Break Shot Patterns
Phil Capelle

I CERTAINLY hope there's a market for Phil Capelle's excellent new "Break Shot Patterns: How To Close 14.1 Racks Like A Pro," because that would mean that there are players genuinely interested in keeping this great game going. This is Capelle's 10th book, and clearly one of his best. There are 14 chapters on key balls alone, plus 46 separate opinions and patterns of some of the game's very top players. Would you have known, for example, that there are five factors that determine where the best break-ball position really is?

Capelle correctly emphasizes break shots from the side of the rack - that's where just about every expert player prefers them - and the key shots that lead directly to them. But Part 4 does take on a variety of break balls, and there's even a modest listing of just how much surveying of the table the top players do. This book is also available as a DVD, which features 110 closing patterns from the Accu-Stats library of championship matches with an all-star lineup of players including Sigel, Hohmann, Schmidt, Ortmann and many others.

www.billiardspress.com * $39.95

The Concise Book of Position Play
Pierre Morin
(Review by Robert Byrne)

WHEN A champion dies, it's like a library burning down, so much information and knowledge is lost. Plenty of players carefully guard what they know and choose to die rather than tell anybody anything. Even those who are willing to share rarely take the trouble to sit down and draw diagrams and write explanations.

Bill Smith of Chicago (now of Florida) is an exception. He was one of the top half-dozen three-cushion players in the country for over 20 years, and in the 1992 U.S. National Championship finished second to the great Sang Lee. Smith has always been a close student of the game and its greatest players.

He has done three-cushion players a huge favor by putting his 45 years of experience in the form of a book and an accompanying DVD. "The Concise Book of Position Play" is obviously a labor of love. Nobody is going to make much money producing a book on such a narrow subject as position play in three-cushion billiards.

But it's more than that. There is also a review of stance, grip, bridge, stroke, aiming and the pre-shot routine. There are descriptions of several diamond systems that don't appear in other books, and there are diagrams of half-a-dozen unusual shots that I haven't seen before. The book has 260 pages and is spiral bound. There are a lot of interesting photos of players, including of his father Merle, who was also a fine player, and of old-timer Ernie Presto, Smith's main mentor, to whom the book is dedicated.

The book has sections on position play for thin hits, half-ball hits, end-rail-first, cross-table, reverse English and multi-rail shots. He even has something to say on how to break through tough leaves.

Smith's book has many examples of position zones, but unlike Vingerhoedt, he advocates trying to leave big balls in corners. In many positions it's not that hard, and his diagrams and DVD prove it.

In his 1980 book, "Position Play in Three-Cushion Billiards," Eddie Robin advocates a position idea that Smith doesn't favor. Robin feels that if you can leave two balls in the middle area of the table - all three is even better - you are almost bound to have a decent second shot because you are likely to have options off either side of the two object balls. Smith would rather leave a ball in a corner than in the middle of the table.

I once asked world champion Torbjorn Blomdahl how often he played position. He replied that he used to play position more than half the time, but he finally reduced it to half because he was missing too often.

Even if you don't feel you are good enough to play position, you'll learn a lot just leafing though "The Concise Book of Position Play": you'll be reminded of shots you have forgotten and learn some new ones.

A final word of advice from Smith's impressive and enjoyable book. Make the shot! Nothing is gained if you concentrate so much on playing position that you don't score.

www.mr3cushion.com * $59.95

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