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Pocket difficulty on BCE & Riley tables

Postby rekoons

Has anyone else noticed a difference in difficulty of the pockets between different snooker tables, more precisely between BCE and Riley?

Reason I ask is because I notice the pockets of the Riley table I recently got installed are quite a bit tighter than the pockets of the BCE tables in our club.

On the riley it’s not enough to aim for the pocket, you need to really aim for the center of it. If you hit the jaw of the cushion the ball wobbles and you end up leaving a sitter to your opponent, whereas on the BCE club table that ball would always drop.

Are BCE tables in general simply more generous than rileys?
Is there a difference in shape / curve of the pockets / rubber cushions?
Has it got something to do with the fall of the slate?

Anyways Riley presents quite a step up in accuracy needed for potting compared to BCE, not a bad thing per se.

Re: Pocket difficulty on BCE & Riley tables

Postby rekoons

Seems you're right, it all comes down to the templates and/or fitters who cut and shape the undercut of the rubber.
I did some research and came up with this:

World snooker official (corner) pocket sizes used on tour have a pocket width, measured at the fall of the slate, of 3 1/2 inch. To make comparisons easy I'll express it in 'eights', so 3" 1/2 is 3" 4/8

pockets 3" 2/8 are considered too tight
pockets 3" 3/8 are on the tight side
pockets 3" 4/8 are the standard
pockets 3" 5/8 are a bit more giving
pockets 3" 6/8 are considered generous (and often club owners ask fitters to trim pockets to this size or even larger)
pockets above this are very generous and
pockets approaching 4" are bucket territory

and especially the shape and amount of undercut of the rubber around the pocket plays an equally important role (more undercut means slightly more passage for the ball).

other parameters are the shape of the fall of the slate; vertical drop edge is tour standard (more difficult), more rounded edge encourages the ball to drop earlier.

also there are like two shapes of the curvature of the pocket edges: more rounded vs. more elliptical, rounded being more giving...

only thing I can measure and judge is the pocket width, which turns out to be 3" 3/8, so we were right in our suspicion these pockets play tight compared to what we're used to in the club, which is probably 3" 6/8 or larger. gonna have to measure it to be sure.

Re: Pocket difficulty on BCE & Riley tables

Postby rekoons

acesinc wrote: I have a major maintenance coming up...new cloth and level, and I am actually going to loosen up the pockets because mine are demonstrably tighter than the pro tournament tables. My table is a century old. I think back in the days of its manufacture, the rubber cushions were actually cut looser but the shelf of the pocket were set back about a quarter inch deeper. So today, my pockets are templated so the cushions are the same as the pro tables, but the shelf is still so deep so the pockets play punishingly tight. It is definitely discouraging for most players.

So after a lot of research, I have made the decision to actually grind the slates to open the pockets. Because of my mechanical engineering background, I am quite cautious about this decision but I am very comfortable with the information I have. Once I have the maintenance finished, I expect the club members will be happier and hopefully drop a few more dollars in the till because the balls will be falling with a bit more regularity. I also expect that after that, I ought to be making the half century a bit more often. Maybe a century one day. Hopefully, I will update you in a month or two when maintenance is finished. :-)


Ace, BSP and others, this position of the 'shelf of the pocket'-bit is interesting. (see this thread: viewtopic.php?f=468&t=7349)

I've noticed my table also plays a lot tighter than the club tables we used to play on. Here's acomparison with our club's table pocket at left, and my pocket. The club table (BCE) pocket is wide enough to pass a credit card through with some mm to spare at each side, while the Riley pocket is tighter than a credit card (card cannot pass through).
credit card width = 85.6mm or 3" 3/8.

Image

The difference in pocket width alone can not explain why we experience the riley playing that much tighter.

I drew red lines along the cushion edge and let them intersect, what stands out is that the relative position of the pocket edge and intersection point lies deeper in the BCE pocket, suggesting the edge of the shelf is further OUT of the pocket with the BCE, and more IN the pocket with the Riley. this means on the riley the ball has to travel longer centrally in the pocket before it reaches the fall and drops.

what really stands out is the blue line (on top of the white mark line), which is the straight path a ball hugging the cushion takes towards the pocket. with the BCE pockets that line intersects the middle of the fall, with the riley it's impossible to drop the ball witheout hitting the jaw! This explains imo why it is nigh on impossible to pot a ball tight on the cushion on the riley.

The consequence of this is that we have learned to avoid going for any ball tightish on the cushion, even right next to the pocket! :sad: I feel this is a shame because on club tables you dare going for these awkward balls accepting that you have a 50/50 chance, with these pockets it’s rather 5%, and it makes it less fun being restricted in shots available.

I wonder how this is with your pockets Ace or anyone else who can snap a picture of a corner pocket?

Am I overdramatizing or not?

Re: Pocket difficulty on BCE & Riley tables

Postby Sickpotter

I think you need to take into account the age of the rubber.

Newer rubber = more lively reaction and less give. Balls played at pace are less likely to drop if they make contact with any part of the pocket rubber simply because the new rubber doesn't give it all. Older rubber has more give and less reaction so balls drop instead of rattling in the pocket.

Cloth is another important consideration, clean/new cloth will allow some shots to slide in.

Overall, club tables are rarely good for comparison, they tend to be on the easier side to encourage play.

Re: Pocket difficulty on BCE & Riley tables

Postby acesinc

Hi, Rekoons. I think you probably won't be too surprised at my photograph. From all I can see, our tables should play very similarly to each other. Mine is not a standard table by any means, very unusual manufacturer for a snooker table, Brunswick, Balke, Collender, from nearly 100 years ago. American standards were different than the British standards back in those days and so this table was originally designed for balls of 2-1/8" diameter (rather than the slightly smaller historic British diameter of 2-1/16". The shapes of the cushion rubber was different than modern style and pointed rather than the flat face of British rubber. I understood nothing about this when I purchased that table and it was my dream to recreate the playing surface that I knew from the time I spent in England in my youth. Fortunately, the table fitter who installed my table originally was quite possibly the best table fitter on the North American continent at the time, the late, great Bobby Graham of Toronto. He had a full machine shop and the skills needed to modify my cushion rails to accept the "proper" Northern Rubber cushions. This was quite a massive undertaking and this along with a number of other personal modifications I have made to my table over the years, means that it is fair to say my snooker table is rather unique in all the world. Along with that however, I believe it is also fair to say that if Steve Davis were to ever happen into my club one day for some reason, he would find the actual table surface to be strangely familiar and very reminiscent of the tables that he won all of his World Championships on back in the 1980's. Suffice to say I am quite pleased with the state of my equipment and would now have a hard time settling for anything else.

So here is my comparative picture. The track lines of the ball running along cushion are very faint on my cloth so I added the straight edge I use to draw the baulk line along with a ball for reference. I also added a blue line on the other cushion so it is easier to see that the intersection point of the centers of two balls each coming down the adjacent cushion (in other words, the contact point of the bottom of the ball with the table surface) would be well above the fall of the pocket, probably about 3/4" out or so. It appears yours would be about the same. The club table on the other hand, this corresponding point would occur just about exactly at the actual fall of the pocket.

Image

My table is originally templated using the official WPBSA templates from 2006. (That is the date that I replaced my cushion rubbers. Prior to that, my table played rather loose to the late, great Mr. Graham's personal templates, which of course played much easier. After all, he made his living setting up club tables much closer to your picture on the left.) I agree with your assessment that when I watch professional tournament play, occasionally a ball will fall that I am quite certain would not have dropped on my table under any circumstance. This does make me wonder if the standards have loosened a bit since the 2006 date of my template shape/size.

You are correct, it is extremely difficult to run a ball down the cushion and there is not and never will be a way to do this easily. That is no reason to be afraid of attempting these shots however. You just need to learn when and how to attempt it. Speeds and spins are what allows a ball running the cushion to drop. To have the best chance to drop, the object must be played strictly at pocket weight. To be clear, by "pocket weight", I mean that if the surface remained flat and there was no hole for the ball to drop into and no cushion on the other side to stop the ball rolling, then you strike the object with such power that it will ONLY roll past the hole, say, about 3 to 6 inches. Of course, that means if you miss the pot, you WILL leave a sitter right there in the jaws of the pocket for your opponent to steal away. If you strike stronger than that, yes, you are correct, the object will strike the rubber on the far side of the pocket and nearly certainly have enough power left to bounce away without falling.

So why and when would you ever do this? It obviously comes with great risk to even attempt to pot an object ball touching the Black cushion at a distance of perhaps halfway to Black spot (call it 18 inches). It depends on your confidence in several ways. If you are playing a Red like this, then obviously DO NOT do it if the frame is on the line because the score is close. But if your opponent needs snookers, then why not try it? Or even if he doesn't need snookers yet but you feel your score is high enough that he will not catch you even if you give him an easy opener in the jaws, then try it. Played this way, you should start making these more often than 5 percent. I would put myself at 20 to 25 percent for this type shot. Still a low percentage, but worth trying when you feel the frame is safe. And again to be clear, I do not mean that I will pot the ball 20/25 percent when I face this situation. By far, most of the time that I face this situation, the frame is not safe, and I will not be foolish enough to attempt the pot. I will either play something different, or else I will play it strong (not pocket weight) knowing I will almost definitely miss but Red will bounce out and White will go safe. I will pot 20/25 percent when there is no risk whatsoever so I just go ahead and try it. When you watch the pros, they will nearly always leave that particular Red along the Black cushion until last. They will keep coming out for the Reds in the Pink/Black area first, then play that one along the cushion when snookers are required by their opponent. And they nearly always make it. So why don't they play it earlier? They nearly always make it anyway so why not play for it sooner? Confidence. The opponent is on the ropes needing snookers, balls just start dropping easier. That is certainly true in my game and probably yours as well. So play that ball when there isn't much risk to it and you will learn how to do it.

If a Red is on the Black cushion closer to the pocket, say 8 or 12", then you can still play at it but don't risk it at pocket weight in a tight frame. You have to play it stronger, plan on getting White out to Blue or Baulk so there is no chance of leaving the Red hanging. In a case like this, your best chance to pot involves three things: 1) This is much easier if the ball is actually in physical contact with the cushion. If it is just close to the cushion, but not actually touching the cloth, it is much more difficult. 2) Put a touch of running side on the White. Not too much or you will need to compensate for the White's curve as it travels which of course makes the pot even more difficult. And for the same reason, keep your cue as absolutely level as possible. Just a slight elevation of the cue will throw White off the needed line. 3) Figure on striking the cushion ever so slightly first before the White contacts the object. I mean a tiny amount first, like perhaps 1/16". Most people try to hit both the cushion and the object at exactly the same time. That is admirable but chances are, it is not ever going to happen. Think of it this way.....hitting both ball and cushion at exactly the same time is very, very, very specific. Like throwing darts and hitting the double-bull, right? Not even close! Imagine that inside the double-bull, there is one very tiny green fiber surrounded by the rest of the red fibers of the double bull. And THAT is what you are trying to hit. Not gonna happen. Snooker is not as precise as we make it out to be. There is plenty of room for error. So if you are trying to hit EXACTLY the ball and the cushion at EXACTLY the same time, like the green fiber, it probably ain't gonna happen. So if you are not precise and you hit the ball first just a microsecond before the cushion, you missed the pot. BUT, if you hit the cushion first a microsecond before the ball, think about what happens.....the White continues traveling in the same direction as it sinks into the rubber cushion. And of course that means it hits the object ball just that microsecond later and very probably knocking it close enough to the correct direction to fall in the hole. If you hit the ball first even by just that microsecond, it will bounce off the cushion and away from the pocket. Every. Single. Time.

I am very happy to know that you are looking into these very minute details. It is exactly the same sorts of things that I have been studying quite closely for well over a decade now. As I said, my table was originally a lot looser than it is today. And I still was not a particularly good player. But part of the problem was that I didn't realize that I was not a particularly good player. The balls seemed to fall into the holes often enough so I was quite happy in my blissful ignorance. Since my table has been playing to proper standards, my game has been improving by leaps and bounds. A tighter table tells me exactly where my problems are and what I need to do to correct the flaws. Stick with it, it is well worth it.
Last edited by acesinc on 06 Oct 2020, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Pocket difficulty on BCE & Riley tables

Postby rekoons

Sickpotter wrote:I think you need to take into account the age of the rubber.

Newer rubber = more lively reaction and less give. Balls played at pace are less likely to drop if they make contact with any part of the pocket rubber simply because the new rubber doesn't give it all. Older rubber has more give and less reaction so balls drop instead of rattling in the pocket.

Cloth is another important consideration, clean/new cloth will allow some shots to slide in.

Overall, club tables are rarely good for comparison, they tend to be on the easier side to encourage play.


Well the table fitter told me they are newish northern rubbers "a few years old, maybe 3 or 4 years".

Cloth was/is new Hainsworth, at first it played rather slow, now it seems to have speeded up after almost a year...

Re: Pocket difficulty on BCE & Riley tables

Postby rekoons

Ace,

thanks for sharing that pic, It seems i'll just have to knuckle down and practice those reds tight on the black cushion more then. <laugh>

Will try your tip of slightly hitting the cushion first rather than aiming to hit ball and cushion simultaneously, which is what I am doing now.

acesinc wrote:I am very happy to know that you are looking into these very minute details. It is exactly the same sorts of things that I have been studying quite closely for well over a decade now. As I said, my table was originally a lot looser than it is today. And I still was not a particularly good player. But part of the problem was that I didn't realize that I was not a particularly good player. The balls seemed to fall into the holes often enough so I was quite happy in my blissful ignorance. Since my table has been playing to proper standards, my game has been improving by leaps and bounds. A tighter table tells me exactly where my problems are and what I need to do to correct the flaws. Stick with it, it is well worth it.


Exactly, my cue action right now is straighter than ever (still not good), but on club tables I got away with a terrible amount of cueing across the white most of the time because as you say "balls seemed to fall into the holes often enough so I was quite happy in my blissful ignorance".
This table is honest and shows me where I need to work on. A bit of a shock at first but i'm up for the challenge <ok>

Re: Pocket difficulty on BCE & Riley tables

Postby acesinc

Rekoons, I re-read this thread from the start and picked up on something you said that I had not noted before:


rekoons wrote:Seems you're right, it all comes down to the templates and/or fitters who cut and shape the undercut of the rubber.
I did some research and came up with this:

World snooker official (corner) pocket sizes used on tour have a pocket width, measured at the fall of the slate, of 3 1/2 inch. ....


Do you have a source for this piece of information? And is it a reliable source? If this is accurate, that really surprises me. It is significantly wider than the information that I have and significantly wider than both your pocket dimensions and mine.

I had some major life changes (for the better) occurring back about 2007/2008, so at that time, I became again able to invest some time and money into my Snooker. I re-clothed and re-rubbered and indeed, for the first time, I came to an agreement with a public venue owner and set my table up in that pool hall to be publicly available. (They went out of business just a couple years later which is when I set up my own little club, but that is another story.) At that time, I "knew some people who knew some people" and so we got our grubby little hands on real live actual official WPBSA templates, the 2006 version at that time. Apparently, these templates are proprietary to the WPBSA and so not readily available to the public. That set my pocket width dimension to proper standards, but the question of the shelf or fall of the pocket was completely unknown to me at that time. Years later, through my mechanical engineering circles somehow, I came across a drawing of engineering information regarding very specific dimensions of snooker table pockets. The story went that some mechanical engineer in England with an interest in Snooker had a mate who purchased some table directly after it was used in some tournament. I don't recall the tournament specifics, but I do remember the statement that Jimmy White had played on the table and it was right around the same time frame of 2006 and I believe that Rileys were the official table then. So anyway, this engineer friend of the new table owner took the time to precisely measure all aspects of the shape and size of the corner and middle pockets. So I had access to this plethora of information. It was then that I realized the fall of my pockets were even deeper than official standards by a bit less than 1/4". That means that when you look at my picture above, move the intersection point of the blue lines up higher another 1/4"......talk about impossible to drop a ball running along the cushion! So with my newfound knowledge, I have been extremely diligent in recreating these numbers exactly.

And this is the reason why 3-1/2" as the standard surprises me. According to my information (circa 2006), the width of the corner pockets measured across the fall shall be precisely 3.313", or 3-5/16", which is 3/16" (or nearly 5 mm) more narrow than the modern measurement you are stating.

As we both have stated, we occasionally see balls drop on telly that would not fall on our personal set ups, and this could at least be a partial explanation. My suspicion is that standards have loosened a bit in recent years, and if your information is from a reliable source, this would make sense. Myself, I have no intention of changing standards on my own table, I love it just the way it plays now.

Re: Pocket difficulty on BCE & Riley tables

Postby rekoons

Alas, the dimensions I stated are not from one reliable source, because world snooker does not seem to make them public.

They are the synthesis of the various bits of information I could gather from the all knowing internet... probably more of a general consensus?

Re: Pocket difficulty on BCE & Riley tables

Postby acesinc

rekoons wrote:Alas, the dimensions I stated are not from one reliable source, because world snooker does not seem to make them public.

They are the synthesis of the various bits of information I could gather from the all knowing internet... probably more of a general consensus?


I think that I will stick with my documented information of 3-5/16" for the moment then.


Anytime one of my club members verbalizes the complaint that the pockets are too tight, I tell them to feel free to find another "pool hall" at which to play. They are clearly not interested in the correct game. <laugh> And might I suggest for you that the next time you are feeling blue because the balls just don't fall like they did on the club table, be grateful that you are not Russian; those guys are insane!

https://youtu.be/ne7WEH7Sxis?t=541 rofl


(Go to the time stamp of 9:00 exactly.)



Ball diameter 68 mm. Middle pocket width 82 mm. Corner pocket width 72 mm.