Posted on 10/24/2019 5:51:03 PM PDT by SamAdams76
Recently moved into a condo community that has a billiards room in the clubhouse. Haven't used it yet but I think I'm going to go ahead and check it out one of these days. However, I need to brush up on my skills first. But I don't want to do it on an actual pool table until I get good at it.
You see, I haven't really played pool since I was in the Marines back in the 1980s. Back then, I played a lot of pool at the E Club but not sure how well I did as I usually had a few 7-and-7s under my belt before I took to the tables, with a lot of ZZ Top type music playing on the jukebox.
Yes, I go back far enough to remember when bars had jukeboxes. I'm going to make a post about jukeboxes one of these days but for now, I'm just concentrating on the pool tables, so enough about the jukeboxes (and the Pac-Man and Space Invader games that were over in the corner).
The e-Club had a couple of ratty pool tables with these battered cue sticks that were mostly splintered or broken in some way because us drunken jarheads would often hit each other in the head with them or strike them against the cinderblock wall if we made a bad shot or something.
So nothing fancy at all about my pool playing days but I do remember making some rather spectacular bank shots - mostly by accident - but sometimes on purpose too. I remember one night one of us hit the cue ball off the table and we couldn't find the darn thing. I think it rolled under one of those video game machines or something. So for rest of the night, we used the yellow "1" ball as the cue ball. Such was life at the e-Club at Camp Pendleton circa-1982 or 1983.
Like I said, ZZ Top had a lot of songs on the jukebox (one play for a quarter or five plays for one dollar) but Alabama, Allman Brothers, Waylon Jennings, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Little River Band had a lot of them too. It was mostly a Southern Rock/Country selection. I must have heard "Gimme Two Steps" at least a thousand times at that e-Club. That was a song that Marines liked to play after they got a little bit drunk. There were others too. A song called "Flirtin' With Disaster" by Molly Hatchet got a lot of plays too. George Thorogood as well. George Thorogood always sounds good in a bar but no so much when you are sitting at home trying to read a good book. For book reading, I need something more mellow like Steely Dan or Toto.
But back to the pool tables. They used to charge 75 cents a game. Between the pool tables, the jukebox and the video games, you needed a lot of quarters at the e-club. So they had this change machine as you walk in the door. You would put a dollar in and get four quarters. Or you could put in a $10 bill and get a whole mess of quarters. If the machine was broke, you had to go to the bar and on those night the bar would run out of change quickly and the Oriental female bartenders would eventually shake their heads and say "no change, sorry, no more change. Buy drink? We can sell you drink..."
I mention the Oriental bartenders because many Marines would go to Okinawa for a year and come back with a wife. It seemed that all those wives ended up working at the e-Club or the PX because that's where you usually saw them.
But back to the pool tables. Now there were some really good pool players back in those days. Now those guys would come into the place with these long wooden cases and they would pull out these beautiful looking cue sticks out of the velvet and screw them together. Also built into those cases were little squares holding chalk. That's when you knew you knew there was a serious player at the table. No ratty, splintered or broken cue sticks for them. And they would chalk up every single shot. Yeah, you didn't want to bet money when playing those guys. But we did anyway, and usually lost
So yes, I would like to get back into some pool playing again. So I'm watching some videos on how to play pool on YouTube like this one here and I'm thinking if I watch it enough times, I'll be able to play like that too - for real. I can already picture myself making some of those shots on an actual pool table.
I also watch some instructional videos like how to make bank shots and combination shots. A lot of pool-related videos to watch on YouTube that will help me become a good player, before I even take to the tables for real.
Anyway, I'm wondering if anybody else out there in Freeper land learned how to play pool out on the YouTube.
No real substitute for playing on the table you hope to play on. It may be crap. It will definitely have some idiosyncrasies, if it’s well used.
Nope. But beer will. At least you will think you are better.
I watch a ton of guitar-playing videos. The videos are generally only helpful to me if I actually pick up the guitar and practice what is in the videos. I’m guessing it would be similar with pool.
If you really want to get good get down in the game room and practice,practice,practice and then after breakfast get back to practice,practice,practice!I have never watched a pool video to learn a damn thing in pool but I sure have put a lot of time doing practice,practice,practice!
I’ve shot pool forever, the way to get good is to shoot lots of racks...
Some of my best games I don’t remember. Whiskey River broke my mind.
You do realize that there’s a difference between pool and billiards?
There are indeed some activities that turn out MUCH MORE successful, after watching a youtube of it...
Most DIY stuff: fixing a washing machine, TV... finer points of painting, plastering, and on and on...
I’m a better lover after watching 1,000’s of porn videos.
Learn to correctly hold the cue. First things first, you want to be able to control the cue when taking a shot. Then hand eye coordination. After that it is rack after rack after rack.
Also, I’m left handed and yet I hold the cue with my right hand and use my left hand as the bridge. Same way with golfing. I golf right-handed even though I am left-handed. But when I bat in baseball, back to the left side. It’s all mixed up. Sometimes I wonder how I have survived in this world.
Practicing alone, after work, with my own stick got me to be fairly decent. And yes, chalk up before every shot.
However, good pool playing is a perishable skill, so you have to constantly practice or lose your edge.
Here's a secret tip as a shortcut to willing more games: Don't you drink 7 and 7s, buy them for your opponent.
Here's another tip: Playing pool on a real table isn't quite the same as playing pool in the bar on a coin operated table.
On the coin operated table, the cue ball is slightly larger in diameter than the numbered balls, so your bank shots are slightly different.
The most you’ll ever get out of those videos is a bit of the strategy and tactics, mate. You need to shoot rack after rack after rack and against anybody, their brother, and anybody’s brother’s dog.
Good news, tho: you get back into it you pick the skill up pretty fast. “Riding a bike” kinda thing. I laid off for close to ten years, went back, and in a few months was back to speed.
Too many fights that I am too old for.
Well watching videos will certainly teach you some new tricks, however, as always it’s practice that is the key.
No.
” make me a better pool player?, W. wrote:
I’ve shot pool forever, the way to get good is to shoot lots of racks...”
Don’t just make the easy shots. Work on bank shots and sharp cuts, work on planning ahead.
watch Earl Strickland, Tommy Kennedy, Ephraim Reyes or any other pro. go to pool halls and play with good players; that’s how you’ll get better. Play on a 9’ table too, not 7 or 8’. also, play 9 or 10 ball or straight pool to hone your skills.
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