worn cloth

[JakeDaSnake]

Hey guys, so just out of curiosity, how much does the condition of the cloth and balls actually effect play? The cloth in my school's rec room is pretty worn, with a few small tears and is actually sort of loose-fitting. It is also LOADED with chalk. Same goes for the balls, being pretty dirty. It seems like the effects of draw are greatly diminished. Am I right or is it just me? Also, when I play at Shooters billiards near my house, which is a pretty nice place, I cant tell if the cloth is really bad or really good. It looks faded where people break from, but it is very smooth and almost thin/shiny/plastic looking. What do ya think?
Jake

 

[cowboyup200560]

Cloth

The dirty cloth at the rec room is definetly a hinderance to the way the the table plays. Those little tears and the looseness can really mess up your english. Same goes for the condition of the balls.

As for the cloth at shooters, the cloth you describe to me should play better. it is faster an more true to the playing surface, therefor naking the table play better.

JMHO

 

[claymont]

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bump

 

[CreeDo]

The scorch marks along the break tracks are normal and will show up even on good cloth. But holes and looseness are the result of someone not having enough money or enough care to replace their cloth when they should. I would encourage them to get it redone and see if they can find a better installer who stretches it nice and tight.

As for the rest, is your main complaint that your draw seems to be going nowhere? It could be the cloth but I find that draw works fine on dirty old cloth. Well... actually there's sort of two parts to how far the ball rolls in a draw shot. The initial high-speed backspin does most of the work and gets the ball moving X feet. After half a second, that spin wears off and the rest of the ball's travel (from a few inches to a few feet) are all natural roll.

On dirty cloth, that natural roll (whether it was originally caused by draw, or follow, or just by getting bumped) will slow down to a stop a bit earlier than on clean cloth.

The other thing of course is it could be user error. Do you have access to nice tables with clean cloth? Can you draw 100% consistently on those?

Also worth mentioning is if it's a bar box, you may be dealing with the effects of a weighted cue ball. It's a bear to draw when the cue ball is heavier than the object balls.