Do you practice playing pool by yourself in that infinite quest for personal perfection in the game—or at least as much perfection as you personally can achieve, knowing that each individual has different abilities and strengths?
You may want to try this practice game I created for myself because I don’t like drills—hate them, in fact.
I was recently practicing by myself, setting up shots and executing them, and kind of bored with the same old routine, so I created a game one can practice by oneself: The Pool Matrix.
What it’s about is setting all 15 balls, not touching one another, with perhaps a few on the rails; then, you take ball in hand and begin your run. When you’re done running off all 15, you leave the cue ball where it lays, place all 15 balls on the table again, and continue your run. And you continue in this way until you miss.
Playing position, you don’t want to run into other balls; pros and advanced players can play that if they run into an object ball with the cue ball, their run ends.
Having created the game, I began to play it a bit, and found that I really enjoyed it. And it isn’t as easy as I figured it to be. After about 10 times playing the game now, my high run is 62.
I assert here that, having played this just a few times, it has already improved my game. Additionally, it’s a great stroke workout because you find yourself shooting so many shots in a short time that your stroke becomes “grooved in,” as they say.
It’s a great game, too, if you like the feeling of pocketing balls, which I love, and pocket billiards are my favorite games (I can’t understand a table without balls myself, but I still respect the game.)
In my mind’s eye, I see a million pool players worldwide getting better, becoming more consistent in the game, and enjoying themselves at the same time playing The Pool Matrix! Perhaps I’m just delusional, but at any rate, I know I’ve benefitted from it already, for what that’s worth.
Also, I came up with a ranking system for the game:
“D” players would have a high run of 1-25.
“C” players would have a high run from 26-45.
“B” players would be in the 46-80 range.
“A” players would be in the 81-150 range.
