Richard Iachetta wrote:
> barenada says...
>> ...And don't even get me started on half-ball hits making 90%
>> of bank shots - it's like voodoo or something.

> Feel free to get started if you want. That sounds like a very
> interesting subject. Are you saying half ball hit most bank
> shots and control the rest with speed and english?

I'm still trying to figure this out myself, but of course I've got theories and (of course) I'm prepared to ramble on (and on) about them.

There seem to be 3 main categories of bank shots. One is a nearly natural shot where you hit the object ball close to head on. Another type requires a very thin hit. The third category is made up of shots needing a nearly half-ball hit.

The first category can usually be seen pretty well. The second category is usually the realm of one-pocket players and I'm not very good at them. The third category is the one that's freaking me out.

In one of Burt's tapes he keeps saying "Cue tip, thru the center of the cue-ball, to the outside edge of the object ball." Translated into regular speech patterns this becomes "No English and a half-ball hit."

After watching Burt make 100 or so bank shots, all the while repeating his mantra "Cue tip, thru the center of the cue-ball, to the outside edge of the object ball" I went downstairs and hit some banks. Anything that looked like it would require a nearly half-ball hit I just shot with no english and exactly a half-ball hit. The damn balls just kept banking in. It almost looked like I knew what I was doing. I remember telling myself that I wish I could bank like this in real life.

I think what's happening is that by taking contact point and english out of the list of variables you're only left with shot speed. Of course shot speed plays a very big part in determining the angle the OB takes off the rail, so you've still got a lot of potential paths for the OB to take off that rail. Eliminating the options for english and contact point does not have to stop the shot from going - as long as the "proper" contact is somewhere near a half-ball hit, then an actual half-ball hit, with the proper speed, can still make the shot.

The voodoo part, for me, is how effortless my banks have become. I put the OB on the footspot, the cue-ball on the head spot, and whack a half-ball hit at the right side of the OB. The OB banks back up into the left corner. I set up the same shot, but with the cue-ball two feet to the right this time, and a half-ball hit still puts the damn OB into the same corner. Obviously I'm varying my speed a lot between these two shots, since the english and the contact points are constant, but I'm completely unaware of making this adjustment.

A shot I've always had trouble with is this: Put the OB near the side rail, down-table a bit from the side pocket, and put the CB near the head spot. Try to cross over the OB and bank it into the opposite corner. I was about 25% on these shots until I started hitting them half-ball with no english. I'm probably about 70% on them now. I'm starting to look like a one-pocket player or something. Damndest thing I ever saw.

I know that a half-ball hit can produce the most throw, and that the collision speed also effects the amount of throw. Balls hit hard into a rail rebound at a greater angle than balls hit softly into a rail. So a softer half-ball hit will throw a lot, resulting in an apparent fuller hit, and open up the rebound angle, while a harder hit will result in an apparent thinner hit and a more closed rebound angle. You get an awful lot of leeway on a half-ball hit just by varying the speed.

Burt said himself that he didn't know why it worked as well as it did. I sure don't know either but it allows me to bank shots that I've never been comfortable with before. In the words of C.J. Wiley - "Hey, it works for me." And in the words of someone else - "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Tom Simpson wrote:
> The best method I've found for this is to focus exclusively
> on the intended RESULT and shoot without hesitation -- faster
> rhythm. It works, but my MP side doesn't trust it. ;^)

The ego wants to take credit for any good thing you do. It has a hard time being stuck in the back seat. When a FP is shooting well the ego is constantly interrupting with "Quite a little run here, huh? Better let me take over so we can keep it going." And after a miss it's "See! I told you! You can't shoot without me. If you had paid more attention to that shot you'd still be shooting."

Every shot that works, the ego claims as its own personal victory, and every miss gets blamed on the body. More mechanical players almost never assign misses to miscalculations. Instead the blame is shifted to the physical side. Too hard, poor stroke, improper alignment, etc. Always trying to claim the credit or shift the blame - quite a little politician, that ego.

Well this is a topic that can really get me going. I'm afraid this will be a long post.

As a hardcore feel player (is that an oxymoron?) I can tell you that my game is either really on or really off. Wihout consistent mechanical elements there is much more reliance on proper and consistent mental state - and that's something both types of players have problems with. In the event of an attitude breakdown, a more mechanical (I don't like that term, sounds robotic and uncaring) player at least has sound fundamentals to prevent too much slipping in his/her game. A feel player without the proper mental state may as well have stayed home. On the other hand, I often break and run a rack of 9-ball in under 30 seconds - I sometimes even string 2 or 3 together like that - and when that happens I feel exhilarated. I would imagine that the more mechanical players would take 5 minutes and feel mentally exhausted at that point.

I'm extremely interested in how things work on the table and why. I buy books and tapes study and them for any new insights or pointers. Even thought I don't usually think about this information while I'm playing I'm sure it's still there waiting to be useful. Imagine a feel player's game as a car going down the road. The body is the driver and the mind is sitting in the back seat giving directions. Sometimes the mind can be very helpful and the body takes the advice, but other times the mind turns into your mother-in-law and gets you lost.

The proper balance between mind and body for a feel player can be an elusive thing, but when that balance is there it's awful hard for a player to miss. Watch a good feel player when they're well balanced. When they do miss they get the most amazed look on their face. If Bustamante ever misses watch him - I'm sure he'll look amazed. More mechanical players, upon missing, aren't nearly as surprised - after all it could have been a hard shot, with lots of throw and squirt to contend with. In their minds they're already justifying the miss and trying to isolate the cause. A mechanical player will replay the shot in their mind, filing away all they can remember about the angle, speed, spin, etc in hopes of using that information the next time a similar shot comes up. A feel player will will just go "Hmmm. Overcut that ball. That was weird" and that's about it. Then the next time the feel player faces a similar shot, the mind will say something like "Don't cut this one so much", and the body takes it from there.

When any of my students (that's too formal - maybe protoge would be better, but I don't know how to spell it) reaches a point where they're sound mechanically but lacking consistency I give them a stack of photocopied pages from my various pool books with descriptions of throw, swell, and cling. I also throw in pages from Jack Koelher's book - the ones talking about margin of error on shots of varying length. Ron Shepard's excellent Pool Physics paper is added into the mix. Once I've given my student a feel for the multitude of factors that all need to be accounted for in making any given shot work, I point out even commiting all that information to memory is only part of the battle. You still need to make allowances for the speed of the table, condition of the balls, the levelness of the table and, depending on how picky you want to get, things like humidity, temperature, and the cue tip thickness can all contribute to the dozens (hundreds?) of things that need to go right for any particular shot.

So say you've got access to all this information - and a Cray supercomputer to perform your calculations for you - so now you know with absolute certainty where to hit the cue-ball, what direction to hit it in, and what speed to use to make the shot work. This information is still just another part of the battle. Now you've got to get your body to execute the shot perfectly. I don't know about you guys, but my body movements are just not that controllable.

So without access to a Cray you can't figure out how to shoot the shot. And without perfect body control you couldn't hit the exact spot anyway, so the questions becomes "What the fuck are you aiming at?" At this point I introduce my students to the be the ball, may the force be with you, Obi-wan Mosconi style of play. Some people, in all honesty, decide at that point that I'm a crackpot and look elsewhere for instruction. Others take my advice and invariably move there game up a notch or two. - and enjoy themselves more because it's not as mentally taxing to play by feel.

But I ramble.

The point I'm trying to make here is that all players - even the most mechanical ones (I have one in mind but she's got a lot of fans and I don't want to offend anyone) - have to play at least partly by feel. And if you're willing to give up any part of your game to feel, why not at least try the next logical step and give your entire physical game to the right side of your brain, and leave the left side in the back seat for a while? Remember, feel players do not stop thinking about what they're doing. They just have more separation between the conscious, analytical parts of their game and the physical part of their game. A mechanical player will consciously think about things like what tip placement will get my cue-ball to a certain point for a next shot. A feel player will just trust their body to move the cue-ball correctly. It's a beautiful thing when it works.

> while the FP's are held back by carelessness and too little
> knowledge.

I'd say that that statement is half true. Lack of knowledge is not what's holding me back. Carelessness is one of those words with too many meanings, but caring about each shot is definitely a problem for me at times.

Tom Simpson wrote:
> This is not stance. This is shooting with a shaft that has a
> pivot point around where his bridge is, and not
> understanding what that means. You might want to check Deja
> on this.

Thanks, Tom. I understand that what Burt's doing is very similar to the latest squirt test. I brought it up because the original poster mentioned that Burt's tape said that one of the main goals of a proper stance was to allow for a perfectly straight stroke with no "steering". I also brought it up because my Schon has a pivot point of 14" and my bridge is between 6" and 8" - but using this steering method still works very well for me. Even with my normal bridge in front of the pivot point the deflection is reduced enough to allow me to play these shots the way I like them - by feel, without having to estimate the deflection and curve, if any.

All of the points you made about various body parts being in alignment are correct and right out of the book(s). In my own personal experience, however, paying attention to where things like your chin and nose are in relation to your foot and elbow, while also trying to pay attention to the shot-at-hand, can be counter-productive.

I know there are probably a lot more good players with "correct" stances than there are players like me with a more casual interpretation of a proper stance so IMHO IMHO IMHO.

If 100 people respond to your questions you'll probably get 100 different answers. Here are the general guidelines that I use:

1. Be comfortable. You need to be able to get in and out of the stance for hours if necessary. For example I can't have my left arm locked straight for very long without tension appearing in that elbow - so I keep it as straight as I can without locking it.

2. Have freedom of movement in your grip hand and arm. Whether you're pushing/pulling the cue during the stroke or just letting gravity do most of the work is not nearly as important, IMO, as making sure that your own body doesn't interfere with your cue's motion. I, for example, cannot play for any length of time with my head way down like a snooker player - it just causes too much tension in my right shoulder after a while.

3. Have your head over the cue and your eyes level wth the table. A lot of people will talk about finding your dominate eye then having that directly over the shot, but I've found that for me the proper position is with the right side of my nose over the cue. The main thing here is to be consistent. Shoot some long straight shots without paying attention to your alignment. When you've got the shot locked in pretty well have someone look at you and tell you what part of your head is directly over the cue.

4. Be balanced. I like to have my weight evenly distributed between both legs, so I end up bending both knees slightly instead of, say, bending my left knee and leaning forward from my straight right leg. I could jump straight in the air from my stance. Some people prefer a different weight distribution. I don't have hardly any weight on my bridge hand - just enough to keep it on the table.

5. Stand close enough to the cue-ball that you can follow-through without inducing any stress into your grip arm.

I do think that having your torso perpendicular to the line of the shot is a bad idea since that would make you lean over to the side to get your head over the stick, and then you'd have to crick our neck the other way to get your eyes level. But hey, I've seen some pretty good players with stances a lot stranger than that. Regarding Burt's advice, in The Deflection Tape he changes his tune a little bit about steering the stick. I'm still trying to figure out how it works at all - let alone as well as it does. And don't even get me started on half-ball hits making 90% of bank shots - it's like voodoo or something.

LePheaux wrote:
> Foxx led in with>
> I play a dead stroke game of 9-ball your supposed to say, ya
> dead stroke fer sure , so dead I can smell the stink from here.
> were gonna have to work on this a bit Dave, when I do the set
> up, you step up

Trashing someone's game just for trashing's sake has never been my style. I have to assume that they're always trying their best. Why take a chance that they'll be offended by my joking remarks? Well, there's actually one guy in Kent that needs the trash talk to keep his ego somewhat in synch with his abilities. So I'm constantly teliing him things like Helen Keller says she'll give him the 8 but the 7 is too much so stop asking. Or (referring to his $1500 custom cue) that I saw his cue was on sale at KMart. Or my jack-handle broke can I borrow his cue for a minute.

With anyone else about as far as I'll go is something like this: You shoot a ball in the corner, using high-right to move Whitey around the table three rails to break up a cluster. It's a beautiful stroke, but you miss the cluster by 2mm. "Most people would have tried to break that out", I'll say, or "Do you need a do-over?" Things like that are obviously well-intentioned.

You and I can (obviously) disagree on several things and debate them with varying levels of intensity, but we don't know each other well enough to start trashing each other's game when we're not even at the table, IMO.

Ken Bour wrote...
> Ahhhhh, another proponent of cueball last aiming.

...because I had written:
> I've found that when I'm shooting my best I focus on the
> cue-ball. My eyes hardly ever leave the cue-ball from the time
> I shoot a shot until I get ready for the next shot.

Actually once the cueball stops moving I shift my focus to the object ball and the line of the next shot. I confirm my tip placement by just flicking my eyes down to the cue-ball a few times, but from the time Whitey stops moving until I hit the next shot my focus is on the object ball.

On break shots I do just the opposite - I look mainly at the cue-ball and just flick my eyes up to the rack to verify my alignment. On the actual break stroke I'm staring a hole in the cue-ball. I need to do this on the break because otherwise I have a hard time hitting the cue-ball correctly on such a hard stroke.

LePheaux wrote:
> I went through a winning streak at the beginning of that 9-ball
> session, and was expecting to go up. didn't happen. I also went
> into a loosing streak lost 6 out of seven matches and it didn't
> go down. oh well.

I really can't help you with the 9-ball system, as I know nothing about it except that I don't think it should be called 9-ball when the main goal of the game has shifted from making the 9 to ball count.

> I would like to think that a LO , would go by the books and
> wait to see what the #'s are before setting an average.

They do go by the books - the League Operator Manual and the franchise agreement. The handicap system is more than a series of equations where you plug numbers into a computer and out pops a skill level. Things like handicap review boards and yes, LO evaluation are an integral part of the system and one of the best ways to prevent handicap manipulation.

I'm sure there are less-then-honest LOs out there who play favorites. In fact I seem to remember hearing about an LO who was threatened with losing his franchise over it. I think you are quite lucky to live in an area with a LO like Gene.

Do me a favor, Rick, and try to put yourself into an honest player's shoes for a second. Imagine you're a 6 playing a lower-rated player, and after your match you feel that your opponent was under-rated. You bring your concerns to the LO. What would you rather hear at that point - That the scores are the scores and that's it, or that the LO will look into it and determine if your concerns have any merit. Take away the League Operator's ability to adjust inappropriate skill levels and you give the sandbaggers a free rein.

> his job is to be UN-BIASED.

Assigning a skill level that he thought you deserved is not being biased. If he had assigned you a level he knew was either too high or too low, due to some altruistic or antagonistic feelings towards you as a person, then that would be biased. It sounds to me like your initial skill level was pretty close to the mark since you say it remained constant throughout the session. I guarantee that you were not locked into your initial rating. If your play had improved or degraded enough then your skill level would have shifted accordingly.

> I go with black and white, the actual #'s of the score sheet.
> To decide a persons average otherwise is dis-honest. cut and
> dried.

I'm sorry, did you just say that using anything other than the scoresheet numbers is dishonest? Aren't you the same person that recently admitted sandbagging to put false numbers on the scoresheet?

> some times I would start a season out as a 10, and loose a game,
> once ya go down from a 10, it's almost mathematically impossible
> to go back up do to the win lose system.

I had the same thing happen to me a couple of times, and it's true - it's really hard to go back up. Is this supposed to be a good thing? I imagine a guy who's a legitimate high 9 in BCA. He starts out as a 10, loses a couple games, then drops to a 9. Now he goes out and gets lessons, plays tournaments, whatever, and improves his game to the point where he's now a legitimate 10-level player. Because of the way this and similiar systems calculate the ratings this guy gets to play under-rated for the rest of the season - and you can't even call him a sandbagger UNLESS he dumped those early games on purpose (and we both know that never happens, right?)

> and there's no runaways because the other teams are in the same
> division are loading up there teams as well.

This works as long as you stay local. Will you at least admit that a team of 9's and 10's from, say, Maplewood Indiana, would probably get their hats handed to them by a team of 9's and 10's from Chicago? The win/loss systems do not give any indication of any given player's ability to play - just their ability to win against other players from their own division/city.

> I personally think in the long run the APA will graft ideas from
> other leagues and vice a versa.

There will (not) be a perfect handicapping system in any sport as long as there are people out there willing and able to sandbag. Well this thread has turned into quite the Rick and Dave show, hasn't it?

Mountain Mike^^ wrote:
> Dave, is it a fact that *innings* are the only criteria for your
> SL? For example, if a guy loses every match, but only takes 2
> innings per game, does his SL go down? What's the reasoning,
> please?

A few years ago I got into some legal troubles for being way too specific on how the system worked, and I'm not going to risk that again, but I think I can be vague enough to answer your questions and still keep the lawyers away.

In your example, if a player ends up with a 2 innings per game match for the night - whether he won 1 game in 2 total innings, 3 games in six total innings, or whatever, that's still shooting pretty good. It really doesn't matter how many games his opponent won, or who won the actual match. Our hypothetical player won, on average, every second or third trip to the table. If his opponent just happened to win, on average, every first trip to the table that takes nothing away from the fact that the first guy still shot pretty good.

Now this can be a bad thing at times. Several years ago I played against a 2, so it was a 7-2 race. I broke and ran the first 6 games, then made an early 8 in game 7. In game 8 my opponent didn't make anything on the break, and I ran out. While my 7-in-1-inning score did not affect my rating snce I was already a 7, that 1-in-1-inning score haunted that poor 2 for her next 19 matches. In fact she went up to a three because of that match. Some L.O.s will correct fluke scores like this to help eliminate this type of problem, but it's not required, and the L.O. in Omaha at the time did not do it.

Win/Loss is not a big factor in APA - it's mainly used to help prevent sandbagging, and I'm not going to get into how it's used.

The best, but not necessarily the easiest thing to do is just play and not worry about the handicap system. One thing that happens as a result of people like our friend Rick is that legitimate and honest players begin to fear they may be mistakenly over-rated, and that can naturally start people questioning the system and its reputed fairness.

Hope this helps.

LePheaux wrote:
> So your saying your a 6.

If I hadn't been frozen into being a 7 for the past 10 years, then yes, I'd say I'd probably have been rated a 6 when we met since I was at the tail end of a two-year funk.

> one good night or one bad night and blah, your rating is fixed
> for fucking ever doesen't go up or down,

Unless you've been frozen at a skill level your skill level can go down. There are several ways to get frozen. Unless you're a 7 your skill level can always go up as you either improve or stop sandbagging.

> what kinda cliquish shit is that all about, it god damn sure
> isn't the way an average is supposed to be obtaind.

It is the League Operator's right and responsibility to assign appropriate skill levels to skilled players, either as they enter the league, or as it becomes apparent that their current level is too low. Some L.O.s are more diligent at this than others.

> Nothing special there dave, I was called a sandbagger before the
> fact. so I didn't want to make Gene, and Kim and all your good
> buddies out to be liers.

Yes, I'm friends with Gene the L.O. You'll never meet a more honest and straightforward man. I don't know Kim nearly as well, but she's always struck me as honest as well. Both of them play at a strong 6 level and are more than capable of telling when somebody is dumping innings on purpose. Unless you showed them some speed I didn't see I can't imagine either of them thinking that YOU were a 7 sandbagging down to a 6. Your team-mates I don't know so I can't speak about them.

> Hell ya, I took three people who didn't have a snowballs chance
> in Miami. of ever going to the end, and showed them how winning
> feels.,

You showed them how cheating to win feels. You showed them how their team captain didn't think they head a legitimate chance to do anything.

> now now dave, it's nice to see your still such a staunch
> supporter of the APA. even after your shafting and all.

Funny, I don't ever recall being shafted regarding league play. I played that league for almost 10 years, and enjoyed all but my last session. Any shafting that took place was in the business side of things.

> But there are no monies in that goofy play off. just a little
> bitty trophey.

I'm not sure what kind of playoff money Gene's giving out these days. I do know that a large amount goes to paying teams' way to Vegas.

> by the way, when the sniveling little shit that lost to brian,
> wanted to see his ID. (Like i was able to pull one of my old
> aquantances from Florida all the way to Seattle to play in a
> league,ya right) That was it, in all the years of league play
> i have never ever been asked or even heard of someone being
> asked for an ID.

It's right in the APA rule book - you need an ID. And unless the laws in WA have been relaxed quite a bit since I left you also need an ID to even be in a bar there.

> were talking about a match previously played prior to the
> playoffs.

So you had warning that you'd need this guy to produce an ID before the playoffs, and you chose to ignore that warning. Then it bit you in the ass. Want some cheese to go with that?

> call me or my team sandbaggers before it happens, then they should
> expect it to happen.

Good thing nobody accused you of being a bunch of funloving, honest people, then you wouldn't have had any excuse to cheat.

> call me an asshole , well when provoked, I can be one major
> sphincter. Personally Dave I like you, and respect your pool
> playing abilities, and your opinions.

Well some of my best friends are assholes, just honest ones. I can also be turned away from my usual easy-going personality, and bringing up sandbagging is an easy way to do it. I really doubt that your posts are a good indication of your overall personality since I'm usually pretty good at first impressions, and my first impressions of you were positive.

Frankly I just don't understand this 'win at any cost' mentality. The second I found out that 7 was the highest skill level in the APA (then Busch) league, I knew that's what I wanted to be - a 7. Some people feel they'll have more fun if they can keep their rating down - and therefore win more matches. My theory has always been that if I could only play good enough, they could rate me a 17 and I'd still win. I'd much rather be a 7 with a 90% winning percentage than a 5 with a 100 percentage - especially if I had to be dishonest to stay at a 5.

> but the way Gene runs the APA here it is not Honest. so the direct
> insults you bear unto me should be redirected towards Geno.

I defy you or anyone else to give me any example where Gene has been dishonest - in running the league, playing, or in life in general.

> I did not start the feud, I only did what they accused me of
> before it happened.

Inner-city minorities have been using this excuse for decades in lame attempts to shift the blame for their crimes to someone else.

> and alas it would not happen at all if the average system was set
> up on a win loss record instead of an inning system.

I'd be happy to compare different handicapping systems with you. I've long thought that the APA's system, based on average innings per game, was pretty clever, and potentially quite fair. The problem with systems based on win/loss records is that each division/league/area has it own average level of ability. For example you could be a BCA "9" from a weaker area but if you moved into a stronger area you might only be able to hold a "7" rating. With an innings/game system it doesn't matter how strong your area is. A "6" in a weak area has roughly the same skills as a "6" form a strong area. Since the APA maintains its handicapping throughout the playoffs all the way to the National level tournaments, a straight win/loss system just wouldn't work - Teams from the stronger areas like Florida and Illinois would eat the weaker areas' teams for lunch. So what happens is that the win/loss based leagues like the BCA have to toss out their handicapping at the national level tournaments - which is only great if you're a strong team.

Well, I've gone off on another rant. I'd still like to grab some beers next time I'm up that way. Let's just agree not to throw them in each other's faces.