[Leg]

Fast Larry,
I have been playing 9-ball on extremely slow cloth for 7 years. Not being especially proficient in position play early on, I developed a habit of getting as straight as I could on shots. I learned to move the cue-ball around these slow, sticky tables real good. Not so much because I believed this was the best way to play pool, but because it is so much fun to juice-up the ball and go 3 rails for position. I now want to transition my game to worn-shiny simonis 760 with lively rails. Naturally I'm all over the place, over-running position by 6 feet. What advice and/or drills would you suggest? I'm especially interested in developing the ability to kill speed and hold up for position. I'm finding many shots I'm used to on the slow cloth impossible to perform on fast tables- draw, follow, and english all conspire to add several feet of travel to whitey.

[MitchAlsup]

You only have to hit the CB hard enough to pot the OB.

Anything harder than this is done to obtain the position you desire. Since you are running way by where you want, quit hitting it so hard. Quit using english to stop the ball, use the natural momentum of the CB instead of draw/follow (to the extent possible).

Delicate soft strokes. You should be able to place an OB 2 ball widths from the edge of a corner pocket shelf and take a CB from the opposite corner, roll the CB in such a way that you hit the OB towards the pocket, but with little enough energy that it stops before rolling in. Its almost like lagging for break on every shot except you are only going 1 length of the table.

Get a CB with 6 spots so you can see the spin on the CB. It is likely that you are using a lot more than you think. Use as little spin (draw/follow and right/left english) as possible until you get a hold of the speed of the new cloth. Learn to slow roll the CB. Once you get a hold of the speed, then slowly add spin back to your game without adding the power back into your game.

[Leg]

MitchAlsup, on Nov 10 2009, 10:53 AM, said:

You only have to hit the CB hard enough to pot the OB.

Anything harder than this is done to obtain the position you desire. Since you are running way by where you want, quit hitting it so hard. Quit using english to stop the ball, use the natural momentum of the CB instead of draw/follow (to the extent possible).

Delicate soft strokes. You should be able to place an OB 2 ball widths from the edge of a corner pocket shelf and take a CB from the opposite corner, roll the CB in such a way that you hit the OB towards the pocket, but with little enough energy that it stops before rolling in. Its almost like lagging for break on every shot except you are only going 1 length of the table.

Get a CB with 6 spots so you can see the spin on the CB. It is likely that you are using a lot more than you think. Use as little spin (draw/follow and right/left english) as possible until you get a hold of the speed of the new cloth. Learn to slow roll the CB. Once you get a hold of the speed, then slowly add spin back to your game without adding the power back into your game.

Thanks for your reply, I do have a measles cue-ball. Shooting softer is an over-simplification of the problem. This is the "Ask Fast Larry" column right?

[MitchAlsup]

The physics of the fast cloth means that the spin effect take place over a longer distance on the table. Say we have two tables that are identical in every respect except the speed of the felt, and that if a CB is hit with energy X on table Ts it will roll 1 diamond, and n the other table Tf it will roll 2 diamonds. If you were to hit your drag shot on Ts and it performed as you are accoustomed, then you were to hit that drag shot on Tf; less than 1/2 of the speed reduction will have taken place by the time the CB hits the OB. Thus, in order to hit the OB at the properly adjusted speed, you need to use the same amount of spin but with 1/2 of the CB velocity, or hit with (moe than) 2X the spin at the same velocity.

Larry is free to come in and respond, and I invite him to do so.

[FASTLARRY]

I always preferred 760 and played on nothing but it at home and in my shows for years. I even heated my slate which made it even faster. The world has always preferred it, when our pros wanted the slower 860. Then the IPT and sigel comes along pushing even a slower cloth which was more like the rugs he came up on.

If you are playing on nothing but bar box rugs and go to a 9' 760, you are double fooked dude. You have no chance. When I was the coach at Ga Tech, I would change my 300 cloths out every 90 days on my two 3-cushion tables, and these are very expensive, and way too fast for pool. Rick Wright would change out my cloths, put these 10' cloths in his washing machine, let them dry on a line, so they would not shrink too much, flip them over to the un used side, and he had a new cloth after he ironed the wrinkles out of it. He would install it on the action 9' pool table and he was a TASA world champion at trick shots and had exceptional fine touch and feel, plus he was a real pool pro, came in 4th in the US Open once, so he could play. The roadies could come in his joint coming off rugs and bar boxes and get on that 300 and he had them by the nuts. I would play him and be running 3 and 4' past everything, but that sucker had that fast speed down cold. But when you get an ultra fast cloth, and I have seen some 760 worn thin for 3 years that were slick as glass, and there are many shots, that just cant be made or the cue ball stopped and shut down. They then become, unfair.

I stock both 760 and 860, charge the same for both, and I have put in the new Humidity resistant 860 for the south.

Never put 760 on a 7 or 8' table, its too damn fast, only use it on a 9' pool or 10' snooker table.

If you want to slow a cloth down, wet a towel, clean the cloth, it raises the fibers. If you want to speed one up, iron the cloth with heat. It presses them down.

You cant jump back and forth between slow and fast and have any real success. You need to master one of them and stay away from the other. I did shows for 3 days on bar boxes and then went to 760. I spent several hours just practicing trying to get the feel of the faster cloth. When I would run past, I would just keep shooting each shot, until I got it right. It's easy to go from fast to slow, hard to go from slow to fast.

[Leg]

FASTLARRY, on Nov 11 2009, 05:53 PM, said:

If you want to slow a cloth down, wet a towel, clean the cloth, it raises the fibers. If you want to speed one up, iron the cloth with heat. It presses them down.

You cant jump back and forth between slow and fast and have any real success. You need to master one of them and stay away from the other. I did shows for 3 days on bar boxes and then went to 760. I spent several hours just practicing trying to get the feel of the faster cloth. When I would run past, I would just keep shooting each shot, until I got it right. It's easy to go from fast to slow, hard to go from slow to fast.

Thanks Larry. Update: I now carry my own set of aramith balls to my practice room, pull out my table brush and throughly clean the table, laying the nap down from head to foot. The tables here play much faster now. Today I spent 7 hours on full-table cut shots using no english. This is totally alien to me and it shocked me to find how far off my sight pictures were for center-ball. At one point I took 3 cue-balls and froze them to object-balls exactly at the fattest part of the pocket from difficult angles. I then spent over an hour walking around the table and lining up on these shots, pretending I was cutting the balls in with a firm draw-stroke to make throw a minimum consideration. It really helped me re-calibrate my sight picture. At the end of the day, I threw out racks of 9 and practiced running balls without any english. At first it was like learning to play all over again. I eventually got it together and ran out a few times. I was shocked at how easy the runnouts happened. I never made a single difficult shot, and most shots were soft to medium strokes. I can't wait to get back to the table and do some more! I'm thinking about sneaking an iron in with me to try that. Should I be worried about burning the cloth? What setting do you recommend, - I don't iron clothes.

[Demondrew]

Leg, on Nov 19 2009, 09:58 AM, said:

Thanks Larry. Update: I now carry my own set of aramith balls to my practice room, pull out my table brush and throughly clean the table, laying the nap down from head to foot. The tables here play much faster now. Today I spent 7 hours on full-table cut shots using no english. This is totally alien to me and it shocked me to find how far off my sight pictures were for center-ball. At one point I took 3 cue-balls and froze them to object-balls exactly at the fattest part of the pocket from difficult angles. I then spent over an hour walking around the table and lining up on these shots, pretending I was cutting the balls in with a firm draw-stroke to make throw a minimum consideration. It really helped me re-calibrate my sight picture. At the end of the day, I threw out racks of 9 and practiced running balls without any english. At first it was like learning to play all over again. I eventually got it together and ran out a few times. I was shocked at how easy the runnouts happened. I never made a single difficult shot, and most shots were soft to medium strokes. I can't wait to get back to the table and do some more! I'm thinking about sneaking an iron in with me to try that. Should I be worried about burning the cloth? What setting do you recommend, - I don't iron clothes.

Before you sneak an iron in think and be careful. If they have matched the slate seams with beeswax you could do more harm than good. Unless the cloth is a heavy nap like Mali or Gorina you wont see any noticable difference.

[FASTLARRY]

Demondrew, on Nov 19 2009, 10:55 AM, said:

Before you sneak an iron in think and be careful. If they have matched the slate seams with beeswax you could do more harm than good. Unless the cloth is a heavy nap like Mali or Gorina you wont see any noticable difference.

Simonis and Gorina are exactly the same, made the same way, mali is like a thick rug compared to them. I never use wax, I only use bondo. Wax in about a year, can shrink up and vanish. But when you iron a cloth, its like a shirt, you keep the iron moving and there is not enough heat that will go through to melt the wax. And if you did, the wax would only soften, then firm back up, where can it go? You only need a couple of fast passes to suck the moisture out or to remove a wrinkle. Just be aware where the 2 seems are and don't stop there, or anywhere. I have ironed 760 and 860 simonis boo coo times with no problemo's. Telling people they can do this, or they can take a wet towel and clean their cloth, most won't do it, they are afraid it will do harm, and few will trust me on this. Installers using wax, are just being lazy and cheap. I have an ongoing war with several of them, over this.