It’s been a great summer, and a relatively mild winter. X-mas and New Years were fantastic! I’ve been absent from posting simply because, well, I was drawing a blank on a good idea for a new discussion. Thankfully, one of my readers helped me out with a great email question! I’d like to share his question with the rest of you, as well as my somewhat lengthy answer. It is in regard to how to learn to break an 8 ball rack successfully when you are playing pool on a coin operated table. Coin operated pool tables pose problems for the break shot that standard eight and nine foot pool tables do not. Lets get into the meat of this, shall we?

My reader, Roger, sends me this:

I started playing when I was 10 years old and got serious when I was 16 and was able to shoot at a pool hall. So my game
was straight pool 14-1. My highest run was 116 balls, now I am 50 and have been shooting pool leagues in the bar scene with a smaller table and a bigger cue ball. I lost my draw shot because of cue size and lack a decent 8 ball break. I could rule the league if I could improve my break shot. If I break from side the cue goes flying off table, if I break straight on I only get a ball in 25% of the time. I use a custom made palmer cue stick from 1973, 22 oz, can you suggest how I can get my game back with a decent 8 ball break. SOS 

I answered him thusly (I apologize for the odd formatting, but I copy/pasted this from my email, and I’d have to delete every carriage-return in order to square it away):
Hi Roger,
Happy New Year, and thank you for visiting Joboworld! I hope you’ve found
some value and entertainment within my site. It sounds like you have quite a
bit of talent and experience under your belt, Roger. I myself grew up
playing 8 ball, and was only introduced to straight pool much later. I found
it an awesome a...
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If I need a good pool table on a budget then I am going with Minnesota Fats pool tables. For one thing, you can find them just about anywhere. Another reason why it is a favorite of mine is because the 8 foot billiard comes with carved, solid wood legs, and the brand alone has many pool table sizes. No doubt about it, the Minnesota Fats 8 foot Lexington will always get my vote, hands down.

I do not need to look at a Minnesota Fats pool table review to know that this is the table for me. I play pool with my son daily. It gives me a chance to unwind and have a bit of fun before I go to bed. Playing on the Minnesota Fats pool table never gets old. First of all, this table is warp resistant which is something that can be hard to find in a good pool table. Another thing is that the price is unbeatable. I got mine for just under $900, which is a steal. The cues, the matching wall rack the ball rack and brush are just perfect.

I may not be a professional pool player, but I am the neighborhood champ and when the guys around the way play pool at my house, they always tell me how great my Minnesota Fats pool table is. Like I said before and I will say it again, the Lexington is incredible. When I first bought it and took it out of the box I could hardly believe how easy it was to assemble. The fit and the finish is great. The bed is nice and even which makes the balls roll just perfectly. It is a bit heavy – weighing 860 lbs., but it is just what a player like me could ever want.

Another Minnesota Fats pool table that I have had my eye on is the Minnesota Fats Vegas 8’ pool table. With 99.5 x 55 x 31” dimensions, this pool table is a beauty. It has a 5.75 inch rail width and a 1” slate height which makes playing a round of pool great fun. It is not one of those kinds of tables that doubles as a piece of furniture. It is a pool table plain and simple and if you enjoy the game like I do then the Vegas ...
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Too often a person’s living room or basement does not offer the type of activities and amenities needed to make an afternoon or evening enjoyable. It takes more than a television and a mini fridge to create a true lounge where friends and family can enjoy spending time. The best game room ideas reflect a favorite location, whether it is a sporting event or watering hole, that people can automatically form a positive association with. Your game room could be the center of the social circle and the reason for everyone to agree to come over for a SuperBowl party or just a laid-back night.

Game room designs all share one common theme in that they require a large amount of space to be properly amenable to company. If you want to put in a ritzy pool table made from marble and cherry wood or if you just intend to put in a cheap air hockey table, a game room has to have enough space for at least two people to gather around and move without restrictions. Ensure that the center of the room has at least fifteen feet of space in any direction to the nearest wall and remember that pool table sizes are at least seven feet long. It is necessary for an additional six ...
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Hello again! I hope everyone has been enjoying a relatively fantastic summer, and that those who have suffered through Hurricane Irene damages have found was to survive the worst of it. We didn’t get hit very much at all here in MA, mostly just a few small fallen trees, heavy winds and rain for a couple hours.

My daughter’s birthday has just past. She’s turned 3! Can you believe it? We’re celebrating it by taking a vacation to Disneyland. And we’re plotting out our activities through the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. I can’t wait to show my little girl and my wife how breathtaking and fun the parade at Magic Kingdom is. Last time I saw it I was, like, 11? But it was just so cool.

I am also hoping that the resort we’re staying at has a pool table or two hidden away in it! Nothing like trying out some new pool techniques on a Mickey Mouse pool table! I was just discussing with a buddy about an interesting pool and billiard aiming system. Nothing fancy or tricky, just an idea that caught my buddy’s fancy about the benefits of aiming a gun while hunting compared to the trickiness of aiming a cue stick, and I thought I’d share it with you here.

You will find a prolific amount of pool aiming systems offered up by professionals and semi-professionals that they dole out to amateur and intermediate pool players that just seem, to me, to be very complicated ways of getting the job done. These are often concepts that are very hard to describe in words, and even difficult to demonstrate on video.

For example, Burt Kennister has a “deflection-less” aiming technique that can allegedly allow you “aim normally” while juking the the tip of the cue suddenly sideways just before striking the cue ball to impart whatever spin you desire. I’ve also read a tiny bit about the Cue To Edge tech...
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I need to talk about getting blindsided by negative thinking during my last pool session. Just when you think your defenses are strong!

Negative thinking really is a bummer, isn’t it? Even when you know it’s out there, and you know it’s working against your defenses, sometimes you just can’t seem to keep it out. These are the times when it’s probably best to step away from the table and pack it up early. Give yourself a break, and plan on coming back with a vengence once you’ve had some time to recharge your battery and rebuild your positive thinking fortress.

Why do I mention this? Well, I’ve had a few pretty rough weeks last month. First a sickness that wiped me out for a whole week, then several back-to-back grueling workdays at the full-time job, then quite a bit of frustration trying to get my website software to work properly so that you, my readers, can access all the material you’ve signed up for without hassle. Just getting through every-day life can really take it’s toll, mentally. When I finally got a chance to settle down shoot some pool… I couldn’t.

The mojo just wasn’t there for me, stress and negativity weighing in on my from life in general just made it difficult to play pool well, or enjoy it even. So it got me to thinking about my Positive Thinking Clinic, and how I might not have given much attention to outside factors affecting your frame of mind come pool night.

I wanted to remind you that the positive thinking tools I gave you in the ebook can be applied to other aspects of your life as well. Negativity attacks us from every quarter, and we really have to be vigilant when it comes to fighting it off. For me, I needed to forget about playing pool entirely since it was obviously going to be a hopeless endeavor. I p...
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One night during my second year or so playing in my amateur eight ball league, I got matched up against a fella named Bobby G. This was quite a long time ago, back when I was just finally understanding how to play pool well, and had earned a (tiny!) reputation for myself as a lucky risk-taker who was pretty accurate (Lord knows how I could shoot anything at all, since I liked to tug my baseball cap down low over my glasses when I was shooting). Bobby was a bit nervous to play me, and I didn’t really know at the time that he could get ‘a bit nervous’ playing just about anybody – he was prone to being superstitiously negative about his skills and luck.

Confidence and reckless shot-making were a couple of my halmarks back then. Heck, they still are today when I’m feeling frisky, but this particular pool night taught me how lacking my skill-development was, and how flawed my strategic thinking and pattern building was, and pushed me to grow even more as a pool player. So, I had noticed Bobby’s nervousness and fed that knowledge to my ego. I used the confidence boost to help me pull off a few ridiculous shots in our first game that left Bobby mumbling to himself after I took game 1.

Bootstraps hiked up someting fierce, Bobby turned game 2 into a nightmare for me. His soft break tied up everything, so I used up all my ducks, during a couple turns, to smash things apart trying to free up the 8 ball. When I finally did, I also missed the current shot, leaving Bobby with a nicely opened up table and 5 balls remaining. I shrugged, seeing a tough run-out my nervous opponent would probably botch and leave me an open key-ball and 8 for the win. But Bobby… shot 1 and safe, then 2 and safe, and then 2 and out in a sequence that never let me see my last ball.

Tangent Definition

Wikipedia has this to say: “In geometry, the tangent line (or simply the tangent) to a curve at a given point is the straight line that “just touches” the curve at that point (in the sense explained more precisely below). As it passes through the point where the tangent line and the curve meet, or the point of tangency, the tangent line is “going in the same direction” as the curve, and in this sense it is the best straight-line approximation to the curve at that point.”

And the tangents definition for a curving surface: “Similarly, the tangent plane to a surface at a given point is the plane that “just touches” the surface ...
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I’m a smidge late for getting this issue out for the first week of May. Actually had one of the busiest weeks I’ve seen at my day job in quite a while, and the extra hours sucked up most of my free time. But we’re here now, so lets get this thing rolling.

I’ve been seeing a lot of folks, just your average every day pool players, dig themselves into trouble with bad shot choices or missed positions. They find themselves in a tough spot, and they wonder what the heck they should do to get themselves back on track?

The answer, usually, is NOT to try pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Nor can you find any good solutions from one of those online magic eight ball gimmicks you see around now and then! So, grab a cue off the pool stick racks, put your thinking caps on, and let’s get to work…

Diagram 1

Scenarios like Diagram 1 happen in 8 ball as well as 9 ball, but for now lets examine this bad position in a 9 ball game, and figure out what we can salvage from it. We see the 7 stuck on/near the rail and the shooter failed to get the cue ball into a good position to attack it. Sure, he could try to slice it thin into the corner pocket (as shown by the black line), but what are the likely outcomes from that?

A) He makes the shot, but the cue ball keeps most of its energy, causing it to bounce up and down the table a couple times and he is left out-of-position on the 8 with another tough slice and few control-options.

B) He misses the shot a...
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Nine ball is probably the second most popular game of pool in the US, perhaps world-wide. It is definitely the most televised, due to its relatively speedy play. Because there are only nine balls to contend with, the game favors an open spread and aggressive shot making. It doesn’t matter if you are playing on a 9 foot Mizerak pool table or a 7 foot coin operated pool table, breaking 9 ball pretty much comes down to balancing enough power to scatter the balls evenly with enough control to sink a ball (usually the 1 ball in a side pocket) and keep the cue ball centered in the middle of the table – optimal for finding an open shot should something drop.

Johnny Archer had once said something to the effect of : “I’d rather break at 70% power with 100%(cue ball) control, than break at 100% power with only 70% (cue ball) control.” Cue ball control is vital to a successful break!

When learning how to break nine ball, remember that your fundamentals in stance are pretty much the same as I laid out for breaking eight ball in part 1. That is, you want to build a stance that gives you the ability to deliver both power and control to your 9 ball breaks. Where things will differ from 8 ball breaks is how you apply power and control to get the results you need to stay at the table after the break, with the best chances of running out (or limiting your opponent’s options) in that first turn at the table. Let me break it down a little to explain what I mean.

Breaking in 8 ball requires you hammer at 15 tightly packed balls and get them to disperse relatively evenly around the pool table. Breaking 9 ball requires the same thing – even dispersment – but you have six fewer balls, so in theory you won’t need as much power in your stroke to get the same results as if you were shooting into a ful...
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People will often ask me “What would YOU do, here?”

“What to do” is in the eye of the beholder, especially when you are an amateur pool player seeking advice from other amateur pool players. Everyone has a different opinion on what choices need to be made during a game of pool, and it is difficult sometimes to weed out truths from hearsay.

There are perfect choices, good choices, terrible choices, and choices that will work differently for different individuals. Don’t strive to make perfect choices. “Good” choices are OK! Just make sure they work for you specifically, or if you are the one giving a coach, work to be sure the advice you give is taylored to your teammate’s strengths and preferences, not necessarily your own.

• Your first task should be to isolate as many generic “good” choices as you can find.
• Your second task is to pick one of them that you feel suits your particular skills and desires the most in regards to this particular game. Your third task is to knuckle down and execute your choice with focus and attention to getting it as right as possible.
• Your final task is to study your efforts and your results for effectiveness, level of difficulty, points to improve upon, etc.

Don’t beat yourself up for a badly executed shot. Be more inclined to beat yourself for making a choice you knew in your heart was a bad, or uncomfortable, one. And then release those negative emotions right away. Instead, analyze what happened and figure out how it could have gone better and file it away for “next time”.

When I am asked for advice on how to play a particular scenario out on the pool table, I do my best to lay out several possibilities for the asker to...
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Welcome to Table Talk Issue 3

This week I’d like to talk a little bit about speed control. There are two downsides to lack of speed control: the object ball can travel too far past or fall short of its destination; the cue ball will travel too far past or fall short of its destination. If you cannot predict with some consistency what your results should be from shot to shot, its no wonder you are struggling with maintaining success at the pool table. Lets discuss the ramifications of poor speed control in more detail…

I noticed quite a while ago that many players have difficulty controlling the speed of the cue ball. Most of the time, this is because the majority of shots beginner players will choose to take are the ones that are closest to straight-in. Relatively straight shots will absorb most of the speed of the cue ball after a shot, relieving a player from having to worry too much about where it might get off to. I also have noticed a lack of awareness with players concerning their own speed-control skills. Players will practice shots that trouble them, might practice making shots with draw, follow, or side-spin, but they rarely knuckle down and focus intently on the speed at which their cue balls or object balls are traveling.

When you can not judge the speed of your object ball very well, it can travel too far past the destination you wish of it, or come up short. This is troublesome when you want to gently nudge an object ball to the rail for a safety attempt, as well as when you want to shoot a ball at “pocket speed” so that if you miss, you still leave your ball hanging close to the pocket.

It has been a comm...
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Welcome to Table Talk Issue 2

“Shooting into the position”

Premium words!

Lets pick up from last week’s discussion on landing position on your next object ball. There are many ways for the cue ball to enter the triangle of position you intend for it. Some enterances are better than others. You should strive to give yourself the best chances of getting into, and staying within, your target zone. Give yourself the widest possible margin of error.

A good friend of mine name Lenny Lombardi was the fellow who actually pointed this out to me, maybe fifteen years ago:

Early on, I had become pretty proficient at making somewhat difficult shots. But I was still having trouble winning games and finishing short runs of balls. Why? Because my position-play was still under developed.

I understood that I needed to choose a position for the next ball in a run but I made a lot of mistakes, mistakes like building the wrong patterns and making it tough on myself to even get shape from one ball to the next. Iwould blow an easy shot trying something difficult like extra side-spin or force follow. I would sometimes blow easy positions with my lack of speed control. I had a good idea how to move the cue ball around the table, but I couldn’t always control it, and even when I did well at controlling it I probably still chose a very difficult positon to reach. There were often easier choices, if only I had known how to look for them.

You see, no matter how good you get at making the tough shots, the odds are against you consistently making one after the other after the other. I wasn’t that good!

I built bad sh...
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