Billiards

By NYC Grind Contributor, Mark Finkelstein I’m off to Tampa to teach another seminar with Tom Simpson. I always enjoy working with people that are improving their game. This week I want to look at ways that our runs stop, and some ways to eliminate some of these errors. Small improvements over time make for big gains in your game. First is missing the shot! A lot of misses come about because we shoot the shot with out a clear picture in our mind of what we want to do with the shot, and we jump up. Make sure you finish every shot. Have a clear idea of what you are doing on the shot and stay down on the shot. This means you have to slow down a little and have a plan. Watch any good player and you will see how much time they take on some shots. They don’t get down until they have a clear picture in their mind what they want to do. The next run stopper is losing the cue ball. Their are two things to look at here. Play better patterns that don’t have the cue ball moving around so much, and secondly, shoot softer. The less the cue ball moves, the easier it is for you to control where it will stop. These run stoppers probably aren’t much of a surprise to you, but I want to add 3 other to this list as a lot of advanced players fall into these traps. Losing the middle ball in a combination stops a lot of nice runs. What happened in this diagram is that after cutting the one ball to the right, it kept going to the long rail. Our shooter was so focused on making the shot, that the cue ball only went to the end rail, not leaving a high percentage shot on the one. Make sure you take the extra time to figure out how to play position on the middle ball so that your run can continue. The next area that stops runs is blasting away at a dead shot, and then winding up with no next shot. This is the kind of cruel fate you that can happen to you if you blast away at dead balls and don’t take the time to play position on another ball. The trick is to know where the cue ball is heading and control the speed and the other balls so that you are left with some options.You’d have to look really close, but this combination might also work if you went in to the 7 first, leaving you the 11 no matter what else happened. The specifics of this particular dead shot are not as important as the idea, when you have a dead shot, don’t just blast away at it, make sure you play position on the next shot so your run continues. The next run stopper that I want to look at is separating clusters of 2 to 4 or 5 balls. Again, if you are not careful, it is easy to stick on a ball or get left with out a shot. Look what happened to me the other day. I was on a nice little run. cruising right along, and I thought I was going to hit the 8 on the side nearest the 2 to leave me another shot. I didn’t take enough time and wound up stuck on the back of the 8 with out another shot! The trick is to take adequate time planning the shot so that you don’t make the mistake I did. The final run stopper I want to look at is bumping in to balls when you don’t have to. Eliminate this error and your game will come up at least one ball. Pay attention for a week how many games are lost or thrown away because the player bumped a make-able ball. Watch how good players take pains to not hit other balls! MENTAL TRAINING TIP: The Japanese have an expression called ‘kaizen’, and it means steady improvement. Adopting this attitude for our pool game will help you play better. Every miss, loss or bad game isn’t seen as an ego destroying event, but rather as an opportunity to learn something. As CJ Wiley says, “the game is the teacher”. After every miss, loss or bad shot, when you have a quiet moment, rather than beating yourself up, ask what the game is trying to teach you. I miss a lot of shots when I am teaching and have learned I can’t shoot and talk at the same time. If you take the time to learn the lesson of each miss, and apply it to your game, you will get better. This accepting

One of the nation’s top regional WPBA qualifier tours is back in swing in 2013… as the J. Pechauer Northeast Women’s Tour’s (JPNEWT) season got underway at Triple Nines Bar & Billiards on April 20-21. The event, which was a qualifier for the WPBA US Open, was taken by storm by 20-year-old World #3-Ranked Siming Chen of China, who defeated newly-inducted BCA Hall of Famer Karen Corr in the finals. New York’s Yomaylin Feliz came in strong in third place in this event, while Kathy Friend finished in fourth. Check out the video of the final match between Corr & Chen below. Video streaming by Ustream This weekend, May 18-19, the JPNEWT will be heading to New York for it’s second tour stop of the season, to be held at Raxx Pool Room in West Hempstead, NY on Long Island. The event will be a qualifier for the Ultimate 10-Ball Championships, set to take place on June 16-20 (www.Ultimate10Ball.com). Check out the complete results from the event at Triple Nines below, in the story by

For many pool players, the ultimate dream is to have the opportunity to play alongside the world’s best in an international competition. Each year, Dragon Promotions, the producer of the World Tournament of 14.1 gives players around the U.S. that opportunity, as they hold qualifiers for the international straight pool tournament. Dragon Promotions has now announced the dates and locations for the 2013 qualifiers, read on for more details… Amsterdam Billiards & Red Shoe Billiards Lead National Qualifiers for the World Tournament NYC's Amsterdam Billiards New York, New York – Straight pool players across the United States will have opportunity to qualify and earn a free spot into the world’s most prestigious 14.1 event. Qualifiers will be held for the 8th year in a row since Dragon Promotions revival of the World Tournament back in 2006. Another star studded field is expected at this year’s 73rd World Tournament hosted by Steinway Billiards in New York on August 19th-24th,2013.

“Sorry it took so long to climb those steps, this burnout’s a killer,” was Barry Hearn’s opening gambit in his speech at the World Snooker Awards in London last week.It was a good line and got a big laugh. It also underlined Hearn’s attitude to players complaining that their workload is too arduous since the circuit rapidly expanded under his chairmanship.Hearn has previously suggested players “go and tell the working man on the street they are burnt out,” the assumption being that the working man on the street would give them short shrift.Jason Ferguson, the WPBSA chairman, appears to agree. He told prosnookerblog: “my father worked down the mines all his life, he did 12 hour shifts digging coal out, he did it year-in, year-out and I never heard him complain once.”To be fair to Ferguson, he takes a more nuanced view than Hearn. He also said: “Some people might say, oh poor things, they are doing something that they love, they are out there, in front of an audience, everybody likes them, they have become cele

At the Saturday, May 11 House of Billiards Tri-State Tour stop, Mike Aro made his mark as the undefeated victor out of a field of thirty total players who came together at the Staten Island, NY pool room. After having recently finished third at the March 24 tour stop at Clifton Billiards, Mike Aro stepped up play strong once again. On his route through the winner’s bracket, Aro defeated Wade Alston 8-6, Juan Maldonado 6-0, Sam Smuke 6-5, and Thomas Rice 6-0 to get into the winner’s side final. Koka Davladze would also come through the winner’s bracket to make it to the hot seat after defeating Bogie Uzdejczyk 7-2. But, Mike Aro stayed on track to earn a 8-6 win and a spot in the final match. After Uzdejczyk was sent to the one-loss side by Davladze, he rebounded with a 8-6 win in the quarterfinal against Gerard Nahay, had a great run through the loser’s bracket to finish in fourth place. Bogie Uzdejczyk then moved on to the semifinal, where he would make a turnaround from his previous

Unity and positive progress for the sport of pool are two elements that many members of pool community hope to see an increase of in the future. Recently, promoter of the much-anticipated Ultimate 10-Ball Championships Badi Nazhat made an exciting announcement of some changes for the event that will be great news for the players. Read on for details in the letter from Badi Nazhat below… Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Badi Nazhat and I am the Promoter of the Ultimate 10-Ball Championships. I join with all of you who appreciate and enjoy the game of pocket billiards. I would like to start by saying that I have invested in my passion for professional pool over half a million dollars since my first event in Aruba some three years ago. Within the heart of that passion lies a very simple belief that is easily understood but sometimes appears difficult to apply. That belief is in unity and brotherhood in the billiard world. That belief is in a team of professionals who all move towards a comm

I had a really weird moment the other day.What was bizarre about this moment, was I got embarrassed, but it was after a positive gesture.Normally I get embarrassed over a negative thing that happened, but this time it happened after something good happened.I had played a couple of safes against a really good player on the men's league in our playoffs. I hooked him on my last safe by snuggling the cueball up to one of my balls behind a stack of balls. He tried to hit one of his balls; any one of them; but he didn't.I saw the layout and even though my balls were close together in clusters, they were still make-able. I saw the run (made a plan) and started to execute the run of 7 balls.I took my time.My heart was beating out of my chest because this guy was their top player and I had a chance to win the game against him.I had a combo two balls before the 8ball and admittedly, didn't know if I would have a shot or not left. Instead, I made both balls. Yikes!There were so many of his balls around my combo, I

As I mentioned a few times, I played in my Monday night league playoffs last weekend.Although there are ten teams, I found myself the ONLY female that played in the playoffs that weekend! You talk about feeling special. :)I felt pretty flattered that my captain even played me; he didn't have to do that. There are several other females who play on that league but none of them played in any of the matches during the playoffs.Yep, it felt cool! A lot of pressure to play well with all those eyes on me, but cool nonetheless.On Sunday, after we won, the new waitress saw me at the bar ordering a drink. She stops me and says, "I just want to tell you that you play AWESOME! I was very impressed.""Oh, that's nice, thank you," I respond back.Then she adds, "And if you are going to qualify for the U.S. Amateur Nationals, don't play in the one in Round Rock, TX" as she walks away briskly to fetch orders.Um, okay then, lol. Then about 15 minutes later, one of the wives on the opposing team stops me and says, "I just

Snooker Legends has been a successful series of exhibitions featuring players who helped make the game such a successful TV phenomenon.Launched four years ago by Jason Francis, it has attracted large crowds to various venues around the UK.Nostalgia tends to be the past with all the bad bits forgotten. However, the players in the legends really are that – players who have become household names through their success and popularity.The Legends mixes fun with competition. One of its pulling powers is that it isn’t grimly serious like tournament play but neither is it a bash-up.This weekend, the Legends will be televised for the first time, by Eurosport. The Rok Stars Cup features two star-studded teams: Dennis Taylor, Ronnie O’Sullivan, Jimmy White and Steve Davis v Cliff Thorburn, Stephen Hendry, Neil Robertson and Tony Drago. So just the 21 world titles between them.It will be O’Sullivan’s first outing since winning a fifth world title earlier this week. He was on good form at the World Snooker awards last nig

By NYC Grind founder & contributor, Jerry Tarantola While legendary New York pro and Predator Tour owner Tony Robles has been busy building his amateur league the NAPL (National Amateur Pool League), and working towards growing the billiards industry in new and positive ways, it is clear that he still knows how to win. Although he doesn’t have much time to practice or even teach as much as he would like, Tony broke through to earn his first win of the 2013 season at the Predator Pro/Am Tour’s seventh stop, held at Cue Bar in Bayside, NY on May 4-5. The one-day Open/Pro 10-Ball division of the event was held on Sunday, May 5, and featured several stand-out players such as former World Champion Mika Immonen, and top New York area players Zion Zvi, Jonathan Smith, and Joey Korsiak. NYC Grind contributor Brian Leong was on site for the event for both days of the event, check out his photos at the links below. Day 1 – http://www.nycgrind.com/photo-galleries-2/regional-tours/photo-galleries/predator-pro