Interesting Pool Sites on the Web – 2
A month ago I posted about 5 interesting pool sites on the web, and I thought it was about time I did it again. There is so much great stuff out there, and I think it’s a shame such a small percentage of pool players see much of it. So without further ado, here are 5 more sites that you will hopefully find interesting and useful, and that I hope will whet your appetite for even further exploration. Like last time, these sites are in no particular order. And don’t hesitate to recommend your favorite sites; Pool Student’s Blog is all about sharing the knowledge.
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| Diary of a Pool Shooter |
Diary of a Pool Shooter, begun way back on November 22, 2003, is written by Michael McCafferty, a true student of the game. “Diary” is loaded with lots of great information, along with Mike’s running commentary of his pool adventures. An outgoing and friendly guy, he’s better known to his friends as “Fast Mikie.” And what friends! I mean, how many guys do you know who have Johnny Archer and Nick Varner come over to their house and coach them through a couple racks of straight pool? And of course he put the video in his blog for all to share. Follow that with Johnny Archer running 120 off a kick/5 ball combo. And don’t miss the story of Johnny Archer and Earl Strickland holding down Fast Mikie’s head and elbow to teach him the power draw!
Fast Mikie has very good videos of himself and his trainer Tony Sorto running a number of drills including some from IPAT. He has a list of his ratings of 100 pool related books, videos and products, and he has a great “Plan for Excellence” which he updates every year that we would all do well to emulate (whether we share it or not).
AZ Billiards certainly doesn’t need any publicity help from me, they’re already the biggest, most content rich pool and billiards related site on the web. But I’ve been amazed at how many of my friends and pool acquaintances have never heard of it.
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| AZ Billiards Forums |
They have up to the minute news from all major tournaments as well as other pool related stories. AZB has a number of professional players writing regular columns and answering questions. There’s video streaming, a photo gallery, a table of the year’s top money winners, and on and on.
But for my money (just a phrase, AZ Billiards is free), the best, most valuable parts are the forums pictured at the left. At the time of this writing, 05/26/09, there were 1,792,016 posts in the forums. If you register you can post, but you can read without registering. The Forums are organized into 4 major subjects, Main Forum, Tournament Talk, Cues and Ask the Pros, but underneath these are literally hundreds of thousands of topics with millions of posts. The quality is uneven, as you would expect it to be, but the number of highly skilled and deeply knowledgeable pool players posting there is nothing short of amazing. If you’re not familiar, do yourself a big favor and check it out.
Fargo Billiards, soon to be one of the world’s largest billiard parlors when completed around July ‘09, has a channel on YouTube dedicated to pool instruction videos. Owner Mike Page, located where else, in Fargo ND, is the creator of these excellent videos and you can learn a great deal from them. There are 16 instructionals with an average rating of 4.8 out of 5, so you know they’ll be worth your time. He’s even got one on the big flood they just had a month or so ago.
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| Fargo Billiards Channel on YouTube |
These little lessons, none is longer than 10 minutes, are clear and concise, with good production values. Mike uses chalk to draw lines right on the pool table illustrating his points well. His explanations are easy to understand without being dumbed down. Some of the most frequently viewed videos are Pool Sidespin–Squirt and Swerve, Aiming at Pool, Part 1 & Part 2, and Learn to Play Pool in 10 Minutes.
My personal favorite is the After Shot Masse. I bet not one pool player in a thousand knows this stuff, and it’s something you can use regularly, if you practice it. But don’t be scared off; these aren’t the full table masse shots you see done to perfection by the likes of Mike Massey and Eric Yow, but easier to do cousins you should get to know.
CueSport TV is a UK website specializing in videos of pool and snooker matches. They recently updated their platform to provide even better quality and performance. Based on Silverlight, the videos are very good; better than most free videos I’ve seen.
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| CueSport TV |
Being Brits there’s a lot of 8 Ball / Black Ball, along with 9 Ball and snooker. With a couple hundred 30 minute videos to choose from, you’ll be watching for quite a while. Live streaming is something else they do, with 4 tournaments covered in the sample month I saw (May 15 – Jun 15).
They also have pay-per-view TV, though I haven’t tried it. The next match is a 10 Ball race to 25 between Ricardo “Indiana” Jones and Raj “Hitman” Hundal. It’s scheduled for Saturday June 20, 2009 at 7:00 PM BST, 3:00 EDT (NY). The price is £5, or US $7.50.
There are about 80 instructional clips by Tim “The Monk” Miller, each about 5 minutes long. I’m not a big fan, but The Monk has a big following. He covers a lot of ground here, including his different stroke types, english, kicking, and more. And you’ll want to check out the interviews section, with more than 25 video interviews with stars of the UK pool & snooker scene.
Pocket Billiard Review is the pool website of Joe Waldron a retired psychologist and university professor who loves pool. Like Pool Student, he’s been writing as he’s been learning, though he’s been doing it longer.
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| Pocket Billiards Review |
Don’t let the big blocks of text put you off, Joe’s site contains a plethora of great articles, particularly on fundamentals and the mental game.
PBR has a great set of links to other sites and a small store where Joe sells a portable 14.1 counter hand-made by his wife and a hand cranked pool ball polisher of his own design. You can also buy the plans and make it yourself. I haven’t used the unit, but it got good reviews on AZ Billiards.
The articles, though, are the real wealth of the site. There are multiple articles in each of the following categories: Mechanics, Practice methods, The Mental game, and Playing the game. Joe has an eye for detail and writes with clarity, an excellent combination. The articles tend to be longer than you might be used to on the web, but it’s because they contain so much information.
Though there is no way to publicly comment of the articles, and thus start a conversation, Joe will answer questions via email.
I heartily recommend all of these sites to expand your pool horizons. Check them out and let us know what you think. And let the authors know too, they’ll be very appreciative of feedback. If you have any recommendations for us to check out, leave a comment to this post so everyone can see them.
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6 Responses to “Interesting Pool Sites on the Web – 2”
GG
- May 28th, 2009
John, thanks again for the kind words …. if I may, NYCGrind is a website that has a very unique, modern touch of sophistication and flare in it’s reporting that I have yet to find anywhere else….if you’re looking for cool new pool site, they gotta be on the list!
Enjoy:
http://nycgrind.com/
Pete Williams
- May 28th, 2009
John, thanks very much for the review of CueSport TV, it is massively appreciated. I would second GG’s comment above, I came across this site the other day, very fresh and a couple of nicely produced videos.
Something out of the norm for you Americans would of course be snooker, this is one of my favourite sites http://snookerscene.blogspot.com massively informative.
John Biddle
- May 29th, 2009
You guys are entirely welcome. I am familiar with NYC Grind, I’ve had it in my blogroll for a couple months. It’s hip and edgy and seems to be doing very well. Perhaps a writeup is in its future? I’ve also had snookerscene in the blogroll for months. It too is quite good, with a constant flow of interesting info on what’s happening in snooker.
Thanks to both of you for the recommendations, keep them coming.
Clare
- July 15th, 2009
John, Jimmy Reid’s site, http://www.freepoollessons.com is quite nice. It’s not just a web site, it’s also a club. It offers some free lessons in thumbnail format, and best of all is Jimmy’s “Diamond Club”. Members can chat, blog, get lessons, and Jimmy even does his own chat once a week. Jimmy is one of pool’s legendary players. In his day, he was one of the best shot makers EVER. Jimmy has been battling cancer for the past few years. Check out his site.
Michael McCafferty
- September 24th, 2009
John…
The good news just arrived here in San Diego (the news that my blog is “interesting”), so THANK YOU for the write-up. Pool sure is a great game, having taken up so much of my focus for the past 5.5 years. Your excellent blog is just the thing to take up the slack now that I’m competing (and writing about it) less. Keep up the great work!
Mike
busy do Niemiec z Gdyni
- May 3rd, 2010
O widze masz podobne zainteresowania do moich, fajna strona, zajrze tu niedlugo
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