who will guide you there
Posted: June 23, 2010 Filed under: pool & billiards, wordreka moment! | Tags: pool & billiards, wordreka moment! 6 Comments »i suppose people may debate the merits of having a teacher/coach to further your pool skills. some believe firmly in it, others will tell us that we can learn by ourselves from books, dvds, and watching pro matches. i’m not sure which approach is the best, but a good teacher can really shorten the learning process, sometimes shrinking years of self-struggle to a mere few months. that is, if you find a good teacher. so below is a random list of things i would look for in a pool teacher/coach. yours may vary.
1. your teacher/coach can emphasize YOU.
when i say emphasize you, i mean the teacher possesses knowledge that can help bring out your strengths, or find the best forms/techniques that you can use. in short, the teacher can be “you-centered”. ideally, the teacher is not too interested in teaching only his/her system, but is very focused on things that will work for you, the individual. as i said many times before, not one in 10,000 can learn the efren stroke properly.
2. your teacher checks his/her ego at the door.
hopefully, your pool teacher is interested in helping you learn, and not trying to impress you with his/her various accolades and sundry credentials. my previous post talks about just such fine gentleman; this supposed teacher is so intent on impressing his students with his knowledge that his sessions are basically pointless. i mean, how effective can a teacher be if all he/she does is rapidly mouthing off shot after shot, without really explaining each shot? not sure if any of his students ever learned anything.
3. your teacher is knowledgeable.
beware if your teacher explains something to you but just cannot demonstrate it on the table, even after 20 attempts. this can mean the teacher’s knowledge is either dubious, or the person does not know as much as you originally believed. although not a total deal-breaker, if your teacher can’t properly demonstrate the things he/she is talking about, exercise caution.
4. your teacher listens.
this is basically related to #1. if your teacher is willing to listen to your difficulties, it means he/she is trying to solve the problem with you. but there needs to have a balance; if all your teacher does is listen to you, he/she may not be able to give you discipline when you need it. conversely, if your teacher never listens to you, think about leaving.
5. your teacher is fair.
by fair i mean your teacher will charge you for the services provided, and no more. most likely your teacher needs to make a living, and by charging fairly, he/she can provide a great service at a reasonable cost. unfortunately i can’t really say what price is fair; that can be affected by region, average rate, experience, reputation, etc. the best thing you can do is to check around first and get some feedback from previous students, if possible. sometimes internet forums can be helpful, since you can contact people from across states and nations. also, talk to the teacher and see if you get any gut instincts. a test drive (taking one or two lessons first) can also help you gauge things. bottom line: a good teacher can help you improve. at least you have some objective criteria here.
that’s all i can think of right now. one more thing: if you are the student, please honor your appointments. there’s nothing worse than booking a session with your teacher and not show up. i mean, at least call ahead (i’m thinking at least 6 hours ahead) if you cancel. your teacher could be holding another lesson if you cancel early.
btw, i totally forgot to do this one wordreka moment! last month when i hosted poolSynergy. so here it is.
WORDREKA MOMENT!
Smassy: a combination of smart and sassy
there. now it’s official. 
Pool Synergy Volume VII
Posted: May 15, 2010 Filed under: pool & billiards, pool synerlogism, wordreka moment! | Tags: pool & billiards, pool synerlogism, wordreka moment! 11 Comments »hi folks. welcome back to another edition of pool synergy. this month marks the seventh volume of this project.
for volume VII, i’m assuming host duties. hope you’ll enjoy this edition.
this time, all the contributors and myself are writing about the topic called “poolosophy”. yep, you know what’s coming next, don’t cha?
WORDREKA MOMENT!
Poolosophy: a person’s unique approach and philosophy to pool
basically, each contributor will tell you, dear readers, his or her respective approach to pool. what are their thoughts about pool? what does pool mean to them? what were the influences they had? what are their influences to pool and others? read on and find out.
typically, a summary is provided for each of the articles. however, since i believe the topic is so personal and exploratory in nature, i will not provide any long-winded bloviations. my feeble words won’t be adequate to describe any of the articles. instead, i want you, dear readers, to explore and find out for yourselves, what each of our contributors have to say, in their own words. i want this month’s edition to be one of discovery and exploration. this month, you all get to be poolcheologists. what you unearth and take away will be uniquely yours.
WORDREKA MOMENT!
Poolcheologist: a pool player who’s also a discoverer of all things in pool
you get two WORDREKA MOMENT!s on top! sweet bonuses. 
again, due to the personal nature of this topic, each contributor’s post will reflect only that person’s thoughts and ideas, and no one else. also, if you click on the link and nothing shows up, there are probably some technical difficulties. check back later; we will fix it as soon as we figure out the problem. if everything works right away, just pretend we know what we are doing. 
also, from time to time we get late entries; if that happens i’ll update this page for the late arrivals.
below are brief introductions to this month’s contributors, as well as links to their blogs & posts. now, unwrap your hand picks and brushes, and go where the trail leads you.
this is charles eames, also known as forumghost516 on the AZB forum. he’s an aspiring pro player. he also enjoys blogging about his pool exploits. for this edition of pool synergy, mr. eames tells us about his poolosophy: approaching pool as an eternal student. read his post by clicking the link below. (btw, that pic is NOT him. since i don’t have his avatar, i’m using a substitute.)
she’s known as G square, or G x G, but not to be confused with gatorade G2. she’s smart, she’s sassy, which makes her smassy. she’s gail glazebrook, captain of the Kiss of Death pool squad. if you ever play her, she’ll silently assassinate you. (get it? get it?) for this month’s topic, ms. glazebrook talks about her desire to constantly move forward. and being a nice person while doing it. wanna know more? why, use the link below to read the whole thing.
this is jarno virtanen. he’s a programmer, a husband, and dad to his two darling kids. oh yeah, when he has any free time at all, he plays and blogs about pool. did i mention he’s from finland? mr. virtanen’s post is about the pleasures of small motions, and his experiences with them. intrigued? why, go read the rest, curious george.
john biddle is the founder of the pool synergy project. he likes to play pool. he also blogs extensively about various pool techniques and drills. when it comes to his poolosophy, mr. biddle likes to keep his standards high and his practices abundant. use the link below to read his post for more details.
johnny101 is an amateur pool player. he likes to write about what he learns in pool. he also posts various videos on pool drills and shots. what is johnny’s poolosophy, you ask? according to johnny101, it’s what you make of it. if i have to come up with one word to describe it, it would be fluidity. use the link below to read what johnny means.
markus hoftstätter is from austria. he’s a pool player, writer, and photographer who launched his blog during his trip to the 2009 Derby City Classic. for this month, mr. hoftstätter writes a step-by-step description about the components that make up his poolosophy. and it’s kind of a photo essay! (he IS a photographer, after all.) i don’t wanna spoil it for you, so read it yourselves. go to his post for this month by following the link below.
this is melinda bailey, aka trigger. she’s one of the partners of AZBilliards. and she also plays pool. from chasing her dog to chasing her dreams, you can read it all in her blog. what is trigger’s poolosophy, you ask? why, it’s a multifaceted one that is composed of books, people, and her own personal experiences. check it out yourself.
poolbum is a transplant to the philippines. he plays the local players there, and blogs about the various pool happenings in not just philippines, but all over the world. by playing with the locals he possesses cojones much more immense than your humble host’s own. just don’t ask him about his level of lucidity. 
for this month’s topic, poolbum explores the parallels between pool and life. and something about microcosmological thingamajig. (hey, i read at third grade level.) read poolbum’s post for this month by using the link below.
samm diep is many things: she’s a pool player, a pool teacher, a blogger, and an entrepreneur. but you can call her the denver cherry bomb. if she has time, ms. diep will take a few whacks at her violin. (no, NOT with her cue.) did you know that django likes her stroke? anyway, for this month’s topic, ms. diep tells us that niceness and competitiveness are NOT mutually exclusive. click the link below to read what ms. diep means.
wee haw! of course, there remain your humble host (without the most) for this month. no one likes my stroke. but read my volume seven’s post anyway by using the link below, and leave nasty remarks if you like. reading at third grade level it’s likely that i won’t even understand what you’re saying, so i’ll just smile and nod politely and reply “thank you” to every comment.
special thanks go to mr. fieldhammer, mr. reddick, plus mr. jerry t & ms. fischer of nycgrind. although their busy schedules prevent them from participating this month, i want to thank them for taking their time out to email me & keep me updated of their status. i look forward to their future articles & posts. mr. reddick, take care of yourself and all our best.
verify, then trust
Posted: December 24, 2009 Filed under: inward stare, pool & billiards, pool & billiards techniques, wordreka moment! | Tags: inward stare, pool & billiards, pool & billiards techniques, wordreka moment! 2 Comments »the texas tigger trigger wrote this in her post titled “the domino effect“.
His [paul potier's] advice was: Basically, embarrassment is the same as fear. If we look at fear and confidence on a percentage level, we have 100% of them combined into a flask (my terminology). The key is to make the two “feelings” lopsided in the flask so there is more confidence than fear. He didn’t tell me how to do that, but the information was still very valuable.
that was an interesting thought, so i’ll attempt to add to it.
confidence is a funny thing. used excessively, it becomes overconfidence, or inflated ego if you’re the blunt sort. used infrequently, it becomes a lack of confidence or timidity. i think this says it best: “verify, then trust”. (a little twist on the favorite saying of the former US President Reagan.)
if you take the logical approach, you can take apart the question linearly.
- first we ask, “am i confident?”
- then we ask, “what is the empirical evidence supporting my confidence/lack of confidence?”
on a pool table, the empirical evidence is execution, or “am i able to hit that shot”. basically, you assemble confidence based on how many shots you can execute. the more shots you can execute, the more you can believe in your ability to play pool. and when i say execute a shot, i mean you can execute a shot repeatedly without missing (or rarely missing). numerically we’ll say 90% or more.
a quick story for illustration. a player excitedly tells a pro player that he just hit this great shot. the pro says, “great! now make that shot 20 times in a row.”
execution doesn’t count if you can’t do it over and over again. it counts when you’ve drilled that shot so many countless times that you can hit it like you’re breathing. this is of crucial importance; you must be able to hit a shot without thinking before you can say you know how to execute a shot.
here’s the good news: when you can make a shot over and over again, you now have NO reason to doubt yourself, because you know deep in your gut that you can make the shot, and you can because you’ve done it a million times before. it’s all very logical and based purely on evidence.
when i play, i know i can probably hit about 80% of the shots on the table. i’m not trying to brag, i just know. now i’m not saying i can link all these shots together to run out all the time; i am saying that when given any one shot, there’s a good chance i’ll recognize the shot and know how to execute it.
if i don’t hit a shot, i know it is due to one of two reasons. one, i didn’t execute properly. two, i don’t know the shot. however, i know that none of the reasons are related to my ability to play. poor execution can be corrected, and knowledge can be learned. but i don’t have to worry since these reasons don’t affect my ability to shoot, so i can still be confident in my ability to play. you may call this circular reasoning, but it works for me.
another area to gather evidence is the limits of your stroke. the more intimately you know your own stroke, the more evidence you’ll have about how your stroke will hold up under various shots. if you got a weak stroke with little power, great. mark it mentally and study different ways to improve it. a powerful stroke? catalog how well you can control that stroke and remember your limits. when a shot comes up, you’ll know exactly how well/how poorly you can hit that shot, then act accordingly. the more improvements and evidence you gather about your stroke, the more your confidence will grow. (personally, the 20% of the shots i can’t hit are those big stroke shots: e.g., draw the cueball back 7 feet when it’s 7 feet away from the object ball. my current stroke just isn’t big enough to execute that shot. i am trying to change that.)
feel free to apply this approach to any area (or all areas) of your game. the more specific the area the better.
if you take this approach, then confidence is really just simple addition. the more you know your own game, the more evidence you’ll have on how well you play.
conclusion?
- you verify your game through empirical evidence.
- once it’s verified, you can then trust in your ability to play.
- you can trust your game now because it has been verified by empirical evidence.
- if you can’t verify your ability to play through empirical evidence, practice until you have enough evidence to know you can play.
that’s it. hope it’s simple enough. if you want a name for this approach, call it the meritocratic approach. oh, wait. i think i’m gonna trademark that term. i shall make this a wordreka moment!
WORDREKA MOMENT!
Meritocratic Approach: an approach to assess a person’s game based purely on that person’s ability to play, as supported only by empirical evidence
there. now go practice. 8)
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