2/25/2024 0 Comments Bar billiards four pin gameThen he said something that was shockingly stupid: “Anybody want to play some One Pocket for a little money?” LOL! Are you kidding me?!! Did he really just say that? Stall” was claiming he was pretty new to pool and was just trying to learn. When I arrived, the guy whom I shall refer to as “Mr. In pool room parlance, when someone intentionally plays below his or her actual skill level, we call this “stalling.” I was tired of hitting balls, so I decided to go up front and watch the show. I was doing my daily practice routine on one of the Gold Crowns in the back, when a friend approached me and told me there was a guy up front who was “stalling” and looking for action. At first I thought it was funny (for reasons explained herein), but as I watched I found it deeply saddening as it provides a glimpse into what is wrong with pool today.Ī few months ago I watched a hustler in action at California Billiards in Mountain View, California. Just when you think you've seen it all.Īuthor’s note: What follows is my account of a hustle I witnessed a few months ago. Because I’m such a data analysis geek, I’ll be happy to share the results with you…I might even provide a graph or two! I’m sure you can’t wait. I’ll use that knowledge to plan future practice sessions to focus exclusively on those items and try to reduce or eliminate them entirely. With my background in statistics and process improvement, I’m quite certain my post practice analysis will identify trends and factors that are contributing to my goofs. My plan for the day is to take notes every time I miss a shot to document why I missed the shot. It’s time to take some of my own advice: (1) practice thoughtfully (with purpose) and (2) take notes. I’ll be practicing at California Billiards most of the day with one primary goal in my mind: I need to figure out why I miss shots. I’ve designated today as an official “pool day” for me. In my response to him, I had merely taken some facts that I knew to be true and in one broad stroke painted the best possible answer I could come up with. If I’m on a mission to transform myself and my game, shouldn’t I know the answer? Shouldn’t I be confident in my response? You would think so however, I wasn’t really sure why I missed shots. Imagine that! He had been following my pool progress over the last couple of years, and he asked me the following question: “Why do you miss?” I immediately gave him the following canned answers: “Because I don’t concentrate, because I don’t think three shots ahead, because I make bad decisions when choosing between an aggressive shot versus a safety, because I get in a hurry and I sacrifice my fundamentals, because I hit the balls too hard, because… because… because…”Īfter satisfying him with my supposedly well thought out answers, our conversation went on to other topics however, my analytical mind was stuck in an infinite loop: was my response really accurate? Sure, all of my responses were valid responses, but I didn’t feel like I was being honest with him and telling him the truth. A couple weeks ago I was enjoying a glass of wine with a friend I had not seen in a few months, and our conversation eventually turned to pool.
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