posted by dave on Sunday, January 9, 2000 at 4:07 PM in category RSB Post

(This post is much too long - especially for the first serious thread I've tried to start in years. My apologies in advance)

I'm not sure where to start here - it's probably going to sound nutty no matter where I start.

I recently bought a house with an 8' Steepleton table in the basement. I didn't pay too much attention to the table until I had it leveled, shimmed, and covered with Simonis 860. Now it plays as well as can be expected.

I have a Schon cue that I paid $1000 for ten years ago, and a Joss that I just bought for $300 in December - mainly just to have something to shoot with while I was in Seattle on a business trip. My Schon weighs 20 oz. I'm used to this cue. The Joss weighs 18.2 oz, and it feels pretty strange in my hand - like there's nothing there.

I have a set of Brunswick Centennials, and also a set of generic balls that came with the table. Both sets of balls are in quite good condition, with similar levels of cleanliness and polish.

When I first started playing seriously on the table I didn't do very well at all. My speed-control was nowhere to be seen, and even the simplest shots seemed to be no better than a 50/50 proposition. This was with the Schon shooting at the generic balls. After a few days of playing like a chump, I started looking for excuses. I decided to change the tip on my Schon - even though the LePro on it was only about two months old and was holding up fine. While the glue was drying I decided to knock some balls around with the Joss. I hadn't played with it much in Seattle and was trying to decide whether I wanted to sell it or keep it. Playing with the Joss, and the generic balls, I fell straight into dead stroke and stayed there for two hours. It was like the damn stick had shape turned into it on the lathe, and shotmaking added in with the finish. I literally hadn't shot this well in over 10 years.

I figured I had finally gotten used to the new table. I invited my cousin - a pool newbie who, despite conflicting "advice" from several people who think Tom Cruise is a Pool God, has managed to focus on my instuction enough over the past several months to actually run a rack of 8-Ball now and then - over to shoot some games. Since this was to be the first official pool session in the new house, with the newly-recovered table, I broke out the Centennials for the special occasion. By this time my Schon was ready for use, and this time it didn't disappoint. I did not have the cue-ball on a string as I'd had earlier in the day but I shot what I'd consider my normal game. After the night's session was over I boxed the Centennials back up and put the generics back on the table.

The next day I went downstairs, hoping to recreate the previous day's exhilaration. Instead I was right back to where I'd been 24 hours earlier. I could hardly make a ball, and when I did manage to rattle one in my cue-ball would end up in a different zip code than the one I'd intended. This, again, was using the Schon with the generic balls. Unwilling to become the Roy Hobbs of the pool world I set out to determine the cause(s) for my inconsistency.

Now I'm not a scientist, and while I do know a little about scientific methods, I'm not claiming to have used any of them here. I just tried some stuff and I'll report the results along with one possible interpretation. In two consecutive outings with my Schon and the generic balls I'd managed to stink up the place. I'd shot very well with the Joss at the generic balls, and I'd also shot well with the Schon at the Centennials. I was starting to sense a pattern, but I ran thru each scenario to make sure.

I like to practice a version of Bowlliards (sp?). I get a free break shot at a rack of ten balls, and I get ball in hand after the break. Scratches on the break are not penalized. I get two innings to run the ten balls, and it's scored like bowling. Most people on this group have probably heard of it. I like to use it for practice, and for me I think it gives a pretty good indication of my current overall offensive skill level. I decided to use my favorite practice game to test myself with the two different cues and with the two different sets of balls. I played five "games" with each pairing. After each "game" I would switch to a different pairing so as not to get stuck in a rut with a certain pairing. Here are the results:

Scenario 1 (Schon and generic balls) 85,174,123,130,151 = avg. 132
Scenario 2 (Schon and Centennials) 204,244,190,237,213 = avg. 217
Scenario 3 (Joss and generics) 272,266,201,199,230 = avg. 233
Scenario 4 (Joss and Centennials) 112,127,128,160,153 = avg. 136

I should probably throw out the 85 score since that was the first set I played, and I should probably also throw out the 272 since my cat jumped onto the table and broke up a small cluster for me in frame 6. But even after throwing out the high and low scores for each set there's still a pretty huge difference between the four scenarios. So what was the deal? Was my $1000 Schon to good for the generic balls? Were the expensive Centennials somehow intimidating the $300 Joss? I know the caste system is alive and well in many parts of the world but I didn't expect it to show up on my pool table. I looked for a better explanation.

I did some squirt-comparision tests with the Joss and the Schon. The test I use is to freeze an object ball to the middle of the foot rail, and place the cueball on the head spot. I then track where I need to aim to "cut" the object ball into the far corners. I used the generic balls for these tests. The Joss requires a point-of-aim that is about 1/3 of the way into the object ball. The Schon does not seem to need quite as much compensation but it is very close to being the same.

As I mentioned before, the two sets of balls are of the same playability. I did some throw tests shooting frozen combination down the length of the table and both sets throw about 4.25" over that length. The size and shape of all of the object balls and the cue-balls are as identical as I an tell by eye. Their difference is in weight. I don't have a scale, but I can tell by a blind pickup test that the Centennials are all heavier than the generics. I did this test enough times to convince myself that this is true - the generics are lighter than the Centennials.

The cues I do know the weight for - I had the Schon weighed years ago after I put a heavier weight bolt in it, and the MBE people weighed the Joss when I shipped it from Seattle.

Looking at the results from my practice sets again, this time taking into account the relative weights of the objects involved, and it turns out that:

1. I shoot the heavier balls better with the heavier stick, and I shoot the lighter balls better with the lighter stick.
2. I suck if I shoot the light balls with the heavy stick, and I also suck shooting the heavy balls with the light stick. Those are the observations I have made. Now is where I have to come up with a possible explanation for them.

The main thing that remained consistent between all of the stick/ball pairings if, of course, the shooter. Things like my stance, follow-through, chalking habits, and the like did not change noticeably just because I was holding a different cue. Likewise my arm speed remained constant, and that, I think, is where a clue to the solution to my conundrum lies.

Again, I'm not a scientist, and it's likely that the scientists who frequent this group will pick my logic to shreds, but here's what I think is happening.

Assume that these generic balls that came with my table are the lightest balls I've ever shot. This may be the case but I haven't been carrying a scale around for the last seventeen years so I don't know. Now, since the generics are the lightest it (duh) follows that every other set of balls are heavier. So every other set of balls I've ever shot with has been (weight-wise) more like my Centennials than my generics. Since I've had my Schon for ten years that means that I've been shooting at heavy balls with my Schon for ten years. Everything about my stroke is tuned to shooting balls with approximately this same weight. My body naturally knows how hard to shoot to get a certain amount of draw, follow, or whatever. My body is able to automatically allow for squirt or swerve with these balls and this cue.

Now take the same shooter (me), and the same cue (Schon), and stick in some lighter balls. Since the shooter is using the same built-in be-the-ball shooting style his arm speed is the same as always. But since the same stick is being driven with the same speed into a LIGHTER cue-ball that cue-ball is being driven forward HARDER than it should be. All kinds of things result. The main thing to go wrong is position play. Since every shot is really being shot harder than it feels, draw and follow seems to mysteriously increase, and the shooter's heretofore automagic squirt compensation doesn't work right either. Hand the shooter (me again) a lighter cue (Joss) than the cue (Schon) than he is used to, and have him shoot at these same balls.

Now the shooter can use his tried-and-true shooting style with much better results. The cue-ball speed is back down to where it should be. Proper position play is restored, and even squirt compensation feels more normal.

Continuing to torment our shooter (guess who), we now force him to shoot at the heavier balls (Centennials) with the lighter cue (Joss). With the same stance, stroke, arm speed, follow-through, blah, blah, the shooter still feels like everything is fine mechanically. But now the lighter cue is transferring LESS energy to the cue-ball. All shots are actually SOFTER than they feel. This appears as apparent understroking of shots, and results in position play at least as bad as the overstroking from two paragraphs up.

At last we allow our shooter some dignity, and let him shoot the heavier (Centennial) balls with the heavier (Schon) cue. His game returns to it's former glory, since this is after all the weight pairing he's been shooting with since 1983.

Well to anyone who's made it this far into this post (without cheating and just skipping to the end) I thank you. I think I can sum all of above into a couple of questions:

1. Can a different stick/ball weight ratio than one the shooter is used to seriously mess up a person's game, especially if they shoot, like me, with the Obi Wan Mosconi play-by-feel style.
2. Remember those el-cheapo cues with the removeable washers for quick weight changes that the chumps were all carrying 10 years ago? Does anyone know if Tim Scruggs makes a cue with this feature? ;)

This post is meant to be serious, but since I am the same person that used to carry different chalk brands around for different type of shots I guess I'll understand if nobody takes it seriously.

post a comment

If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.

I'll pretty much approve anything except SPAM comments, or comments that clearly have no purpose except to piss me off, or comments that are insulting to a previous commenter.

Use anything you want for your name and email address. I think it has to at least look like a valid email address though.