If you are married there is a good chance you will get ” invited” to go see Ranger and the gang… Just like in real life getting out of this one is trickier than it looks. The idea is to use a short draw stroke and bring the cue ball back to the long rail closest to us. Then shoot the 8 ball in the same pocket.
Here’s what to do:

1. Choke up on your stick and hold it near the very top of the wrap. ( this will shorten your bridge and soften up your stroke).

2. Hit low right on the cue ball and do your best to bring the cue ball back to the near rail to slow it down.

3. Ideally you will now have a somewhat steep, but makable shot on the 8 ball.

Let me know how it turns out, I’m sure it will give that movie a run for it’s money…

Thanks for reading! Remember:

-Ranger danger

Here are some of her accomplishments:

• 10 million sold-2005 (Diamond Album) Patsy Cline’s Greatest Hits
• #1 Juke Box Record “Crazy”
• #1 Female Artist 1961 and 1962
• #1 Song of 1962 “I Fall to Pieces” (c.p. 2)
• Ranked #11 on Vh1′s greatest women of Rock and Roll
• 1st woman solo artist inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Tragically  she died in a plane crash in Tennessee at the age of 30.   But her impact and music is un deniable and her husband Charlie Dick still continues to support her memory and fans to this day ( everything I’ve found says he is very supportive so I plan on trying to meet him if it is at all possible)    So what does this have to do with pool?    A lot, or maybe nothing at all, the answer is it totally depends on you.   The hardest part of making an impact or doing something great is staying consistently motivated and inspired to take action now.   And to me that is what Patsy’s music and life is the perfect reminder of.   The world owes her a great deal, but a bigger question is: What will it owe us?  To me not trying to do something great is as “Crazy” as it gets.

Check this out:      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzq5X-p2C0Y

                      Thanks for reading( I mean listening)

                    -Tom Parker

Thanks for reading!

Bottom of the 9th 2 out and here's the pitch..... way back and it's ....Longggg Goneeeee..

What to do:  Close out this pattern.  Just like Todd Jones ( the retired Detroit Tigers closer) I have blown too many games to count ; when all that was needed was 3 outs(Or in this case 3 balls).

Results:  Shoot this five times in a row and see how you do.

Good luck!

I did not miss that shot....

I never really never put much stock into the importance of body language and playing pool well; until recently… when I saw very interesting show called  .  The main character Dr. Cal Lightman uses body language to tell what people are thinking and to figure out if they are telling the truth.  I started  to be more observant and watched what happens when I or someone else misses a shot.   Take a second and imagine it… I am sure a couple familiar images will come to mind:  Slumped shoulders,  an angry look on their face,  usually mumbling something about why they missed.    The problem with this is that it doesn’t help with the next shot and actually creates 2 additional problems.  #1.  You are showing your opponent that you are not confident and odds are good they will start to play better,  2.  The bad body language  you started with may have contributed to you missing the shot in the first place.  It is very easy to say something that you may or may not believe but your body language doesn’t lie.   In fact studies have indicated that up to 90% of the meaning we get from a message is non-verbal.   Changing your body language can change your state and mood very quickly (especially when you are at the pool table); and since we all know pool is mostly mental, being aware of what you are doing and how you carry yourself is very important.  Successfully controlling your body language is a giant step toward setting yourself up to play your best pool game.

Good Luck  and Thanks for reading!

What to do: The idea is to thinly bank the 4 ball towards the 5 and bring the cue ball around 3 rails behind the 9 and 7.   

    Important: a little right can help. 

Try it 5 times and see how you do,    Good Luck

Good Luck and Thanks for reading!  Watch out for the Shadows

1.  People who are good work hard,  People who are great work on themselves.

and

2.  Everything has a price, the price of winning is discipline.

Wow!  If you think about number 1 we all know people who are incredibly hard workers and as a result are very good at what they do;  which is great.   But what would happen if they spent a few hours a week or each day working on themselves?   The way they think, communicate, talk, write ?( there aren’t enough hours in the day to save my writing)  The results would be unreal!

Henry Ford had was no dummy check out his take on the above:

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason so few  do it.

Point # 2 may seem simple but in the fast paced day-to-day it is really easy to lose sight of the big picture.   This is especially true while playing pool.  If during a shot I am thinking about how much I don’t like the Neal Young song that just came on…. I will miss every time (and like that song even less).

Check out Dr. Elko’s book:  Nerves of Steel.

Thanks for reading

-The (Northern)Southern man

Good Luck and Don’t break your bridge (at least until after you’re done practicing)

 I know what you’re thinking:

That’s great now I’ve got that awesome… uhhhh, I mean stupid… song stuck in my head and that’s nice for Lenny but what does he know that the rest of us don’t…

return of the Mayans....

Given that the world was supposed to have ended about 25 times in the last couple of years I thought now might be as good a time as any to put together a game plan and some pool goals for the coming year. (Just in case the world doesn’t end….and we find out that a several thousand-year old cannibalistic pagan society didn’t quite have all the answers….like I don’t know…penicilin,  you can never be too safe). Besides without written out pool goals for the new year what would we have to angrily tear up and throw in the trash next December.   Now might be a great time to come up with a list of some of your own.  (Shattered Dreams make great kindling)

Here’s the countdown to midnight…..(please read in an excited countdown voice)

10.  Continue to find time to practice at least 2 hours per day.

9.  Complete and pass IPAT 2  3 times by June. 

8.  Play in at least one league match every week. (I plan to continue to play in the local masters as well as a standard APA league).

7. Play in at least 1 tournament every month.

6.  Visit 2 Pool Schools across the country.

5.  Find an Instructor locally to work with 2 times a month.

4.  Post to this blog at least 3 times per week.

3.  Continue using the stroke trainer every day.

2.  Start working on IPAT 3 in June.

1.  Make it to Nationals and Place in the top 50!

Woooooooh……HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

If we still have electricity feel free to leave a comment!

                              -Seacrest Out

How did they get him to stand still long enough to put the hat on him?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6O0tyaAtSk

“Every time you miscue an Angel gets its wings….”

                                      -George Bailey

steady Eddie...

Okay so for this drill here’s the objective:   

Make the 8 ball in the corner and roll it up for the nine in the other corner…but here’s where it gets tricky:   The cue ball is against the rail and if you really want to test your mechanics shoot both shots one-handed.

Denny had me practice one-handed shots to make sure my follow through and mechanics are good.  If you’re stick stays down through the shots and you are making these balls, then shooting this with two hands will be a breeze in  no time.

        Good Luck!   Let me know how it turns out?

not as hard to catch as advertised....

Sometimes the key to playing good pool is finding the right tempo.  Not too fast that you miss, but not too slow that you …well, miss. Gingy can teach us a lot about tempo and playing with rhythm.  I’ve seen suggestions to practice using the same number of strokes and eye patterns each and every time…no exceptions!  I guess the idea is to make it second nature and consistent; which sounds like a good idea.   The problem is that I practice this a lot, and am pretty sure as soon as I play in a match, this (along with many other things) flies directly out the window…  At first I thought this was a really bad thing!   So doing what most idiots do; I decided to focus even harder on “the right mechanics” (number of strokes, eye pattern, elbow position) while playing.   This is what most sports or WWII fighter pilots may refer to as: a death spiral, or death roll… whatever it is it doesn’t end well.  To quote Allen Iverson:  When we’re talkin about Practice… practice? (somehow he uses it 15 more times and turns it into a question).   But, he has a point(I think…): practice is different than games.  We can’t think and play at exactly the same time.  We need to trust what we’ve practiced and continue working on our fundamentals so that they become second nature.

By not thinking at the moment we are shooting; we will all be run, run, running racks as fast as we can… (but not too fast or you may end up far, far, away from your best pool game)                                     -Gingy

Thanks to John Biddle; Pool Synergy is a collective effort of Pool writers on the internet all blogging about the same topic.  This month’s host is:

Michael Reddick @ www.Angleofreflection.wordpress.com

Check it out!

The 80′s were a great decade for movies: but when I was 3, lightning struck!  (Unfortunately 3 year olds don’t understand movies; but by the time I was 5 I was ready).  The movie starred a cool wise cracking robot named: # 5 .  Please take a second and think it over… any guesses ???  For those of you that guessed Honey I Shrunk the Kids with Rick Moranis….please stop reading immediately.  But for those of you that said: Short Circuit… you are either really cool, or you at least read the title.   I don’t care because either way you are awesome in my book.  The movie is about an inventor that never leaves his lab and is constantly working on developing the perfect robot (kind of sounds a lot like pool players…)  Any way Johnny Five (and the other robots, at least 4 that we know of) is at his military debut when a freak storm rolls in…. and you guessed it:  Number 5 is hit by lightning!  The lightning causes him to Short Circuit bringing him to life… which makes perfect sense so please don’t question the validity of this plot; as a Five year old it clearly made sense to me and still does to this day.

In pool it works almost exactly like the movie.   Usually we start playing pool because it is fun and we like making balls.  Then the following Exact Scientific Sequence Happens: 1. We watch The Hustler, then we decide to play straight pool against Larry from down the road who has never seen or heard of Minesota Fats,  The Hustler,  or straight pool, but we beat him anyway in a race to 24 balls.  But who cares because we won.  2. Then we watch The Color of Money, which we rewind and watch about 8 more times.  Now we have moved on to batton twirling, Werewolves of London, and most importantly 9 ball.  This is now the only game we play and we get really pissed when we lose to our friends because we leave the 8 and 9 after making the 1 through 7.   3. We decide we hate 9 ball and go back to good old 8 ball as 9 ball is clearly for bangers anyway right?  (We also maintain that safeties are for women and continue playing only offense).  4.  We play in a few more matches,  5. We see Efren Reyes run 7 racks in a row on ESPN and that’s when it happens…. Johnny Five comes alive and we are struck by lightning.  We become cyborg robots obsessed with learning all we can and becoming great at the game of pool.  After hours of practice and reading we play in a big match or tournament and we are certain we have outworked 90% of people in that room.  Then the unthinkable happens.. that’s right, we play like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (see an earlier post).

For a lot of players this is when we can get discouraged and maybe even start feeling down and burnt out.  For me(and a lot of others too) the opposite happens… it makes me mad!  But not in a bad way, or at the person I am playing.  I get mad at myself because pool is a very honest game( if we were robots we would make no mistakes but we aren’t… well maybe Efren is, but they don’t have tests for robots that advanced yet) and if we aren’t playing as good as we like to it means we either had an off day  or need to practice more. ( Actually, it just means we need to practice more).  Sometimes the answer is both…   Wanting to win every time we play is not a bad thing, but being realistic about why we want to win and what we are doing about it is!  If you’re goal is to win your local league or the U.S. open, the only thing we can control is getting better each day.  The competitions are just telling us where we are at on that day so who cares.  I can’t remember what I did this morning, so by tomorrow I will have already forgotten what I had planned for yesterday… or something like that.

Johhny Five doesn't always drink.... but when he does, he prefers Gin and Tonic

Practicing drills for hours at a time and making no visible progress sucks!   I have proof: it’s called the stupid IPAT 2 workbook…  (I am writing this after just practicing IPAT 2 and after about 25 minutes of not making it past the 4th ball on a 10 ball drill I thought about taking up knitting; but I clearly don’t have the coordination and I would almost certainly end up poking myself in the finger and bleeding all over the place ruining the stupid afghan I was working so hard on in the first place)  so I decided to stick with pool and went on to fail a different 6 ball 3 rail position drill about 15 times.   But I don’t care because I get a little bit better every time I practice.  Track your results and map out a plan; then do it!  So what if Starla(not her real name but eerily close) at Gary’s thinks your intense or maybe a little nuts.   For me the best way to recharge is to not Short Circuit in the first place and remind myself of a famous Angus Young Quote:

It’s a long way to the Top if you want to Rock and Roll so don’t get Thunderstruck and Short Circuit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RukUetw0hAM&ob=av3n

Click on this link and I guarantee you will be thunderstruck and come to life just like Johnny Five (and be ready to kick some serious ahhhh… pool balls.)

-Johnny Five

For this drill the goal is to pocket the 4 and walk the cue ball through each of the 6 lanes you can add or subtract balls to make this easier or more difficult.

Good Luck

Cut the 8 ball in the corner for the Win

For this week’s drill I thought I ‘d go with a situation that came up during a game.  You are solids and the only ball left is the 8.  There’s only 1 problem: your opponent played a tough safety and you have this shot for the win.   I think the best approach on this one is to line up the shot with a level cue and then elevate into it (almost like a jump shot).   The trick is to see the shot angle correctly and hit the center of the cue ball.

Thanks for reading and Good Luck!

A good instructor is the key to long term success in pool and so I wanted to incorporate it into Appetite for Pool.  

So here’s the game plan: on the First week of every month I will add a quick 10-15 question  interview from a different instructor from around the country as well as how to contact them.  The result will be a lot of good advice and alternative perspectives of how to train and play better pool.  Which is kind of the point and unless you are Mike or Crutch the reason you are reading this!

For the 1st interview I decided to interview my coach Denny Stewart.  He is an awesome coach and a great person.   If you have a chance to work with him, do it!

1. What first got you interested in Pool?

 I Started playing Bumper pool at the age of seven and loved it. Then started playing pool at the Boys Club and fell in love with game! I have been playing it now for almost 46 years! And you know I still love playing this great game.

2. How long have you been an instructor?

TEACHING EXPERIENCE: – 26 years teaching Individuals and groups. (Hundreds of Satisfied students)

Graduate of The Pool School in Madison,Wis.  Under the tutelage of Master BCA Instructor Jerry Brieseth.

Also a graduate from the College of Cueing Arts, Cue Sport Billiard Academy, under the guidance of Master BCA Instructor Fred Fechter.

Currently on the International Staff of Cue Sport Billiard Academy and College in Peoria, Il.

3. If there were any 1 thing you could change about your students (generally) what would it be?

With a new player it’s pretty basic. They need to work on all of the Fundamentals.

4. What is your favorite pool tournament that you have ever been to or played in and why?

Probably the Super Billiard Expo in Valley Forge, Pa. is my favorite tournament to go to every year.  I get to watch a lot of my students play in the event and I get to see old friends and meet new ones.

 5. APA or BCA … (which league do you prefer for students)

I really don’t have any preference for them to play in.  I hope they really enjoy playing the game regardless of what game they are playing. It’s great for them to compete every week and continue to make progress in their game.

6. What is your favorite game to play, and which do you think is best to help students grow their games?

I like playing all the games but over the years I got to say I like One Pocket the best. As far students go in every game they play there are challenges. Whether it be in 8Ball, 9Ball, 14.1 or 1Pocket.

7. What kind of chalk do you play with?

Masters and Kumai

8. If you could give three pieces of advice to up and coming players what would they be?

Get Lessons, play in tournaments, leagues and most of all enjoy playing!

9. Do you have a favorite book or dvd on pool?

There are many great books and dvd’s out there. Great to read or watch but none of them tell you how you are playing.

10. What makes a great pool player in your opinion?

They understand what it takes to get there and have the dedication and work ethic to do it!

What is the best way to get a hold of you or reach you for lessons?

Probably the easiest way to get a hold of me is to email me > ohiopoolschool@yahoo.com  or on Facebook.  You can also Google search for Ohio Pool School.

Thank you to Denny for all of his help and input!

my marshmallow pool game

I think this just about sums it up.    The moral of this story is that to perform at our best we need to play often. I need to practice a lot more.  This game is very honest and it is important to keep playing tough competition and putting in the table time.  On the bright side the competition down here is great; and I will be able to learn a ton and continue getting better each match.

Thanks for reading and remember to:     -Stay Puft

This is a very tricky drill that forces the correct use of good follow through and right hand english(assuming you are pocketing the object ball in the right hand cornner) to get the cue ball around the table 3 rails for the 8.  Another option may be to cut the ball into the cornner with draw but this puts a lot of throw on the cue ball and I think would decrease the odds of making this shot.

Good luck this one, it is from IPAT 2  if you have a better way to get the cue ball around the table I am all for it?