I did a little research this morning and found that the “secrets” my opponent used against me were not really secrets at all. They are described in detail in Philip Capelle’s masterful tome Play Your Best Straight Pool. In the chapter appropriately titled “Safety Play,” he explains several full rack safety plays that can wreak havoc on your opponent. In my 14.1 match on Tuesday, my opponent used the safeties shown below to almost completely stop my offense. He would make a ball or two then leave me frozen to the rack. I did my best to shave the edge of the rack to avoid opening up any balls, but inevitably I would loosen one or two and he would pocket them and then freeze me back on the rack again. Talk about death by paper cuts!
If you want to get better at Straight Pool, I highly recommend Capelle’s book. (I also recommend a huge dose of patience!) For these shots, just hit the cue ball with natural follow, make a full hit on the object ball (the yellow highlighted ball closest to the cue ball), and use just enough energy to make at least one ball go to a rail. These are simple but devastatingly effective shots. If you take 10 minutes to practice these shots whenever you are at the table, you will have a new weapon in your arsenal that you can use when you are feeling particularly nasty. Incidentally, I seem to have more success with the yellow highlighted balls as opposed to the center ball (ball number 6 in the diagram below). I need to spend some time practicing these shots myself.
Back of the Rack
Side of the Rack
Last night I opened my 14.1 match with a 26 ball run and thought I’d have an easy time racing my opponent to 80. I was wrong. Over the next seven innings, every time I got up to shoot I was looking at a cue ball that was frozen solid to the back of the pack. My offense was completely negated. From that point on I had to fight tooth and nail for every single point. In the middle of our match I jokingly asked my opponent to tell me his secret for sticking the ball to the pack. He declined. Near the end of our match, with the score tied 75-75, I begged him to tell me his secret and I even offered a bribe to loosen his jaws. He just grinned and said, “No, this is worth a whole lot more than money can buy.” After the match was over, he finally spilled the beans and shared his secret with me. Tomorrow, at no additional charge to you, I’ll share his nasty little technique for playing devastating safeties against the pack.
How did I not know about this earlier? This August in Las Vegas, the APA is hosting the 
After satisfying my fat and carb crave, I headed over to 
I checked into my room, unpacked, got my stuff ready for a meeting with FDA in the morning, and then realized I was hungry again. (After all, I hadn’t eaten in over two hours!) Time to search for food! It was after 11pm, so I was guessing most restaurants were closed. I sought guidance at the front desk and they told me there’s a McDonald’s relatively close by, so I headed out searching for grub. Now, the funniest thing happened to me on the way to MickeyD’s. I was in downtown Silver Spring at 11:30pm and was about to cross the street when guess what I saw? On the other side of the road I saw four guys walking together as a group and they were headed away from me…and all of them had nice leather cue cases on their backs! WHAT?! Had I made it to the Promised Land?! The light was red and I couldn’t cross, so I yelled at them, “Hey Poolplayers! Where’s the pool hall at?!!” The last one turned, and yelled back, “Galaxy Café, right over there!” He pointed to my left, so I turned in that direction and realized I was standing about a hundred feet from the 
Do you know how many balls you can run on average without missing? Most people overestimate their playing ability. The discrepancy between a person’s actual playing ability and their perceived ability is a key factor in determining who wins or loses a match. When you compete, you don’t have to be the better player to win. All you need is a more realistic view of your true capabilities so that you can make better decisions and alter your game strategy accordingly. 
Angle of Reflection 