Pool

Mason l.​ ​English 10

Imagine you’re a firefighter after a long week, you stop in at a bar with

your buddies and are weary from your week ready to wind down the week with a few
drinks and maybe a game of pool. I’ve heard stories for the longest time in my family
about my grandpa along with other firefighters playing pool at their union hall on friday
nights to have fun and enjoy themselves over a few drinks. I never really understood
that till recently..In this generation it’s possible to go your life without playing a game of
actual pool in our digitally advanced age. Pool can be accepting to just about everyone
as the game is very differential in how the skill levels work between the most
competitive and casual players. In general the game is very welcoming and is a great
thing to play to relax yourself. Consider picking up a pool cue and joining in on the fun
before the new coming age forgets about the game. To give a brief history Pool overall
is a rather basic sport it entails an even number of both solid colored and striped balls
that must be knocked into holes on the billiards table to “score” in a way. The balls are
struck and broken up by a single white ball on the board to begin the game however if a
ball is knocked in on the break of the balls it will not count towards your score at the
beginning of the game and for each of the people playing end up being given either
solids or stripes based on which kind of ball they manage to knock into the pocket at the
start of the game. Whichever kind they have will be kept to their scoring for the duration
of the game, however if the opponent still manages to knock one of your balls into one
of the pockets it will stand and you will now have less work. Turns are divided up based
on when someone manages to not hit a ball successfully into a pocket the ball will be
turned over to the next person. This is known as “scratching”. And on the note of
scratching in more serious games of pool the 8 ball comes with its own rule of the
scratch and if it's knocked into a pocket before all balls of either solids or stripes have
been knocked in. Depending on which ball you were playing with the person who
scratches the 8 ball will lose. However most people you might play a just fun game with
will throw the 8 ball back on the table and resume playing. Overall pool is simple and
complex depending on how you choose to format and play your game but regardless it’s
still a fun experience to learn and test your abilities.
I got into my first week now playing pool and i’m absolutely terrible as to be
expected however intend to work on my game and talk with people more about how to
play. It’s seeming right now that it’s going to be a long couple of weeks playing but i’m
ready to grow
As I researched pool more I found It has its competitive points and it has points that are
just plainly casual. Rules between each may vary. After beginning to play i decided to
look more at the casual end of play.
Pool to my mind is perhaps one of the most addicting games you can possibly play. It
has great nuance and play that I fail to find in any other game that I play it takes precise
angling efficiency and precision that I’ve found most other games can’t mirror. Whether
it’s a causal game of shuffleboard or pocket billiards the games are just plain fun. This
as I’ve stated is a rather new concept to me as I only just picked up the game as a sort
of hobby to perform in my free time. It’s an enjoyable game where you can either go all
in and be competitive to high degrees or it’s entirely possible for you to just sit back with
your pool cue and spend quality time with friends. Most people may have differing
opinions to me in terms of how they feel towards the game. I’ve found that throughout
interviews I’ve conducted many interviews and found that people see pool as an overly
boring game that is too basic and they simply struggle to have fun when playing. That
coming from a generation of which I am a part of that clouds their faces and minds with
video games and electronic devices daily just makes me sad. They find the game too
difficult in that they can’t just find an unfair way to win the game in my opinion. To those
people who find it boring for any reason I implore you to please slow down and take
your time at learning how the game works and operates at your own slow pace. Frankly
I’m afraid that if generations like my own and future generations which are bound to
have more technology may lose out on a truly fun way to spend your free time with
friends family or anyone in between.

As i’m now playing more pool i’m slowly getting better and improving but not by much
i’ve been speaking more with my grandfather about the proper ways to hold the sticks
when striking the cue ball and the different ways to hit the ball when either breaking or
striking a ball into a pocket. It’s been enjoyable

Pool is interesting and but at times it can be poorly done and just isn’t fun. To now
add an example of how to poorly execute the game Bumper pool is an absolute travesty
of a game it has none of the nuance of a real game of pool and instead attempts to be a
boiled down pretender of what the game can really be and a wannabe knock off of pong
the most basic game ever created.It really misses a big point in the fact that pool isn’t
really meant to be a very fast game and when you do make it fast you really take out a
lot of the little moments where you figure out a key shot or are just shooting with little
reason but still thinking. Instead bumper pool decides to make the game much more
fast paced and more action oriented .This game can be found in a number of different
ways one of them being “game pigeon” a brainless texting app people use to play
games with each other as they compete. See however the thing is in the same exact
app you can play an actual game of digital pool which in itself is still mindless and
boring and in my opinion also dumbs down the quality of the game. This game can as
well be found on forms of media downloading services such as the steam game store
and the App Store on both Samsung and apple products. Overall bumper pool is a
simple game about facing off against someone else and attempting to knock balls into
the holes on the other side. Please before you consider playing this terrible game
please consider that in the physical world you can actually play a real game of pool and
have 3x the fun of this mobile travesty of a game.
 Week 3 and I’m happily showing improvement. I attempted my first trick shot and
absolutely missed and made the white ball jump off the table but I had a good time
making the attempt.
As you’ve noticed I’ve been ending off my weeks worth of research to this point and
now I will use the entirety of this paper to entail some of my own experiences playing
pool up to this point and highlight my favorite games I’ve played as of yet in the project
process.
To begin my play has gotten significantly better. I’m enjoying testing my skills
working at new goals. My current goal is to land a trick shot while lying on top of the
pool table.
I came very close earlier today to pulling one off in what I can confidently say at
this point has been my best game of pool that I had played yet. After about an hour of
mediocre games where I was having little luck of landing any defining or even winning a
single game. My frustration was building and I was ready to give up for the day till I
decided to play one more game. This game was a blast up until the very end. Me and
my opponent were basically neck and neck through out and my excitement was
building. Towards the end of the game I decided to use a tactic to try and throw off my
opponent I tried a trick shot and very nearly made it in. I could tell this threw him off his
rhythm as he proceeded to scratch the ball and I had the white ball back. Given that this
game was rather competitive I had to put the ball down in the middle of the table, once I
did I pulled off a perfect ricochet knocking in the last 2 striped balls I needed. After this
exchange the white ball was in a perfect position for me to win the game. I cleanly
knocked it in and the game
Was mine. I enjoyed the satisfaction of taking out my opponent and left lucky strike
social happy. I again can say with full confidence that this was easily my best game of
pool yet and I look forward to moving on to reach my current goal while playing
 Furthermore past my personal data I believe it is important to highlight After long
times of pool being known as a casual hobby it has evolved into more competition
based and in general more competitive as a whole. Cue sports while always being
popular were transformed around 1893 to fit a more competitive end of the game as
well as appeal to more people and get them to join in and pick up the game. In between
my games of pool as i began to get more competitive i began viewing more serious
games and competitions and even tried to get in contact with a few pro players, though i
sadly received no responses.Contrary to popular belief there is far more than one way
to play the game of pool the most recent being introduced into the world level games in
Germany in 2005 and the whole umbrella can be included in their technical name
“billiard sports”. In an article i found on billiards.colostate.edu written by joe waldron he
states that when it comes to competitive billiards sports players don’t prefer to play
someone who is very inferior to them. Then the game isn’t fun to them. They prefer to
play people who are only mildly different from them in terms of skill level. LIke all other
sports of course pool can come with lots of competitive anxiety and as a result a game
of pool or any other billiards sports can be ruined and players could just have very little
fun and not enjoy themselves. A good amount of the game of pool is mental more than
physical. Learning angles and psyching out your opponent is a very big part of billiard
sports. I’ve learned throughout the probably 50 or so games i’ve played at friends
houses or at a local club or recreational area where pool is available to be played. To
close out this topic i believe i’ve been getting a lot better overall at pool. I’m really
enjoying my experimentation of new ways to hit the ball and enjoying hitting trick shot
type moves. On top of that i’ve also been watching a lot of new competitive pool
competitions and i’ve actually attempted to reach out to a couple of pro players to get
feedback on my game and see what makes them enjoy the game so much that they
decided to make a career out of playing a game that on the surface is so complex but
when you really look at it is a very complex and fun sport.
In addition to the competitive games of pool I have found There are many
different cue sports and each one is unique in its own way. Pool being the most popular
as I’m sure you’ve assumed by now I’m going to use this paper to clarify just what it is
that distinguishes other cue sports from pool as well as organize them in an order that
situates there popularity in comparison to pool as well as determine different rules and
styles for playing the different games

I will divide up the most interesting ones I’ve found by paragraph and explains
the different nuances and such of each individual sport beginning with novuss. Novuss
is a national sport of Latvia similar to other cue sports such as Karrom (which I’ll touch
more on later) and pocket billiards. The game entails of a 100 centimeter square table
on which each player is given a puck and must sink 8 small disc like objects into 4
respective pockets on the board. Due to its similarity to pool and other cue sports it’s
been given the nickname “Baltic billiard” or “Scandinavian billiards”. Games similar to
novuss are played all over the world in countries like Finland and even the Philippines
have certain cultural games similar to each other from completely different continents
suggesting some sort of heritage perhaps shared between the 2 places.

My second focus of odd cue sports will detail shuffle board a very curious cousin
to the umbrella of billiards in that it is scored rather differently and also instead of balls
uses a special weighted puck that is pushed with a broom like stick on a long wooden
table. Shooting in the game of shuffle board is done directly with hands rather than the
cue or broom like sticks used to play the game otherwise. Scoring is generally done by
using ones puck to knock your opponents puck out of the the scoring board and allow
more of your pucks to enter smoothly. This is quite similar to the winter Olympic sport of
curling which now that I think of it is an oversized version of shuffleboard

Overall cue sports are rather broad and have many different styles as well as
many different games that can be played from smaller puck bound versions of pool on
square tables in Europe to large oversized versions of curling which is a legitimate
recognized Olympic sport.
More further The thought of plateauing in any sport or hobby is frightening. The fact that
you can just stop getting any better at what you are pursuing is a scary thought. In this
paper, I will describe what can be done to avoid plateauing in pool as well as what can
be done if you are already in the middle of a plateau like I am at the moment.

To begin the idea of plateauing comes from a time when you stop gaining skill from
a particular point of your training. For example in pool you will attempt for a long time to
hit new and exciting shots on the table but you will never really attain that higher level of
play that can distinguish a pro from a beginner with small changes. In an article I read
on the subject of pool it was stated that to avoid a plateau in your skill slow down your
training and pay attention to small things you can change in how you play the game
instead of making great leaps to much more complex things than you’re used to.
However if you find yourself already in a plateau it’s important to step back from the
game and take about a week break off then return to see how you feel and how you
perform in a game. This is something I’ve been working on all week I’m slowly building
back up my drive to compete and learn about the sport of pool.

As I haven’t played much this week will not have an entry due to lack of any real
relevant events in my games.

As I moved forward from my plateau I found that Throughout the world people do lots of
different sports and for each one of those sports people train and practice hard so they
can succeed at whatever sport they may be competing in. Pool believe it or not is no
different in the aspect of training for success. it takes precision and practice to make
some of the shots that competitive pool players take on a daily basis.

People who play pool casually will be surprised to know that pool is actually very
interesting when it comes to it's training. Unlike most sports where the ball you use to
practice can as well be used for playing an actual game of whatever sport you may be
playing whether it be football, soccer, basketball, etc. However in pool there are actually
specific balls and different kinds of sticks that are selected and held to suit a person's
comfort while playing. they can be bought to perfect and train perfect forms of some
shots including everything from things like complicated jump shots to just basic simple
shots. The way these balls are made is actually very weird as they are made using a
kind of "measure by numbers way" of aiming the ball so it can connect with others and
sink shots. it does this by training the person to observe certain numbers as they
correspond to different points on the ball. Similar things are done with colored dots
placed on the cue ball to indicate the best places and angles to strike a cue ball at for
the most effective shot.

Now that we've covered the balls we can only assume how poolplayers train
given the different kinds of cue balls they use. Some take the approach of a clear cue
ball to practice simple shots and other more complex physical shots to hit. whereas
other players use things like numbers and dots to intellectually determine where a ball
will go based on the way the ball is oriented and the best given direction for the ball to
travel in.

Well to begin it's now week 8 and i have played so much pool that it's practically
hard not to hold a cue and ball in my hand at all times. enjoying how competitive it can
be right from the moment the first pile of balls is separated to the time when the 8 ball is
sunk in and you are either victorious or upset while being happy regardless. pool for me
over these past few weeks has became a really good way for me to reduce stress and
have fun with friends. It's been very enjoyable playing with some of my best friends in
games of pool and watching them grow into better players with me as i was always
forcing them to play with for the sake of my project.

In conclusion Pool is a great experience. Over the past few weeks not only have i
perfected and enjoyed a super fun and classic game but it has also brought me a lot
closer with my friends as i pulled them into games with me whether it be at lucky strike
social or just hanging out in a friends basement talking and enjoying ourselves. It was
awesome learning the nuances of a game that up until i started this project i thought
was boring and dull as a sport. Overall I’m looking forward to playing more pool in the
future and growing into a better player. Furthermore people look at games in too fast
paced of a manor in today's world. With all the violent media and fast paced action
video games people are being led in the wrong direction when it comes to lessons of
patience and timing. In the game of pool it’s important to at first begin slow and not just
gun for a win. It’s very important to slow down and take the time to understand how to
really play pool instead of approaching the same way you would a game like call of
duty. I implore people beginning the game to take it slow and enjoy themselves.

Sources

“Billiards Sports.” ​Billiards Sports | IWGA,​

“Cue Sports.” ​Wikipedia​, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 May 2019,

User, Super. “Billiards Rules.” ​Billiards Rules: How To Play Billiards | Rules of Sport​,
www.rulesofsport.com/sports/billiards.html.

“Categories.” ​Billiards Supplies: Pool Tables, Cues, Balls and More | Escalade Sports,​
www.escaladesports.com/category/billiards/.