Billiards is a good game (1975) | Hacker News Reader

Billiards is a good game (1975)

mag.uchicago.edu

84 pointschucksmash59 comments

A more difficult variant is snooker, played on a 12ft x 6ft table with tighter pockets and smaller balls.

It can be frustrating to play well, but when you "get it", it really is a beautiful game to play, and a real mental workout.

For anyone interested, Ronnie O'Sullivan is the best ever player, and his YouTube highlights are worth a watch: https://youtu.be/PE8XPHnCNpg - makes the game look incredibly easy, but I assure you, it's not!

Wow this felt magical to watch, thank you for sharing it.

Ronnie might be the best but I’ve always enjoyed Mark Williams style of play more. The whole of the “Class of 92” are beyond special though.

Class of 92 are indeed very special. Williams is still doing amazingly well - just got to the final of the Saudi masters, and nearly clinched the deciding frame. Not bad for someone nearly 50 years old!

Billiards doesn't have pockets. Pool ("pocket billiards") has pockets.

You can see a billiard table in the background of the photo, behind the pool table.

English billiards does in fact have pockets, carom billiards does not.

Wow! Never saw Snooker before. It was awesome to slowly realize what he was trying to do, then watch him sink shot after shot after shot… the really impressive thing to me was the placement of the cue ball. He wasn’t just shooting balls into pockets. He was doing in a way that perfectly set up the next thing he wanted to do.

Cue ball control is the key. Anyone can pot balls when the cue ball is in the right place, but keeping that cue ball under control is what most people struggle with.

I agree that Ronnie O'Sullivan is great; I especially love watching his record fastest Maximum break [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/9D2rFMPN9js

TLDR: the article posted is not really about billiards at all. But I guess HN culture has degenerated to such an extent that the top comment is a response to the title, not the content. Not that your comment is incorrect, I've played snooker a few times on a full size table but also wasted countless hours of a UK childhood watching it on TV. It's just... not really in any way relevant to what the article is actually about.

Have you read the full article? It is using billiards as a metaphor for an intrinsic understanding of physics.

>In 1928, three years before his death, everyone said of Michelson, "He measured light," and today he is one of the few Nobel Prize winners whom nearly all educated people can name and give the reason for the award, although Michelson’s award actually was based on a wide spectrum of experiments.

I found this line (particularly "nearly all educated people can name and give the reason for the award") pretty amusing. Prior to this article, I'd heard of Michaelson, knew he was part of the Michelson and Morley experiment, and remembered a couple of details of the experiment design. But I also have a bachelors degree in physics, and I still couldn't have confidently told you whether he won a Nobel prize. I'm sure the intervening 50 years have dulled his fame a bit, but I've got to wonder how true it was when written.

I like that this was published to promote "A River Runs Through It," but they either hadn't quite decided on the name or misprinted it as "The River Runs Through It."

It's also interesting that lunch was organized in a way where graduate students watched the professors eat, and professors had recess after lunch.

I hadn't read the byline until I read your comment. Young Men and Fire is also a highly worthwhile read about the Mann Gulch fire. I'm delighted to have this article to read in a Saturday morning, because Norman Maclean's prose delights me.

Amazon's page (and URL) covers all angles. All hail SEO!

https://www.amazon.com/River-Runs-Through-Norman-Maclean/dp/...

My father, who died in 2010, would play Yahoo Games Pool and was good at it. It is all angles and physics and good for the brain.

Yahoo pool was ace. Fond memories of 2006 I think...bunch of devs taking 5 minutes off to play.

This is a complete tangent, but I would note that we don't have physical models nearly good enough to actually compute the way billiards balls (or even worse, snooker balls) interact with each other and the fabric on the table. It's all guesswork and experience, mostly. The interactions between the balls and the fabric are critical for the vast majority of the movements, and they are far too complex for any physical first-principles based model to capture.

Is this because of imperfections in the fabric? Golf has a similar situation where if you use a machine to roll a ball on a perfect line and speed, sometimes it won’t go in. This is because of imperfections in the gradient and that grass changes constantly as it slowly grows and bends towards light, etc.

Wow now that’s a tangent to a tangent!

There was still ongoing dispute between pool and snooker players whether playing side spin on white ball affects angle of the object ball hit by the white (ignoring deflection, just the spin transfer).

In real life it depends on the tables bed, banks, cloth (different material, speed, whether it's clean or dirty, it's 'mileage', air temperature and humidity...), balls, cue and of course human factor.

seems like you could test this. simply line up a very easy (and repeatable) combination shot with the two object balls really close to each other and vary the contact and spin as needed. the closer the cue ball to the first object ball will mean that you could minimise the impact of deflection. have to try it next time I'm near a pool table!

I've always assumed that deflection, swerve and throw were a given but sounds like they're debating the "throw" part?

Not imperfections, the fabric itself. If the balls were on a frictionless surface, their movement would be completely different, they would barely spin. Much of their movement is caused by their interaction with the fabric. But that is very hard to model from Newton's laws of motion.

Why are snooker balls harder to model?

Not the balls themselves, but I believe the fabric is thicker, and thus has a bigger effect on the balls' motion, on snooker tables compared to pool. There are also other difficulties, such as the cue having a smaller tip that brings more variability in the spin imparted to a ball, but those I think are less relevant to the ability to model the game from first principles (Newton's laws of motion).

If anyone is seeking serious answers about the variables, the first bible is "Byrne's New Standard Book Of Pool And Billiards."

And it's not just the cloth and balls (rolling and static friction, dirt, ball elasticity...), it's also the rails, which rarely exhibit "angle of reflection == angle of incidence" due to more complexities.

Humidity also plays a huge factor with the felt, same with the tip of your cue and how it hits.

If a tournament is using Andy Cloth (Taiwan based producer), I won't even bother entering.

Their felt isn't a consistent thickness, and if you put heavy English on the cue ball, there's a chance that it will suddenly grip and change direction in the middle of the table if you're not powering the shot in.

Simonis it is, then?

Simonis is pretty much the gold standard. Their 860 is my preference, but their others play really well too.

The Predator Arcadia is good, but plays really fast.

Haven't really had issues with the other brands I've played on (aside from Andy), although humidity really affects the Valley Ultra cloth.

Had a tournament on Valleys when a rain storm came through a few hours into it. Without hearing the rain or looking outside, I could tell it was raining. The tables slowed down dramatically.

Edit: Slight side note, avoid tables by doors to the outside. The fluctuations in temperature really messes with how true the table plays.

Huh it's still around. https://www.yahoo.com/games/play/pool-lucky-break-9-ball/

Looks like fun.

> The waitress told us he drew sketches of the faculty he did not care to eat with. She said they all had long noses.

I’m trying to understand this comment. I can’t tell if this is somehow a vague hint of an anti-Semitic attitude? It’s a weird thing to say or write in modern times if not.

> I can’t tell if this is somehow a vague hint of an anti-Semitic attitude?

Doesn’t seem likely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_A._Michelson#Life: “Michelson was born in Strelno, Posen, Kingdom of Prussia (modern-day Strzelno, Poland), to Jewish parents […] His family was non-religious, and Michelson himself was a lifelong agnostic”

Considering he was Jewish it seems unlikely?

You have to admit, it’s a strange comment though.

If you’re looking for it.

Could be a physiognomy angle.

It's fine. Stop seeing race, ethnicity everywhere. Just be more chill and not get triggered by everything, we don't have to police language. People should be able to say whatever they want

On the other hand, OP asked a question and you seem to be the one policing language in response.

I was not triggered, merely curious. It caught my eye. Several other people in this thread also noticed it as a bit strange. Doesn’t mean any of us were “triggered” by it.

Add me to the list of people wondering about it too. An odd throwaway line, something of a non sequitur, some information we didn't really need to know - and yet, it was included. (And the noses referred to again later.) But without further elaboration. Clearly we are supposed to take something from this - but what?

And I also considered the anti-semitism angle. It's not like the hook-nosed hand-wringing cartoon Jew isn't an extremely well-known anti-semitic stereotype, and it's not like the idea that somebody might be anti-semitic is hugely surprising. I don't think this thought is exactly some ridiculous flight of fancy!

Turns out Michelson was a Jew though. Well, maybe that was just his art style then! But now I'm even more confused about the inclusion of this information.

It is a strange comment.

In many cultures this signifies being a fool, e.g. think Pinocchio. Similar connotations exist for a wide variety of exaggerated proportions you might see in caricatures. So in this context it seems he didn't think highly of the faculty members at an intellectual level.

I forget the name of the specific art style, but "exagerated noses" is a known caricature motif. You can see this vividly depicted in the opening sequence of the BBC's "Yes Minister" TV series from the '80s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDEMthILzpA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Scarfe

also did drawings for Pink Floyd's The Wall.

Awesome! Thank you for the proper cite.

Jumping to that conclusion does require a very honed skill of looking for outrage.

I'd be curious to know what they mean but until then I'd just take it as a pun and move on.

> Jumping to that conclusion does require a very honed skill of looking for outrage.

Welcome to the modern internet.

It’s a good thing they didn’t jump to any conclusion, and asked a question

It's a reporting of a report of an observation of portrait drawings.

Theres no way to know what it means from the text; you'd have to ask the artist.

The question is why did the author feel compelled to bring up this bizarre remark about noses twice in the article, it’s rather out of the blue and several of us in this thread found it odd. It’s just a little strange. Curious, is all.

"I saw a monkey in this guy's house, which made me think of black people. Therefore, he was racist".

Assigning your own biases to other people is a great way to lose friends and influence nobody.

Ridiculous accusation. And note several others in thread had a similar curiosity about the remark.

I wondered too. It may simply indicate that the portraits were (intentionally) unflattering.

It's also one of the hardest games (sports) mentally, you can sit for a few minutes or few breakes and all you can do is wait for opponent to make a mistake - or play a safe. All you can do is try to stay focused and positive, not sulking over mistake you just made that might've lost you the whole match, to not mess up a chance when it comes.

Sort of like batting against peak Pedro. Just wait for him to err, if not you're toast.

Basically I've been playing billards all my life. Never really got better, playing at the same level for years. Meaning that getting more than two or three balls at one go was a rarity.

Until one day when I stopped looking at the white when playing a shot and instead I started looking at the target ball. It's weird that it took me so long to make that little change but it completely changed my skill level.

Something else I realised was that the less time I think about a shot the better the shot comes. As you said, it's a very mental game.

And I realised that it's all about placement: where do I want the white to be after playing a ball into the pocket.

Do you mean pool?

I had no idea Billiards had no pockets and no objective to sink balls into pockets. I had no idea a game like that existed, although, I certainly heard of Billiards but always thought it was, I now know is the game known as Snooker.

Billiards can be played on a snooker table (depending on company a potted ball is a penalty, £5 in the 'pot')

A great skill improver is often financially aligned.

Clicked to see whether this was Mclean on Michelson. Yep.

Their laboratory high school taught billiards as a phys ed class on the university's tables, too.

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