Inspired by darts thread, really. I used to play pretty seriously, putting in 3-4 good hours every day. I'm still pretty decent, though my playing time has decreased significantly. I was really pretty good at 9-ball, but played 8 and straight as well. I never really got into snooker though. Awesome sport is awesome because anyone can play and tables are basically everywhere. You can play with people or by yourself, and really don't even need super duper equipment. I used to set up the second shot all the time in college, it was great with the ladies [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN6dhpUMVTc"]YouTube - 6 Amazing Pool Trick Shots by Mike Massey[/ame]
Mike Massey is always a pleasure. I played straight pool a lot during my senior year in college. The cafe we all frequented in the afternoons had a few tables and we started playing. It's a great game.
I used to be alright at pool, but haven't played in a while. What was really weird was in India they didn't play 8-ball or 9-ball, but snooker, a game that completely confounded me. Also I learned from Donald Duck in Mathmagicland that there is a version of billiards without pockets.
ah yes, played just last night as a matter of fact. i think i've posted before that i play in the APA (American Pool-players Association), which is one of the two big ones in the states. last year our 9 ball team won regionals and we went to Vegas for free to play in the national tourney. we're qualified for regionals in 9 ball again this year, but this session hopefully we qualify for 8 ball as well. got a cash tournament coming up in March, which should be fun, we got 2nd in last years. i've gotten soooo much better over the last few years that i've been playing consistently, and last session i made some huge improvements to my game. i'm shoot the best pool of my life these days and feels good man. ALMOST got a break and run in 8 ball last night. i was so close. ran all the way down to one ball and the 8 left, but they were locked up on each other, and i couldn't quite drop the last one. so i beat him the next turn. <3 EDIT: also, never really been that impressed by trick shots. i mean, come one, you set that shit up yourself. it's just sophisticated dominoes.
I think I read about the Vegas trip, awesome job I've never really joined a league/team, pool just isn't huge wherever I go. When I lived in Muskegon there was a pretty decent following and a couple leagues here and there but I wasn't old or good enough. By the time I started shooting seriously I'd moved away and there was NOTHING at school. It was kind of a shame. They have a great activity center with about 8 tables that get resurfaced yearly, but i was regularly the only person in the room. Running the table is hard as fuck. I've come close (1 or 2 left) but never gone all the way.
if you haven't been approached by a league operator by now, there probably isn't one around you. though, call your local Moose lodge. they usually have tables, and they're a perfect fit with APA. the great thing about the APA is that it's a weighted system. you don't have to be the best to have a chance to win. in 9 ball the skill levels go 1-9, one being "can barely hit two balls together" and nine being "OMGWTFBBQ". every match, things like innings, time outs, defensive shots, et cetera are kept track of, and the score sheets are fed into a computer program weekly, which then spits out your rank. it's not a perfect system, but it's pretty good. in 9 ball your rank decides how many points you need to get before your opponent gets their number of points. as a four, i have to get 31 points to win. if i was playing a two, they would need 19 points before i got my 31. if i was playing a nine, they'd have to get 75 points to beat me. each ball is worth one point, and the nine is worth two, and you just keep racking a cracking until someone gets their points. 8 ball is more straight forward. the ranks run 2-8, and you have to win a certain number of games to win the match. as a 3 in 8 ball, last night i had to win 2 games before the four i was playing won three games. there's some more rules too, but that's the basic gist. last session i was the best player on our team, so i was playing the opposing team's strongest players most of the time, and i found that i play MUCH better when playing someone better than me. i played mostly 6's and 7's, and i only lost 3 times all session, 2 of those by only a ball or two. this session we picked up a 6 and a 7, so i'll probably not see the higher ranked opponents this session, but it'll be good for me to hone my head-to-head skills, playing to the same level as i did last session against players that aren't better than me.
Playing someone who at least has a basic concept of strategy is way better than playing a slop guru. It takes away a lot of the junk you'll encounter, anyway. Playing with random drunks is the worst because the table becomes a mess and before you know it you've got to shoot through six balls of garbage just to sink your last one. I prefer a more civilized chaos
well of course. saturday night after church i was playing against this kid (maybe 16 or 17) that would just slam the shit out of every shot, and then couldn't believe his "luck" at hitting the 8 ball in out of turn like 3 times. he would also try and give me advice on what to shoot, and let me tell you, i had a really hard time not calling him a dumbass. like, he was telling me to shoot things that weren't physically possible. my tender retort was "physics disagrees with that shot". in APA trash counts, but it's not what people are looking for, you know? you're not going to win off of trash very often. another interesting rule is that every foul is a ball-in-hand foul, in 8 and 9. and since it's a foul if you don't touch your ball first (and then the cue or any other ball touches a rail), it's a ball in hand foul. this makes defensive playing extremely important.
Wow, that sounds harsh. But it sounds like it would make 8 ball way more interesting than a generic house rule session.
it seems radical, but once you start playing that way it's actually a lot more fun, because you REALLY don't want to give your opponent BiH, so you try your damndest every shot. and then consequently, playing defense is to try and put your opponent in a position that they can't make their next ball and hopefully they can't touch it either.
Played for my first time a few weeks ago at a Dave and Busters party, I wasn't bad at all. But i think i would feel awkward to walk into a Pool hall and play, maybe next time im at a bar or something i'll play again.
I played in a league last year, but I'm only mediocre. It was BCA, and I'm still not sure I know all the rules compared to straight 8. My skill level at any particular match depends on the skill level of my opponent. The worse the other person is, the worse I tend to play (unintentionally, of course.)
never played BCA, but i think the rules are almost identical to APA, with just a couple minor differences.
last week i almost got my first break-and-run. playing 8 ball i broke and got down to one ball left plus the 8, and my ball was almost completely locked up on the 8. i still almost made it, but not quite. my opponent shot and i proceeded to win that game in my next turn. i destroyed him. got pool tonight and i realized this week that this is the first time in the 3 years i've been playing APA that i'm actually looking forward too and excited to play. it's pretty cool. i also realized the other night that one of the big factors in my increased level of play is that my shooting has improved immensely over last year. my cue control et al is still a work in progress, but i'm to the point where if i get the ball reasonably close to where i want it, i can more often than not make my next shot. i'm more confident than ever and it's a good feeling.
Do you have your own hardware? I learned even a cheap cue will do wonders over a crappy bar stick. I also invested in a graphite cue just for breaking... its lightweight, but still packs a nice punch. Then a generic wooden cue for shooting. It's 21 oz, because I feel like I can control my form way better with a heavier stick. All my old friends swore by lighter cues to give them a quicker follow through (and better English) but I am way more comfortable feeling the extra five ounces.
yeah my stick is 190z, which i think is a good compromise. really though, the tip has more to do with it than anything else. well, not anything else, but the tip is enormously important. got a cash tournament coming up in march, and there's a guy there that sets up shop and re-tips peoples sticks. going to get him to slap a $20 tip on it, and it's going to be amazing. my uncle has a "cannon" for breakinf with. it's a 24oz break stick, which is weighted differently than a normal stick. last night i crushed my opponent in 8 ball again, but i didn't play 9 until later in the evening, and i was unfortunately a couple drinks past the "good" point for shooting pool. the biggest thing that happens to me at that point is i get easily distracted and can't get "in the zone" as easy, so i missed a lot of shots i should have made, but i brought it back to withing 5 balls at the end, making the loss more respectable as far as team points go, and we still crushed them as a whole. the way team points work in 9 ball, is there's 5 matches, and 20 points per match for 100 overall points up for grabs. depending on how close the game is, the score ranges from 20-0 (a skunk) to 12-8 (losing/winning by a ball or two). so i think i brought my loss from the 17-3 range into the 13-7 range, and overall our team score was 68-32, so it's all good.
Played doubles last night, put too much English on the 15 and sent it flying through a beer mug. First time I've knocked a playing-ball off the table. Won 2/3 though, our team playing straight up while giving them slop.
Bca player here. Been shooting in the league for about 6 years. Talentwise, I'm somewhere in the middle of the pack of our league.
i have a beautiful brand new table on my sky lounge. i like to play once a week or so. also i used to go to the place black widow practiced/played. she's the shit.
Not sure what you mean by ranking. The scoring is on a 15 point basis, points being awarded on number of balls sank.
i guess BCA has a completely different scoring system than APA, which isn't surprising. in APA, a bunch of different stats are kept track of and fed into a program each week, which then determines your skill level. i'm a 3 in 8 and a 4 in 9, just about in the middle of the pack.
Oh, your refering to the handicap. In 8, i'm currently a 6.6 out of 15. Our top shooters are in the high 10's, low 11's. It is basically an average of how many balls you sink per rack. If I break and run, leaving the other dude with seven on the table, I get a 15 and he gets a 0. I don't play in a 9 leage, and don't know how the BCS scoring is done for it.
oh ok, gotcha. in APA 9 is scored with each ball worth a point and the 9 worth 2, 10 points total per game, and the match lasts until you get the number of points you need to win depending on your rank. in 8, it's just a handicap of games. the higher the rank, the more games you have to win, and winning the game is all that matters, not balls made or left on the table.
playing in the Regionals for the trip to Vegas on wed/thur/fri and hopefully saturday morning. time to turn things up another notch.
We've got a pool table at work and I play two or three games a day. I'd say I'm well above average in terms of ability, but there are some real fucking cunts at work who can still destroy me. Does that count?
sure! how are you with your cue control? i can make some hard shots, but getting where i need to be for my next shot is still what i'm working on. we lost in the Vegas tournament. next year. i shot fucking great monday night too. destroyed a 5 in 8ball (i'm a 3) and then i had to play a 1 in 9ball (i'm a 4). playing 1's is fucking awful, because they have to get so few points that if they make a couple balls a rack, you're going to lose. i got to 31 and she only got 6 balls, because i played defense when i couldn't get to me second shot. that's a 17-3 team win and it enabled us to split overall that night (50/50 out of 100 team points), because a couple of my other teamates got crushed themselves.
I've always enjoyed pool. There was a pool hall three blocks from my house when I was growing up, and they allowed kids to come. I would go by myself when I was 11-12 and shoot for an hour or two--tables were like a buck an hour. I even got a few lessons from a guy to learn basic cue form, some ball strategy and a bit of English technique. Then we moved to a small town and I didn't play for about three years. I got so rusty that when a youth place finally opened with a pool table, local yahoos would beat me with the most fucked-up looking grips and the basic "search and destroy" approach. Pissed me off. But I couldn't practice there, either, since the joint was only open a few hours, there was only one table, and it was 50 cents a play. Reading the thread makes me realize I know nothing about the sport past your basic "stripes/solids/sink the 8 ball last" kind of game play.
I can make some pretty difficult shots, but I'm not so great at positioning the white for my next shot. I've done it well a few times, but I don't really bother trying often enough to get better at it. That's probably a bit more serious than I'll ever want to be, given that I only play at work.
yeah putting the ball where you want it for the next shot is what i meant by cue control. man, last night i destroyed in 9 ball. almost beat this 5 so bad i would have gotten a Skunk patch for it. if he had only made 7 balls instead of 8. feelsgoodman.jpg
I can make difficult shots, but I can't make straight-in shots...especially if it's all the way down the table.
Argh, I struggle so much with those. If the white ball is sitting by a corner pocket and one of my balls is sitting by the opposite corner pocket, I'll always manage to fuck it up. Always.
practice practice practice! one exercise i do when i'm by myself is put four balls in a diamond with the front ball on the dot you rack from, then you break and try to make all four in without missing a shot. it's difficult at first, but it really helps you work on your gameplan and forward-thinking skills. don't break very hard at first, so that all the balls are near each other to make it easier on yourself.
fair enough. i've been playing APA for 5 years, and didn't really start getting any better until a couple years ago, and have made decent strides the last year.
so with the money i got for my birthday, plus some i added to it, i invested in a NICE cue. it's a Jacoby that was originally $500, and i got it for $250. then i got a new tip put on it for $30. i LOVE it. feelsgoodman.jpg
http://www.olhausenbilliards.com/BYOT.php?tableID=013-240-41080-100-7QA I want to buy this really badly. Need someone to put it, oh and more money...
Really want to start APA play as well. Been playing fairly consistently with my friends for the past few years. Follow all APA rules and whatnot. Recently two guys approached us who were playing on a table next to us and asked where we play out of (for APA), told them we didn't play competitively. Played a few games and absolutely housed them, they were each ranked as 4s for 8-ball.
I have a gigantic pipe and I intend to smoke it and play pool as soon as I get this table. Honestly I may just take the plunge and buy this thing, I've got the money for it. I wanted to wait until I've got my own house with proper space/decor for something like this but at the same time I want to be able to practice whenever I want on an amazing table right now.
