Who's Winning?

For this month’s column, I am pleased to introduce Wendy Kaplan, another one of my top students, as a guest commentator. She is now an assistant teacher at the Chico Billiards Academy. She also does exhibitions with Kelly and I, “The Angels of Billiards”. Wendy would like to share some insight on something that has helped improve her game which she believes may help you improve, as well.

“Who’s winning?”

How many times have you been playing a game and some random spectator asks you this question? Of course, we all know that the conventional answer would be, whoever has more balls pocketed is “winning”. Right? Not necessarily. Often, it’s the person with more balls on the table that has the advantage. When you have more balls on the table, you have more options. You can hide the cue ball behind them, you can use them to block your opponent’s balls, and you can use them to get into a great position to run out.

How many times have you seen someone who has one “problem” ball and runs out all of their other balls and leaves the “problem” ball for last? From a novice’s perspective, that person is “winning” because they are pocketing all of their balls. But then they have to try some crazy shot on that last ball and miss. They just left their opponent with a wide open table. Their opponent has a greater opportunity to either run out or play safes until they are in a good position to run out. You’d be surprised at how many times the person who is “winning” ends up losing. Try to keep in mind, there’s no prize for losing with fewer of your balls on the table. You still lost.