Will watching YouTube videos of people playing pool make me a better pool player?

[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.

[heshtesh]

Don’t you drink 7 and 7s, buy them for your opponent.

With that attitude you would have been booted from our team in 2 minutes!

[SamAdams76]

Thanks for the tips! Never realized that coin-operated tables had slightly larger cue balls!

[JohnnyP]

I hang out on the azbilliards pool form, also posting as JohnnyP:
https://forums.azbilliards.com/forumdisplay.php?f=6

Check out Virtual Pool 4. They say the equations behind it make the balls behave realistically.

I see they now have a version for Macs, so I will have to get it:
http://vponline.celeris.com/vp4offprod

They are offering VP3 for only $9.95, and they have a free version:
http://www.celeris.com/virtual_pool_3_windows.html

Dr. Dave Alcatore is a Physics Prof in Colorado, and a pool nut. He has hundreds of videos, many in slow motion, showing how the balls react, how spin effects things, etc.

He charges, but he also has 3 minute excerpts on youtube, like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=43&v=680o8EChP_o

Here is ole’ JohnnyP ten years (and 50 pounds) practicing. It was Christmas Eve, so you know I was hooked on pool:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x34m3aq

I accidentally deleted my youtube channel and lost a lot of videos, including this one, but someone had already grabbed it and reposted it.

[gundog]

Ah, the Air Force. A pool table in every dorm. The balls were always there(Homestead, 81-85)Some things even GIs won’t mess with. And if they did, we’d have gone to the next dorm, and taken theirs.

[W.]

Ya gotta play position. It’s the way to win...

[W.]

Ya gotta play position. It’s the way to win...

[PROCON]

I also am cursed with being ambidextrous!

Left-handed athletically but write and hold utensils with my right hand; serve in tennis and ping-pong with my left but play with my right.

Same in pool.

[SkyDancer]

Did you study geometry and trig in school?

[Hot Tabasco]

After I retired in 2008 I hooked up with an old friend who was also a good pool player and we started playing twice a week at a billiard hall that had a bar and restaurant.

Lunch time between noon and 3 p.m., pool was free if you had lunch. Tables were regulation size, not short bar tables.

I hooked up with an actual pool instructor for a couple sessions and purchased a series of instructional manuals. The manuals gave tips as well as different drills to practice on your own.

At the billiard hall close to us, I got us kicked out of there when I sent a letter of complaint to the owner about a gal who did his book work who let her kids run around the tables...turns out she was his mistress and he said if I ever showed up in the hall again, he would have the manager call the cops on me........oh well.

I got the last laugh, about a year later he was shut down for hosting illegal gambling tournaments........LOL!

But back to pool, I learned a hell of a lot from that instructor in the two sessions with him and the books he sold me.........

As for my buddy, we had a falling out due to our opposing politics. He was a flaming liberal who stopped corresponding with me..........

[LeoTDB69]

Watching Youtube videos always helps make you better at things.

I have gotten really excellent at adding liquid nitrogen to my swimming pool. Not to mention my expertise at filling my backyard with millions of orbeez.

[Hot Tabasco]

Dr. Dave Alcatore

I have his book "The Illustrated Principles of Pool and Billiards" and the video that came along with it......

[rawcatslyentist]

and snooker

[Bonemaker]

No.

[minnesota_bound]

A pool table brings trouble.
That starts with a capital ‘T’ that rhymes with ‘P’ and that stands for Pool!”

The Music Man : “Ya Got Trouble
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_Oe-jtgdI

Be careful about being too good.....

“A Game of Pool” The TWILIGHT ZONE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh7ceBHrQJM

[Grimmy]

Yes.

And you just read that on the internet so it must be true.

[PROCON]

My Dad showed me snooker, a very difficult table game.

The version I learned was having to use the cue ball to hit both other colored balls with one shot or lose a turn, very difficult with the larger table.

[MichaelRDanger]

I learned to play pool by reading books so I guess watching video’s will teach you what to practice. Copying a good players style can go a long way but you will need to spend hundred’s of hours to get really good.

[mac_truck]

Go visit your local pool hall, rent a table for an hour or so, and see if your skills come back.

[CJ Wolf]

I watched youtube videos on how to replaster my pool. Helped alot especially since I never replaster a pool before.

[Yaelle]

In general, if motivated, yes, learning from youtube is definitely possible. For all kinds of things. Depends how you apply yourself.