>>>>>I used to be a pretty serious pool player ( when you grew up with Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason in your head in The Hustler in a pretty continuous loop that happened. Fortunately, I went to college with a lot of rich kids who had tables in their basement and could beat their coursins so they thought they could play <g> )
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>>>>I hope you didn't get your hands broken as Newman did.
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>>>>>I'd go up to Canada in the summer and get my clock cleaned pretty regularly on snooker tables (which looked to me the size of footbal fields <s>) by the local boys, who had similar experiences when they came south and played our version of pocket billiards.
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>>>>They're daunting in size, aren't they. It's like the difference between launching short- or long-range missiles. Accuracy diminishes with distance. During the finals they showed some ultra low speed film of the cue- and object balls and discovered that they actually bounce minutely, from a hardish shot, and any bounce of the cue ball is imparted to the object ball. Very interesting bit of physics, and like watching a Newton's Cradle.
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>>>>>Very different game - the size of the balls is probably the biggest adjustment.
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>>>>Billiards on a pool table. How so and how many balls in the game?
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>>>>>
>>>>>I've never seen a snooker table in the US though I've been told there's a place in Boston that has a pretty nice setup.
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>>>>>Of course, I can't stand playing 8 ball or on tables you put coins in either. 9 ball and straight pool are the only games I can take seriously. And I really prefer to play in places where my Balabushka isn't the only one in the house. <s>
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>>>>Ah, there's another difference. I've only ever encountered the coin-op 8-ball tables in British pubs and clubs. I get the impression from TV and film that the professional tables (often in blue baize) seem bigger than these, and I don't know what you mean by 9-ball pool.
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>>>I think, but please don't tell anyone I said this in case I'm wrong, that a pocket pool table is 8'x4'.
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>>About the size of a sheet of plasterboard (dry-walling) then? Is this the same size for the coin-op table and the professional "pool-hall" table?
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>>...
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>Without having ever measured one, I think that some of the coin ops are more like 6'x3'. I doubt any 'real' pool hall tables are that small.

I thought so. It's just that I've never seen a "real" pool table, and TV and/or film can make things seem bigger or smaller. Are they lined with slate as snooker tables are?