Making century's on club tables compared to tv tables

[Ramon]

Well,,, Most of The club tables are slower than match tables !!!! That's for sure !! As for The size of the pockets , a pro does'nt think about the size of the pocket !!! for a pro, how fast and how quick The table is and how fast The CB reacts .,,is much more important than The size of The pocket !!! (Not saying what They're doing is easy ,btw )

[luke-h]

the comparison with tables evens itself out when you add in to it factors;

you say the tournament tables pockets are tighter they may be but they are cut to accept balls many of the clubs i have seen have a very rounded pocket edge which incidentally spits balls out.

Pros have new cloth and with that are able to play shots that only club players can dream off.

If a ball hits anywhere near the jaw on he club tables i play at they would get spat back out, thats not the case for the pro tables.

Pros don't have to try and put their whole body into the shot as the conditions are fast and most of the time consistent, you wouldnt have that on most tables which is why you see club players throw a crap shot every now and then in.

The list is endless.

[ace man]

Pros don't have to try and put their whole body into the shot

Oh come on, please.

[Inoffthered]

Oh come on, please.

Aye x2 .

[cueman]

Here is a story of what I witnessed around about 2007/08. There was a pro-am event held at Breaks snooker club Erdington and many of the top names were there. Only the likes of Higgins, ROS, Davis, Hendry did not turn up but many of the players in this years Masters were there on show.

Now anyone that used to know this club would know the tables are your typical club table, not bad for a club player but the cushions aren't very responsive, compared to a pro table, and the cloths heavy duty.

Current world champion Selby, Perry, Maguire were all there and all struggled on these cloths and missed so many straightforward pots trying to move the cueball around you would think they were club players themselves.
Not to say some other pros didn't adapt a lot better but they were also the younger pros who will have been playing on club tables more recently, the likes of Mark Allen and Ricky Walden played pretty well.

In between one of the matches a few of the players came over to the one table and started hitting a few balls and they were saying how difficult they are to play on and that they shouldn't hold tournaments on these tables.
So there you have it from the pros themselves. If you adapt to a certain type of table and conditions of course you are going to be able to play all the shots but don't just automatically assume that because these guys are pros that they can still produce the goods on club tables. Many of them can't and it would affect their game to play on them because when they go back onto proper match conditions they would have to adapt again to the speed and responsiveness of the table.

[luke-h]

Here is a story of what I witnessed around about 2007/08. There was a pro-am event held at Breaks snooker club Erdington and many of the top names were there. Only the likes of Higgins, ROS, Davis, Hendry did not turn up but many of the players in this years Masters were there on show.

Now anyone that used to know this club would know the tables are your typical club table, not bad for a club player but the cushions aren't very responsive, compared to a pro table, and the cloths heavy duty.

Current world champion Selby, Perry, Maguire were all there and all struggled on these cloths and missed so many straightforward pots trying to move the cueball around you would think they were club players themselves.
Not to say some other pros didn't adapt a lot better but they were also the younger pros who will have been playing on club tables more recently, the likes of Mark Allen and Ricky Walden played pretty well.

In between one of the matches a few of the players came over to the one table and started hitting a few balls and they were saying how difficult they are to play on and that they shouldn't hold tournaments on these tables.
So there you have it from the pros themselves. If you adapt to a certain type of table and conditions of course you are going to be able to play all the shots but don't just automatically assume that because these guys are pros that they can still produce the goods on club tables. Many of them can't and it would affect their game to play on them because when they go back onto proper match conditions they would have to adapt again to the speed and responsiveness of the table.

+1 And we all know that the more still you can be on the shot the better which is why they missed, no way could they play half them shots on our club tables..

[timcunnell]

Decent set of balls and a proper cloth make all the difference! After playing on slow club tables all my life I've recently had some lessons with Barry Pinches (top, top guy! If you're near Norwich go see him!) and he has a proper match table where he practices and teaches. And yeah the corner pockets are extremely tight. Blacks off the spot are much harder to pot consistently. BUT the cloth (and obviously decent balls) made it so much easier to move the white. I have found it so much easier to play screw shots on that cloth with much less effort.
Thing is, if you're at the level where you can make tons you're already a very good potter. I reckon cue ball control comes into it more, and in that respect a proper West of England match cloth makes cue ball control that much easier. When you're having to welly the cue ball to get enough action its sure to put a strain on your accuracy.
Like one of the earlier posts, I watched a Selby exhibition a couple of years ago in the Rileys in Ipswich. The cloth was like a carpet on their match table and Mark managed a 60-break in 8 frames.
I think it depends what sort of player you are - some are out and out potters, while others are finesse players. And if you're the sort of player who strokes it in and holds the white really well I think a heavy duty cloth is your worst enemy - more so than the size of the pockets.
Conversely, lower standard club players would struggle on a match table - partly because the cloth would play too fast for them to control the white, and partly because the pockets are that much tighter.

[vmax4steve]

the comparison with tables evens itself out when you add in to it factors;

you say the tournament tables pockets are tighter they may be but they are cut to accept balls many of the clubs i have seen have a very rounded pocket edge which incidentally spits balls out.

Pros have new cloth and with that are able to play shots that only club players can dream off.

If a ball hits anywhere near the jaw on he club tables i play at they would get spat back out, thats not the case for the pro tables.

Pros don't have to try and put their whole body into the shot as the conditions are fast and most of the time consistent, you wouldnt have that on most tables which is why you see club players throw a crap shot every now and then in.

The list is endless.

I totally agree with you Luke, I played my mate on our clubs match table last monday night, a cold and rainy evening and the conditions in the match room were cold and damp. The table there is over sixty years old and the size of the pockets are the same as tables of that era, much tighter than the templates that the pros use on modern Star tables. The phenolic resin balls kicked every other shot, the heavy napped cloth was incredibly slow and we had to really belt the cue ball around to try to get any kind of screw or run thru going and this in turn made potting incredibly difficult on such tight pockets. One twenty break each in three hours and we were both mentally exhausted and thoroughly fed up at the end of the evening.

I had to play a league match on the same table the next evening and the conditions were the same, but as I had to give 40 start, just potting a red and running away wasn't an option for me and I tried very hard but once the black went safe I was done for and I knew it. I was getting a kick every other shot and jawing balls that I had to hit too hard to try to gain position, last straw was playing for a snooker behind the green off the yellow, getting a huge kick and sticking the yellow up when the cue ball practically stopped dead.

There are club tables and then again there are other club tables that do not have bucket pockets. In my town there are no snooker clubs, we play in political clubs and the local British Legion, and that is the only club that has tables from the 1980's, other clubs have tables that are much older and their pockets may not be smaller than the present pro templates, but are cut not to deflect the ball into the pocket but across it, so if a ball touches the jaw it stays out.

Every time the local players meet up on league night after a pro tourny on tv, the discussion is always about how easy the pockets are compared to what we have to put up with. For sure the pros can play better than us on our tables but if a ball touches the cushion before the pocket or catches the far jaw thick it will stay out for them just as it does for us, and those long range deep screw shots from baulk and back to baulk again, forget it, split the reds with a medium pace cannon off the blue, might loosen one or two out if you're lucky, stun ru thru a 3/4 pot near the cushion, the pocket will spit it out and the cue ball will only move half the length it does on tv.

Why are the conditions so different for the pros on tv, they never used to be; everyone, pros and ourselves, once used super crystalate balls and a cloth with a decent nap on it and the game wasn't flooded with century breaks then like it is now.
The decision to open up the middle pockets in the late 80's opened up the game for Hendry & co and the introduction of the phenolic resin balls meant that the cloths had to be finer as these balls just don't work on cloths with a heavier nap. These balls don't have the same response as the super crystalates, they kick even when clean, the click between the balls is more of a clunk, they seem to be softer and have more friction between them on contact which is exaggerated by a heavier naps resistance to inertia.

The game is easier on tv now because of the phenolic resin balls and the conditions needed to make them work, and those conditions are so fine tuned that a drop of a degree on the table heaters or a little moisture in the atmosphere of the arena make them kick an awful lot and the game becomes a lottery.

Blame Aramith for buying out the Super Crystalate Company, ceasing production of super crystalate balls and forcing those awful phenolic resin balls upon us. The game changed then and not for the better.

I wonder why the game is dying at grass roots level in the UK; it could be many factors but one is surely the belief that the shots a lad sees on tv can be made in the local club and when he finds out that they can't then giving up is the norm.

[itsnoteasy]

Someone once said bad tables make bad players, I don't know about cloths or tight pockets much as I don't have enough experience but I do play on some old tables with tighter pockets when the league is on and it takes a few shots to get kind of zeroed into them but then they feel ok. In our club the cushions are awfull and it's not from cush to cush, it's if you hit diferent parts of the same cush, one place you get a good bounce, hit the same Cush six inches along dead as a dodo ,that is very frustrating.
On the other hand we had a player up here once called Mike Nixon, knocked in 147 s for fun on the same tables, so if your good your good.

[luke-h]

I think you have hit the nail on the head with the comment about grass roots snooker and kids not being able to replicate what they see....a very valid point.

Also about the bad bounces, it goes to show how consistent the pro tables need to be as they stare and almost lose it when they get a bounce that takes them marginally out of position.

I can almost guarantee you if you was to play on those tables and are a good standard you would improve drastically.

In an old club i used to play at they had one heated table and that was the match table to be nicely clothed and i can honestly say thats the only table i have ever been able to screw a red between pink and black spot from the baulk like back up to blue....its a fact consistent tables equates to being able to play better.

[luke-h]

Barry Pinches (top, top guy! If you're near Norwich go see him!) and he has a proper match table where he practices and teaches.

details about his coaching please

[timcunnell]

He used to be based at the Riley's club in Norwich, but now moved to Woodside Snooker Club. When I last went to see him it was £25/hour. Bargain!!
He's helped me out with sighting properly, setup, cue action... and also break-building strategy/technique. Really helpful! I don't know if you've watched him play much, but in amongst the balls he is pretty much as good as anyone.

[sberry]

club tables have more generous pockets and are easier to pot on and that makes break building easier, end of

you can argue about cloth, balls, etc but any club player trying his hand on a match table with perfect cloth, running and balls will struggle to put decent breaks together because the pockets are much more unforgiving

there's a separate thread on here about the Lada 147 table, not many people played on that when it was in a club near me as it depressed them compared to the rest of the tables in the club where potting and break-building was much easier

[dcrackers147]

This Thread is crazy!!! I have played on Ali carters match table Mark Selby's old Match table down WT's and they are a million times harder than your club tables. People suggesting that they are easier really are just making themselves look silly. Yes there are advantages as in the balls split better and reaction is achieved easily (provided you cue well). But the pockets are so tight unless your positioning is bang on your not going to keep a break going. The cushions spring and react differently and there is basically no near jaw. Yes I agree pro's get used to the conditions they play on but bear in mind alot of them were making breaks all over the place on club tables before they got used to the conditions they now play on.

[Leo]

This Thread is crazy!!! I have played on Ali carters match table Mark Selby's old Match table down WT's and they are a million times harder than your club tables. People suggesting that they are easier really are just making themselves look silly. Yes there are advantages as in the balls split better and reaction is achieved easily (provided you cue well). But the pockets are so tight unless your positioning is bang on your not going to keep a break going. The cushions spring and react differently and there is basically no near jaw. Yes I agree pro's get used to the conditions they play on but bear in mind alot of them were making breaks all over the place on club tables before they got used to the conditions they now play on.

Yep Agreed & unfortunately this thread died as soon as a poster convinced himself that club tables are just as hard.