Filed my taxes yesterday and it looks like I’m getting some money back. Wahooo! After filing my return, a friend of mine called and wanted to play a quick match during lunch, so we met at California Billiards and shot a few games of eight ball and nine ball. The focused practice on kicks and banks paid off big time. On bank shots, I made 3 out of 4, which is a huge improvement from historical levels. For kick shots, I hit 100% of all kicks, and even make a kick shot for the win in 8 ball. Just for fun, I diagrammed the 8 ball kick shot. In the previous inning, I had started to run the table, but lost position on the 8 ball and had to turn control of the table over to my opponent. Instead of attempting a runout, my opponent played the safety as diagrammed in the figure above. My only option was to try a one-rail kick (or two rail kick) off the long rail with left spin to stretch the angle out. Both the one-rail and two-rail shots would have worked since the object ball (8 ball) was so close to the short rail. The actual kick ended up being a two rail kick, and the 8 ball went down for the win.
Tomorrow, I will be posting my article for the April installment of PoolSynergy. Hope to see you again tomorrow!
Angle of Reflection 