Two and a half years ago I was regularly beating the 9 ball ghost, I was cashing in regional tournaments and was progressing very quick. I was doing all of this on 2-3 days of practice at best.

Work decided they needed me more than I needed a life outside of work. Suddenly I had zero time for pool for the next year and a half. I was working 60-72 hours a week. On the odd week that I only worked my normal 48 I was so far behind or exhausted that I still didn't play.

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I totally forgot about posting the finished cue pictures. I will say that this cue is absolutely awesome. The look, weight, balance and hit are fantastic. I actually love this cue...

It's starting to look more like a cue now and I am getting very excited to see the final product. It's to the point now that if this cue shows up on a work day I may very well have to call in sick since I work at night.

About 4 weeks ago I suddenly hit the wall in playing pool. Not only did I hit the wall, but I busted through the drywall, knocked out the floor and landed in the basement. Apparently the week before I had hit my peak.

For roughly 3 months I had constant improvement. The tough part was that the week before I hit the wall I was playing as perfect as I had ever played. It seemed that no matter what distance I was making the CB travel from OB to the next it always landed perfect and...

Over the two years and some odd months that I have been a member on this site (I am quite sure that it has been going on longer than that) I've seen many a thread with titles such as, "What's Wrong With Pool", "What Is Wrong With This Game" and others along that line. I suppose that I am an eternal optimist, which is certainly something of myth in this vast sea of self hating billiards pessimism when I say this:

There is nothing wrong with pool.

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I've always wanted to have a full splice cue made for me, so when I saw that John Davis was making blanks I couldn't help but jump on it. I bet I looked through wood and veneer combos for three or four months before I finally jumped on this...

Well I've had Stan's dvd on CTE/Pro One for a week now. I've watched it several times after work and finally had some time today to put it into action. I decided that I wanted to make CTE second nature to me before venturing into Pro One so this may take several sessions before I totally happy with it.

I started out with my normal drill of straight in stop, draw follow shots on a 9 foot shimmed table. This is the one where the OB is in the center of the table and the CB is about 6...

When Stan's CTE/Pro One DVD came out I was incredibly surprised at the lack of negativity involved in the thread announcement. I assumed that well now anyone that orders it can learn it and they will all be happy......finally.

Holy shit was I wrong. As people started receiving their DVDs the haters came out of the woodwork. First it was someone who just couldn't understand it after less than a week of having the DVD. Already giving up and asking for a refund to my amazement. I find...

I ordered this book after hearing about just how good it was and of course because I have watched Danny Basavich play and you just can't help, but like the guy.

The story gives you a very real idea of what modern era hustling was like before every action game had an AZBilliards thread to accompany it before the coin was even flipped. You get a very real sense of just how much Danny absolutely loves the game. He loves it so much that it seems to be the only thing that keeps himself...

I've often heard the near cliche' about the only way to get better is to constantly play for money. I for one have never agreed with this opinion and never will, but you will pay your dues one way or another.

When I quit pool in 1998 I was playing for small stakes, playing a lot of tournaments, playing in a league and winning a large majority of all of it. The reason was the amount of practice I put in, but mainly because I never got nervous. I'm not sure if that was because I was...

Over the last decade I've seen, or heard of quite a few pool halls closing. In that same period of time I have also seen billiards on television less and less, much to my dismay. We have seen the blame placed on the economy, promoters, video games, bad image, the time it takes to learn the game and on the professional players themselves. I am here to say that things will be tilting back in pool's favor soon.

We are seeing more and more events streamed onto the internet. Between tournaments,...

Pool is a lot more like poker than some of you may realize. In poker you might fold hand after hand for hours before getting that lock up hand. In pool you may practice for months and months before something clicks and then you are suddenly in the midst of that same type of fleeting excitement.

I have recently experienced a frenzy of this excitement. I started out trying to train my stroke to be as straight as possible. I started out by only practicing on a double shimmed table. This...