pool world. I'm talking about "C+" up to "A" players that don't kick well.

Over the last 9 months I've had a dozen or more of these type players over to play. Most were a lot younger than me and kicking wasn't a very strong part of their game. I tell everyone that I don't allow jump cues on my table because someone's ball left the table and broke the sliding glass door. This is a lie and most knew that when I use to match up I always would say no jump cues allowed. I knew back then that it gave me some advantage with some players, but I never realized how much.

The 4 guys that could and would beat me over 50 % of the time couldn't come close to beating me w/o their jump cues. I even 3 fouled a few of them. These were mostly 9-ball or 10-ball races to 7-10.

What I'm trying to say here is I never knew when I said no jump cues how big an advantage I was getting from the weak kickers. A big part of the old game of pool has been taken away from the guys that spent hours and hours practicing kicks and good safes. You perform a very good safe now and a guy that couldn't hit it in 3 tries kicking gets his jump cue out that took him a week to learn how to use and hits it with no problem. I know I'm old and sour on jump cues…I'm just venting. Johnnyt
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Yeah your right, im on the fence with the jump cue thing. I personnally don't own one. I always tend to lean toward traditional methods. But the dam thing will get you out of some tight jams i must admit. And as long as the rules are ok with it then i think you do yourself an injustice not to use one while your opponent has one. I actually prefer to kick if it is kickable. You just have to remember if your opponent has a jumper to seal him up extra tight on your safeties i guess. On the other hand i have seen alot of jumpers wind up gettin a good hit and sellin out the rack. I have seen alot more kick safes than jump safes.
 
jump cues

I am a firm believer jump cues hurt the game more than help. If you cant kick then work on it some more, besides a good kick game also tends to help the banks game a bit also.

Some of the best shots ive ever seen were safes and the shot to get out or them. I am also a fan of a solid masse game so the jump cue kinda robs me of some viewing enjoyment.
 
to me jump cues are handy, but most of the jumps I shot at I could make with a full cue before I got a jump cue. I probably jump a little more with the jump cue though.

Now you have to play better safes, get the cue ball up against another ball, or have more than one ball in the way of the object ball.
 
Johnnyt said:
First off let me say that I'm not talking about the SVB's, or the Earl's and the Efren Reyes's of the pool world. I'm talking about "C+" up to "A" players that don't kick well.

Over the last 9 months I've had a dozen or more of these type players over to play. Most were a lot younger than me and kicking wasn't a very strong part of their game. I tell everyone that I don't allow jump cues on my table because someone's ball left the table and broke the sliding glass door. This is a lie and most knew that when I use to match up I always would say no jump cues allowed. I knew back then that it gave me some advantage with some players, but I never realized how much.

The 4 guys that could and would beat me over 50 % of the time couldn't come close to beating me w/o their jump cues. I even 3 fouled a few of them. These were mostly 9-ball or 10-ball races to 7-10.

What I'm trying to say here is I never knew when I said no jump cues how big an advantage I was getting from the weak kickers. A big part of the old game of pool has been taken away from the guys that spent hours and hours practicing kicks and good safes. You perform a very good safe now and a guy that couldn't hit it in 3 tries kicking gets his jump cue out that took him a week to learn how to use and hits it with no problem. I know I'm old and sour on jump cues…I'm just venting. Johnnyt
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What about the hours of practicing that the jumpers put into it to jumping with control, accuracy and english? You are taking that part of their game away. Technology makes the game better. Take modern multilayered balls or graphite shafts away from golfers and it would have a similar effect. For me taking away jump cues is the equivellent of what vegas casinos do with their blackjack rules. It puts the game in their favor because if they played as the original rules were written they can't win.
 
my opinion is pretty much same as others above, play better safety, or leave them the jump off the table shot.
if they still make a very good jump shot, then cudo for them for putting effort in practice.
 
I'm a big fan of the jump cue BUT I think the use of it should be as a last resort.
I'm a pretty good jumper but I always check my kicking options first and if it's there then most likely I'll go with a kick.
But sometimes even if the kick is there and it's an easy one I'll take a jump over it, this will happen in cases when jumping means pocketing the ball and kicking means safe....

In friendly games I get to jump more, it is my practice... I do not practice jump shots other than that. In competition (league or tournament I'll go with the safer option).

I don't think that an A player can be an A player if he doesn't know how to kick.... a B player should be able to kick pretty good as well.

It's hard for me to rank my game compared to what you consider an A or B player (or C,D.... etc.) But I believe if I was playing APA 8ball I would be ranked a strong 6 or a 7 (according to some APA players I've played in the last couple of years).

Bottom line is that both kicks and jumps are part of the game and the more tools you have in your arsenal, the better player you'll be.

Just my 0.2 :wink:
 
If you don't allow jumps at your table, how about allowing pushes. Would that equalize the game or give too much of an advantage?
 
Jump Away

My kicking is not too bad. I get a good hit most of the time, but I miss the pocket more than I make them, although a lot of them come close these days so I am getting better. There are times when a kick isn't available though. There are also times when a kick would be ridiculous to do when you can do an easy jump shot.

I am very fond of a jump cues and I think I shoot pretty good with mine. I can jump as close as one ball to a half table easily, and can even apply english in my jumps. This ability is because I have practiced jumping to where I can pull it out of my case in a match and use it without warm up. This has helped my game a lot. Of course, there are time you can't jump and have to kick.

I think knowing both in this day and age is essential. Some shots you have a choice, and others you do not. As far as defense shots go w/ a jump cue. If you hide me behind a ball with more than a ball length, I will get over it. This just makes you have to do better defense shots that hugs another ball and take the jump shot out of the equation. Just like defense shots that take away kicking.
 
Pretty much how I feel, JohnnyT. Though there is some skill in the execution of jump shots at a high level of play, it takes almost no practice at all for even a poor player to learn to get the cue ball in the air on a typical jump shot if they use a jump cue. At low levels of play, the jump cue serves as little more than an insurance policy against certain snooker situations. As you and I have both observed, one of the standard characteristics of weak players is a poor sense of table geometry, but the jump cue not only reduces the penalty for missing knowledge, but it causes countless weak kickers to invest less and less time in learning kicking skills.

In fact, I find kicking to be one of the most interesting aspects of nine ball. Defense, kicking and two way shots, in fact, are the only things I find interesting about nine ball.
 
sjm said:
Pretty much how I feel, JohnnyT. Though there is some skill in the execution of jump shots at a high level of play, it takes almost no practice at all for even a poor player to learn to get the cue ball in the air on a typical jump shot if they use a jump cue. At low levels of play, the jump cue serves as little more than an insurance policy against certain snooker situations. As you and I have both observed, one of the standard characteristics of weak players is a poor sense of table geometry, but the jump cue not only reduces the penalty for missing knowledge, but it causes countless weak kickers to invest less and less time in learning kicking skills.

In fact, I find kicking to be one of the most interesting aspects of nine ball. Defense, kicking and two way shots, in fact, are the only things I find interesting about nine ball.
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Thank you. I couldn't have said it better or probably as good. Johnnyt
 
Jumpers who can only jump to hit the ball without any control or consistency aren't getting a very large advantage over people that kick well. If they only thing that is being looked at is making good hits with a jump, fine then there is definetly going to be a great divide in the argument. There are weak kickers who make good hits consistently but can't play safe or make a ball with any consistency. The same goes to jumpers. If you are in these skill levels and are a good kicker you are probably a weak jumper and vice versa. If you are both a good jumper and a good kicker then you need to work on the rest of your game because people that are good at both should at least be an A player.
 
Junkyarddog said:
Jumpers who can only jump to hit the ball without any control or consistency aren't getting a very large advantage over people that kick well. If they only thing that is being looked at is making good hits with a jump, fine then there is definetly going to be a great divide in the argument. There are weak kickers who make good hits consistently but can't play safe or make a ball with any consistency. The same goes to jumpers. If you are in these skill levels and are a good kicker you are probably a weak jumper and vice versa. If you are both a good jumper and a good kicker then you need to work on the rest of your game because people that are good at both should at least be an A player.
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I agree with most of what you said and like I said, I'm not talking about players that kick good and jump good. I'm talking about weak kickers that a jump cue helps in hitting the blocked ball, jump and hit ball and slop in another ball, and so on. I did not say ban jump cues. Hell I have two of them myself. Johnnyt
 
I have another angle I would like to offer here.

Where I play, most of the tables in the same club play differently and during competition with relatively short races you don't get enough time to learn the table speed and the rails. I'm sure that this is true to many places world wide.

In many cases when I feel I don't know the table that well I'll take a jump over a kick, I will also take an extreme cut shot over a bank shot on an unknown table.

I don't think it makes me a lesser player, just smarter....

So basically when you invite someone to play at your home, on a table that you know very well and they don't, it's not that fair....
 
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Johnnyt said:
First off let me say that I'm not talking about the SVB's, or the Earl's and the Efren Reyes's of the pool world. I'm talking about "C+" up to "A" players that don't kick well.

Over the last 9 months I've had a dozen or more of these type players over to play. Most were a lot younger than me and kicking wasn't a very strong part of their game. I tell everyone that I don't allow jump cues on my table because someone's ball left the table and broke the sliding glass door. This is a lie and most knew that when I use to match up I always would say no jump cues allowed. I knew back then that it gave me some advantage with some players, but I never realized how much.

The 4 guys that could and would beat me over 50 % of the time couldn't come close to beating me w/o their jump cues. I even 3 fouled a few of them. These were mostly 9-ball or 10-ball races to 7-10.

What I'm trying to say here is I never knew when I said no jump cues how big an advantage I was getting from the weak kickers. A big part of the old game of pool has been taken away from the guys that spent hours and hours practicing kicks and good safes. You perform a very good safe now and a guy that couldn't hit it in 3 tries kicking gets his jump cue out that took him a week to learn how to use and hits it with no problem. I know I'm old and sour on jump cues…I'm just venting. Johnnyt
Click to expand...

Instead of instituting a rule to give yourself and advantage maybe you should tighten up your safety game. If your leaving em enough room to jump then your safeties aren't that good. Obviously good safeties weren't a part of the "old" game of pool
 
jump schmump

I say you should play the game with 1 freaking cue stick and that's it! No break cues, no jump cues, just one playing cue. I've got a jump cue because I needed to even out the field for BCA, I'm not so dumb (usually) that I'm going to give up that big of an advantage to others.

I can still get a good hit on damn near anything at times by kicking, but I see a lot of other players that should be able to just can't. My best guess would be that they vary their kicking speeds so much that they routinely fail to calculate the difference in the angle. :confused:
 
I am a firm believer that jump cues are good for the game. I practice 50-100 jumps a day. But I also practice 100-200 kicks a day--even more in th eplay that naturally transpires. To be fair, I have not used the jump cue in a real game for a couple of weeks and use it at most 2-3 times in an evening. There are things you can do with the jump cue that cannot be done with kicks or your regular cue.

For those purests who dislike jump cues--I ask--why not ALSO quit using break cues?
 
When I gamble I too like to change the rules of the game only I institute the "no using a leather tip" rule. I feel that the leather tip really took away from the art of using center ball to get shape and I feel like any hack can get out of trouble using "English"
 
I can kick my way out of some hairy situations but I like mixing it up with the jump cue every now and then,especially if I'm in a ring game and I roll out for a jump shot,knowing my opponent is horrible at jumping. That gives me the advantage. There have been a few times I get a bad roll and hook myself and I can't kick out. For example,I was playing in a ring game Friday with 3 other solid players. I made a money ball and hooked myself on a ball hanging near the side pocket. From the position I was in,it was nearly impossible to kick the object ball in. I jumped it and missed by only a hair.
I agree with the others who only resort to jumping as a last resort. You should definitely have a good ability to kick at a ball but in some situations jumping is the best option and you shouldn't shy away from it just because you think it's a cheap way to hit the object ball. It's all about being a well rounded player.
 
Although I agree in concept, the reasoning is similar to the argument against 7 foot tables. It eliminates the shotmakers advantage on the 9 foot table.

I have no problem with jumping, but it should be done with a full cue. This isn't golf.
 
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