Yay! My first practice on my shiny like-new equipment!

I racked nine balls up and broke, then banked nine in a row. That's right, nine in a row. This is exactly the opposite of what I thought would happen. I figured that the tighter pockets, the fast cloth, and the slick balls would conspire to make me miss way more than normal until I got used to the changes.

What I failed to take into account was that on cloth that is very new, with balls that are very slick, shots that have no business at all being made will slide right down the rail and drop.

This is what happened to me. After the initial nine banks I continued to make most banks for over an hour. At first they went in as I just described - very sloppily. After a while, however, something very cool happened. The shots started hitting the pocket centers. I really looked like I knew what I was doing there.

I guess my confidence was so boosted by the accepting pockets that I relaxed just enough to become very accurate on my banks.

I know that the pockets will become less and less forgiving over the next several sessions, but I'm sure going to have some fun while it lasts. Hopefully I can keep up with the changing table conditions.

Today, to go with my nice new cloth and retightened pockets, I cleaned and polished my set of Aramith Super Pros with some Karseal polish. I also cleaned my cue's shaft with Larry's cleaner and finished it off with some CueSilk.

While waiting for the polish on the balls to dry I went ahead and drew my standard lines on the table. First I used string to very accurately determine the footspot and drew a 3-inch "+" at that point. I drew a line across the headstring, another from the footspot straight to the end rail, and another set of lines around where a rack would be placed. For the footspot itself I used a hole-reinforcement sticker like I used in the connect the dots practice.

After taking a towel and buffing the balls off I was finally ready to play on the best equipment available.

I got my table back today as promised!

Actually all I "got back" was the rails with the new-improved tightened pockets and some new 860 cloth.

I can't wait to get down there and miss for a week because of the slick cloth and tight pockets.

The pool table has been dismantled so the cloth can be replaced and the pockets tightened. I have to wait until Friday to play again. Woe is me.

For a year and a half I've been saying that the pockets on my table got wider when I had the Artemis rubber installed.

I was right.

The pocket facings that were installed were 1/8" and the old ones were 1/4" facings.

So there.