Ron Shepard wrote:
> Another way to tell what kind of player someone is is to ask
> them some question about some detail of a shot when they are
> in dead stroke. I think the FPs will just give you a blank
> stare and ask "what 6-ball?".

I don't think this is quite true. I can certainly recall things like where the CB and OB were in relation to each other and what path the CB took to the next ball. I'll also have a vague recollection of what english and speed were used on the shot, but to really recall those physical elements I'd have to set the shot up again, hit it again, and take note of how I hit it.

That's only for recent games and matches. Older memories are much fuzzier, although that may be due to age and alcohol. I do have a pretty good memory of some various key shots in the past, but again only circumstancial memory - not a complete play-by-play.

I think the examples you use about not knowing the day of the week would more readily apply to the hypothetical "Zen Player" than the "Feel Player".

Now, what were we talking about again?

Derek S. Ray wrote:
> lots of attention in about two hundred different directions

That's what I meant.

I figure I'll try to post this before Derek does since he and I seem to be in complete syncronization here. Maybe we should find a scotch doubles tournament somewhere to enter.

On page 133 of Capelle's 'A Mind for Pool' he lists 19 different definitions for Dead Stroke. I'm not going to enter that list here, not so much for fear of copyright infringement, but because I'm verbose enough without having to use someone else's words.

Of the 19 definitions listed, about 12 of them directly describe the FP style of play when it's going well. The other 7 are ambiguous and could apply to FPs and MPs equally. On page 134 the very first suggestion listed for getting into dead stroke is about as anti-MP and pro-FP as you can get.

Perhaps we could differentiate MPs and FPs like this: An MP is constantly striving to play their best, hoping for Dead Stroke, while an FP is constantly striving for (and expecting) Dead Stroke.

Think about it, you MPs who've experienced Dead Stroke. Did you maintain the same level of intensity, or did you "let go" a little bit and fall into a more FP style of play? I can guarantee that FPs who drop into Dead Stroke don't suddenly start analyzing everything.

Ron Shepard wrote:
> When things are working right, you can maintain mental focus
> for hours at a time. Mental exhaustion is not the main problem.

That's when things are working right, but what about when things aren't going so well? Say you're behind in a match and you know you just HAVE to run out to win. Does that force you to concentrate extra hard - even beyond the level you concentrate at when you're in stroke? I guess that's the scenario I was imagining would be mentally exhausting. Sure you feel great if you pull out the match, but can you jump right into another match with the same intensity? Also, what happens when, despite your best efforts, you fail in one of these pressure situations? That can be a pretty hard blow for the ego to take, having all that responsibility then falling short. How do you rebound from situations like that?

I've tried to play as an MP in the past myself, and maintaining that level of intensity proved to be nearly imposssible for me. Of course I also have the attention span of a three year old at a candy convention.

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.