More musings on Billiard Tricks

I was watching a closed gambling match between Efren Bata Reyes and Ronnie Alcano the other night. They played simple 9 ball, race to 15, professional rules. When we say professional rules, it means the bounds is "rail after contact". When the cue ball hits an object ball, either one- the cue ball or object ball must hit a cushion. If not, a ball-in-hand infraction would commence. In addition to these rules, professional rules entail the common three foul rule, which I guess everyone knows about. No player is allowed to have three consecutive fouls on his turns. This would result in the loss of the rack. In our next lesson, I'd be giving billiard tricks about hiding the cue ball. The most extraordinary shots are done rather very ordinarily. Did that make sense? I hope it did. Think about that first.

So anyway, as I was watching the Magician and Ronnie Alcano, a guy from the audience suddenly told me, "Efren isn't that great. He hasn't done any hard shots yet he's winning by a huge margin." I scoffed and told him, "You're wrong son. That's why he's so great because he didn't need the need for difficult shots." And this doesn't hold just a grain of truth to it. It was the absolute truth. A great player may know his way around jump shots, masse, drawing control, etc, but the greatest players use these tough shots only when needed. The best of all players have total control of the cue ball making each shot as though it were a bad shot. The less funky billiard tricks you see in a player's game, the more top caliber he is.

Once I amazed myself at the beauty of the bank shot. I kept on practicing it on my table and told myself that when this situation would ever arise, I'd still make the winning shot. Come tournament time, it did with my fight for the semifinals of 64 players. I had a wrong preparation for the 9 ball. However, it seemed like an easy bank. It seemed like what I was practicing hundreds of times in my own table and never missed. As I proceeded to bank the shot, you guessed it, I missed. Resulting in the loss of the game after two more turns of placing and bad luck.

The moral lesson in this entry is billiard tricks should be put on reserve, well, at least the really fancy ones. The real "trick" is no trick at all. Practice preparation, forget fancy moves and you're all set to win.

Go back to how to jump or how to draw.