Every player uses some kind of pre-shot routine for every shot. For some players, it is as short as a glance at the table, a bend down for the shot, a practice stroke (or two), and a strong forward thrust into the cue ball – no thought, no attention to detail. Continue reading
When you are on the “money” ball, are you suddenly smitten with uncertainty? Do you feel like the eyes of the world are watching and waiting for you to embarrass yourself? Does a spear of fear embed itself in your guts? Do any of these situations seem a bit familiar when you finally have a shot at the ball that can win the game, match, a million dollars and the “world’s greatest player” trophy? Continue reading
How do you know when your passion for pool as taken over your life? Here are a few indicators: Continue reading
One of the “problems” of loving the Green Game is that pool practice is necessary to fix problems and improve skills. Think of pool practice as similar to basketball practice. If you don’t spend time shooting balls and developing the moves to help get baskets – how can you expect to become a better basketball player? If you are playing “horse”, you will always lose. The same applies to playing pool. You have to get on the table and work on shots and setups. When you can make shots during pool practice, you can make shots during competitions with your buddies. Continue reading
Most of the time when you play casual matches; they are, at best, played as a matter of friendly competition or something to pass the time of day. In either case, the games and matches are rarely anything of importance or have anything of value at stake. Game wins and losses mean little to the players. Continue reading
Whenever you play competitive pool matches, you will once in a while find yourself on the losing side. When that happens, there are reactions. For some reason (certainly no fault of your own), you experienced this setback. Continue reading
The warm up process is designed to take you from an off-the-street condition to your ready-to-play condition. The process is a series of shots used to help find your groove, center, platform, etc. These shots dial in your feet positioning, weight distribution, arm/hand positions, bridge hand, head position; everything you need to set up for a shot. Continue reading
Over the long life of a pool table, there will be times when liquids get spilled on table beds due to carelessness. The liquids may be soda pop, coffee, tea, water, beer, or even (in rare circumstances) cat or dog elimination. Continue reading
It is important to be able to have an exact center line stroke and hit on the cue ball. If any fundamental is off, you can be hitting the cue ball to the side as much as 3/4 of a cue tip off the center line. That is almost guaranteed to miss all but the simplest of shots. Continue reading
When you come into a pool room you’ve never been in, you need a way to quickly figure out how the table rolls and whether the rails are in decent shape. You also need to know any roll offs and the slowest speed that will overcome the problem. Continue reading
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