Pool Player's Edge - Gerry Kanov and Shari Stauch

Pool Player's Edge

by Gerry Kanov and Shari Stauch

NEW, 240 pages

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About Pool Player's Edge

The best-selling guide that helped countless players improve their game is now updated, expanded, and better than ever!

With Pool Player’s Edge you will sharpen your strategy and shot-making skills while mastering tactics and techniques in the four most popular forms of the game: 9-ball, 8-ball, straight pool, and one-pocket.

In this new edition, billiards experts and tour pros Gerry “The Ghost” Kanov and Shari “The Shark” Stauch share their secrets on every aspect of the game. In Pool Player’s Edge you will learn these skills:

• Perfect your aim and master your shots
• Control the cue ball
• Set the tone for the game with a power break
• Handle the most common and troublesome shots
• Map the table and set up shots
• Strategize your game
• Remain focused and unnerved in competitive play

Step-by-step professional instruction and over 200 full-color detailed diagrams will show you how to take your game to the next level. Whether you’re a league player or a seasoned professional, if you’re serious about pool and looking for a competitive edge, Pool Player’s Edge is your best shot.

About Gerry Kanov and Shari Stauch

Gerry “The Ghost” Kanov and Shari “The Shark” Stauch combine an unprecedented wealth of professional pool experience and talent. Both contribute to Pool & Billiard Magazine, the top publication for the sport. They have also played against or worked with most of the top professional pool players and instructors in the world.

Kanov has been playing professional and amateur pool since 1968. He has dozens of local and national top-three finishes and championships, including two national team championships as a player and coach. He is an instructional editor and technical advisor for Pool & Billiard Magazine and has written dozens of instructional articles, including the columns “Ghost” and “Eight Ball Ernie,” both reader favorites.

Kanov was a touring professional on the Camel Pro Billiard series and a coach for several top players. He also has a screen credit: He portrayed a referee in the motion picture The Color of Money. Kanov and his wife make their home in Nashville, Tennessee.

Stauch, a 2007 inductee into the Women's Professional Billiard Association (WPBA) Hall of Fame, was a touring pro on the Women’s Pro Billiard Tour from 1980 to 2004, when she retired to pursue promotion of the sport full time. She was consistently ranked in the top 32 players in the world, even while serving as executive editor of Pool & Billiard Magazine and handling publicity for the Women’s Pro Billiard Tour. She has performed dozens of exhibitions for clients, including ESPN.

Stauch was the founding president of the Billiard Education Foundation, which conducts youth billiard national championships and scholarship programs. Stauch also was involved as a consultant for The Color of Money. Shari resides with her husband and two children outside of Charleston, South Carolina. She is a BCA- and ACS-certified instructor and certified coach.

Reviews

"Pool Player's Edge is a shortcut to mastering the game, no matter what level you strive to reach.”

Ewa Mataya Laurance -- "The Striking Viking", World Trick Shot and 9-Ball Champion

About Billiards and Pool

All cue sports are generally regarded to have evolved into indoor games from outdoor stick-and-ball lawn games (retroactively termed ground billiards), and as such to be related to trucco, croquet and golf, and more distantly to the stickless bocce and balls.

The first known mention of a form of the word "billiards" appears in Edmund Spenser's Mother Hubberd's Tale in 1591, where he speaks of "all thriftles games that may be found ... with dice, with cards, with balliards." The word "billiard" may have evolved from the French word billart or billette, meaning "stick", in reference to the mace, an implement similar to a golf club, which was the forerunner to the modern cue; the term's origin may have also been from French bille, meaning "ball". The modern term "cue sports" can be used to encompass the ancestral mace games, and even the modern cueless variants, such as finger billiards, for historical reasons. "Cue" itself came from queue, the French word for a tail. This refers to the early practice of using the tail of the mace to strike the ball when it lay against a rail cushion.

A recognizable form of billiards was played outdoors in the 1340s, and was reminiscent of croquet, purportedly, created by Percivile Winkle. King Louis XI of France (1461–1483) had the first known indoor billiard table. Louis XIV further refined and popularized the game, and it swiftly spread amongst the French nobility. While the game had long been played on the ground, this version appears to have died out in the 17th century, in favor of croquet, golf and bowling games, while table billiards had grown in popularity as an indoor activity. Mary, Queen of Scots, claimed that her "table de billiard" had been taken away by what would eventually become her executioners (who covered her body with the table's cloth). In 1588, the Duke of Norfolk, owned a "billyard bord coered with a greene cloth... three billyard sticks and 11 balls of yvery". Billiards grew to the extent that by 1727, it was being played in almost every Paris cafe. In England, the game was developing into a very popular activity for members of the gentry.

By 1670, the thin butt end of the mace began to be used not only for shots under the cushion (which itself was originally only there as a preventative method to stop balls from rolling off), but players increasingly preferred it for other shots as well. The cue as it is known today was finally developed by about 1800.

Initially, the mace was used to push the balls, rather than strike them. The newly developed striking cue provided a new challenge. Cushions began to be stuffed with substances to allow the balls to rebound, in order to enhance the appeal of the game. After a transitional period where only the better players would use cues, the cue came to be the first choice of equipment.

The demand for tables and other equipment was initially met in Europe by John Thurston and other furniture makers of the era. The early balls were made from wood and clay, but the rich preferred to use ivory.

Early billiard games involved various pieces of additional equipment, including the "arch" (related to the croquet hoop), "port" (a different hoop) and "king" (a pin or skittle near the arch) in the 1770s, but other game variants, relying on the cushions (and eventually on pockets cut into them), were being formed that would go on to play fundamental roles in the development of modern billiards.

The early croquet-like games eventually led to the development of the carom or carambole billiards category – what most non-US and non-UK speakers mean by the word "billiards". These games, which once completely dominated the cue sports world but have declined markedly in many areas over the last few generations, are games played with three or sometimes four balls, on a table without holes (and without obstructions or targets in most cases), in which the goal is generally to strike one object ball with a cue ball, then have the cue ball rebound off of one or more of the cushions and strike a second object ball. Variations include three-cushion, straight rail and the balkline variants, cushion caroms, five-pins, and four-ball, among others.

Over time, a type of obstacle returned, originally as a hazard and later as a target, in the form of pockets, or holes partly cut into the table bed and partly into the cushions, leading to the rise of pocket billiards, especially "pool" games, popular around the world in forms such as eight-ball, nine-ball, straight pool and one-pocket amongst numerous others. The terms "pool" and "pocket billiards" are now virtually interchangeable, especially in the US. English billiards (what UK speakers almost invariably mean by the word "billiards") is a hybrid carom/pocket game, and as such is likely fairly close to the ancestral original pocket billiards outgrowth from 18th to early 19th century carom games.

There are few more cheerful sights, when the evenings are long, and the weather dull, than a handsome, well-lighted billiard room, with the smooth, green surface of the billiard table; the ivory balls flying noiselessly here and there, or clicking musically together.
—Charles Dickens Jr., (1889)

Pool Player's Edge