When did the home table become popular?

[drop_pocket]

Hi all,

I noticed that it seems like most of the top shooters at the rooms I play in have a table at home. In fact, one of them told me you really need a home table if you want to get that good.

I know home tables have been around for ages. Didn't Thomas Jefferson have one? And later, Elvis?

But I imagine many of the greatest of the great players did not. I bet (just given average house size and wealth of the olden days) that many many of the best of the 20th century never had home tables, or at least not until late in life.

So, when did home tables become so popular? Why do you think that is? How important do you think a home table is to developing skills?

 

[kollegedave]

Even if some great players didn't have "home tables", many great players had cheap or free access to tables early in life. For example, I believe Tony Robles' father owned a pool room. I think a pool room allowed a young Keith McCready to sleep under their tables--while in many respects it is sad that Keith McCready had to endure this, I am sure it helped his pool game. SVB's grandpa was a trickshot artist, and I believe his mother was a league player. Most young people experience significant barriers to spending a lot of time playing pool--laws preventing children/ teenagers in pool rooms/ bars and the disposable income to play. Many good players, if they did not have a pool table at home, had easier access to a pool table early on.

Recently, I bought a home table. I have to say, that it has made a big difference in how and why I play. Before, when I went to the pool room. I have to admit that part of my goal was to simply have fun, and there was also a social element to it. Part of having fun, is having success, so I think for people who have to go to a pool room, there is a bit of an incentive to not practice on your weaknesses. Of course, I also wanted to improve. At home, when I play, I am not having fun, unless I think I am somehow "making progress"--improving a weakness, etc. The lack of distractions at my home table and the freedom to experiment without the judgment and curiosity of "haters" has helped me improve steadily in the years since I got the table.

If you use a home table correctly, it will help your game. There is no doubt.

kollegedave

 

[Black-Balled]

Playing a lot of pool is a main factor in proficiency.

Home tables do benefit one's game, but it isn't all positives...I feel I have gotten soft in many ways, playing almost exclusively at home. I have my music, my equipment, my bathroom, my soap and paper towels, etc...

I am not sure how to define the experience, but when I go play elsewhere i often have a shit time, dealing with substandard equipment, people I don't want to interact with, no paper towels in the disgusting bathroom, keeping one eye out for myself and my equipment...and paying for it.

 

[Cameron Smith]

Obviously a key benefit is the volume of practice a home table can allow for. But I think it’s also helpful that you can easily spread it out through the day. For example, practice a bit until you lose concentration and then come back later refreshed. It’s also, helpful that if you are playing poorly that you can put your cue down and just come back later.

Meanwhile at a pool hall, you essentially have to do all of your practice in one block of time. And if you are playing poorly, you have to choose between struggling through it or quitting while potentially not coming back for several days.

I’ve always figured that it was easier to learn an instrument than pool only because of the easier access to home practice.

 

[kling&allen]

Shamos' book Pool has a good history on this. Short answer is rich people had tables in their homes since the dawn of the game in Europe. Workers played in the public halls. The same was true in America until Brunswick started focusing on the home market in the early 1900s.

 

[Buzzard II]

Whoa, I feel the same as Black-Balled. To the point that I added a little Valley bar box next to the GC. Now I don't have to go to a pool hall or bar.

I do hold regular games at my house and most of my friends have tables too. So we all move around. Until last spring we would ride our motorcycles to a bar that has three nice tables for a lunch run. I miss that. Maybe this new year.

The Valley really makes me wish that I had put in a little table forty years ago in my other house. I had just enough room to do it but I didn't. Big mistake. Any table is better than no table.

It may even be that a cheap POS table is good for your game. You learn to deal with the adversity of the table.

I had way too many years of not playing and now too old to get really good. But damn I have something to do when a virus or a snowstorm comes to town. Plus a very comfortable man cave.

 

[kling&allen]

Most of the early greats (Hoppe, Greenleaf, Mosconi) had access to tables and competition as children because their dad owned a pool hall.

 

[fastone371]

Playing a lot of pool is a main factor in proficiency.

Home tables do benefit one's game, but it isn't all positives...I feel I have gotten soft in many ways, playing almost exclusively at home. I have my music, my equipment, my bathroom, my soap and paper towels, etc...

I am not sure how to define the experience, but when I go play elsewhere i often have a shit time, dealing with substandard equipment, people I don't want to interact with, no paper towels in the disgusting bathroom, keeping one eye out for myself and my equipment...and paying for it.

One other advantage of playing at home is you control the volume of the music. One bar in particular that we shoot league at has the music so loud that you have to shout to the person next to you. Granted, Im not really a bar person but I always thought going to the bar was a social activity, how can you enjoy a "social activity" if the music is so loud that it is difficult to hear the people that you are trying to socialize with???

 

[Nikrnic]

The first thing my dad got when my parents bought their first house in 1959 was a new Brunswick Anniversary 9 footer. He still has it, bought it back years later from the people he sold that house to.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

 

[Geosnookery]

I’m 66. Before my early 20s I had never seen a billiard table in a house. In contrast, today I have a 12 foot snooker table and the 9 foot American style pool table that I can access any time..even in by pajamas. I might play 15 minutes or an hour...and play a variety of made up games, challenges, bang balls Around or whatever...good for the head.

I started playing at age 14 at a Canadian military officers mess. Fortunately my best friend‘s father was a general. Otherwise I never would’ve entered an officers mess until many years later when I was an officer in the military myself.

I play billiards because I enjoy it for the moment and not ‘to practice’ to one day win the world championship in snooker. My friends and I play billiards at each others homes. It’s fun to play on avariety of tables. Fortunately, all of which are in good shape. We all also play in local leagues and are much better from having home tables and being able ‘to mess around’ with fun shots

Players today are much better than those of 50 years ago. This is largely because of access to tables at an early age and being able to Play as much as one wants on a home table. I would confidently compete against a top Snooker play of 50 years ago. In contrast today I ‘might’ win 1 out of 10 games.

I never play in a bar. I don’t drink and don’t like annoying music, TVs, etc. Our leagues play is in a Legion, a Community center and a nice pool hall.

 

[Wybrook]

Playing a lot of pool is a main factor in proficiency.

Home tables do benefit one's game, but it isn't all positives...I feel I have gotten soft in many ways, playing almost exclusively at home. I have my music, my equipment, my bathroom, my soap and paper towels, etc...

I am not sure how to define the experience, but when I go play elsewhere i often have a shit time, dealing with substandard equipment, people I don't want to interact with, no paper towels in the disgusting bathroom, keeping one eye out for myself and my equipment...and paying for it.

I totally get it..
I have perfect conditons at home and all the other modern conveniences, with no idiots around to spoil my fun.

 

[cjr3559]

I have the understanding that Brunswick Corp made a big push in the 1960s towards home table sales since the average middle class family was buying larger homes and had more space and expendable income than previous generations.

 

[kling&allen]

Brunswick had a first push for home table sales starting in the 1910s. The Bensingers and the later CEOs all were desperate to rebrand pool as a family game (stupidly as it turned out, given what happened after the Hustler movie). Lots of its early marketing was about keeping your kids and husband at home (away from the pool hall). Here is an example from 1930:

And here's another showing a wife keeping tabs on her husband and his friends.

 

[philly]

Playing a lot of pool is a main factor in proficiency.

Home tables do benefit one's game, but it isn't all positives...I feel I have gotten soft in many ways, playing almost exclusively at home. I have my music, my equipment, my bathroom, my soap and paper towels, etc...

I am not sure how to define the experience, but when I go play elsewhere i often have a shit time, dealing with substandard equipment, people I don't want to interact with, no paper towels in the disgusting bathroom, keeping one eye out for myself and my equipment...and paying for it.

There is no substitute for hitting a million balls.
Home tables afford that luxury be it at 10 in the morning or 3 in the morning or both.

 

[hang-the-9]

Most of the early greats (Hoppe, Greenleaf, Mosconi) had access to tables and competition as children because their dad owned a pool hall.

A lot of the younger kids that compete at Jr Nationals also played because their parents owned or worked at a pool hall.

 

[Black-Balled]

I totally get it..
I have perfect conditons at home and all the other modern conveniences, with no idiots around to spoil my fun.

There's only one asshole at my home pool room!

 

[Dan_B]

a mans' gotta know his lamentation's...

 

[livemusic]

One other advantage of playing at home is you control the volume of the music. One bar in particular that we shoot league at has the music so loud that you have to shout to the person next to you. Granted, Im not really a bar person but I always thought going to the bar was a social activity, how can you enjoy a "social activity" if the music is so loud that it is difficult to hear the people that you are trying to socialize with???

Yep, that sucks. And I am a musician and I like loud music sometimes but not when conversations are in order.

 

[Geosnookery]

1967. The year before I ever picked up a snooker cue. If only I had one of these...I’d have got a jump start and become world champion...maybe. Those happy kids! My brothers and I would have been poking each other with the sharp end of the sick.

 

[mikemosconi]

Most of the early greats (Hoppe, Greenleaf, Mosconi) had access to tables and competition as children because their dad owned a pool hall.

Add many more to this list- Mike Zuglan, Mizerak, Jean Baulkas, Lou Butera, Babe Cranfield and many , many more had access to pool room owning parents, or had very early access to pool training, like Ralf Soquet, for many sports early access to devoted parent(s); and some high level early experience equals greatness, it has nothing to do with just having a home pool table for the most part.