Return to my Billiard/Pool Pages
Go to my home page

My Hot Billiards Shot

© Copyright 1998, Jim Loy

The 3-cushion billiard shot (a "time shot"), on the left, may be my claim to fame, in billiards. This shot is currently tied for the lead, in the 1998 1st Artistic Carom Billiard Championship on the Internet. The picture is a screen image from the billiard simulation program, which is used in the competition. The yellow circle shows how I cued the shot. I drew the cue ball back to the rail (I somehow got two rails out of this), and then out a small distance from the rail. The cue ball then sat there waiting for the red ball to come back and double kiss it into the white. The double kiss gave me two more rails. I don't think I got three rails from a double kiss. I used a small amount of English, to correct for an earlier miss when the double kiss did not make the cue ball go towards the white.

An animation of the above shot can be seen at hot.gif. Warning: It is a large (194Kb) gif file, which apparently takes about 2 minutes to load with a 14.4 modem.

The program tempts a person to try shots that would be pure fantasy on a real table. For example, try this: You can shoot the cue ball really hard, then put the first object ball where it could be just touched by the cue ball after three rails, then see where the cue ball ends up after four or five more rails, and put the second object ball there. So, you have 3 rails, a ball, 4 more rails, and a billiard. Nice shot. And it only took you 5 minutes to master the shot. Such fantasy shots score fairly well. But, they also get penalized some because of their impracticality on a real table.

I think the diagrammed shot scored well because it is creative (I have never seen one like it, before), and because it looks very possible (but difficult) on a real table. Getting a lucky extra rail probably didn't hurt, either.

This difficult massé is my favorite, among the shots that I submitted. This shot was voted 43rd best shot, in the tournament, so far. Other massés of mine scored better. In real life, the cue probably gets in the way. You may have to move the cue ball away from the red.

In the above paragraph, I used the word "massé." I apologize, if your WWW browser does not support special characters. That was an "e" with an accent over it. A "massé" is a shot which is stroked with a cue that is held almost vertically, giving the cue ball a great deal of spin. A massé can do great damage to the cloth.

Return to my Billiard/Pool Pages
Go to my home page