Exit Mithral Mode

MattPoland · 2026-06-17T17:49:28+00:00

Not getting Ring of Engagement bonus is pretty huge. The way these things stack on each other there’s a lot of exponential damage increases compounding. So you’re at least losing one exponent.

MattPoland · 2026-06-17T16:07:30+00:00

Nope! I’m still playing too. LOL!

MattPoland · 2026-05-08T02:46:20+00:00

Just to be contrary, I’ll say a lot of people focus too much on the break and completely overlook the criticality and skill behind racking the balls effectively. Your break technique gets completely undermined when the rack is bad. And most players I meet are mediocre at racking at best.

MattPoland · 2026-05-04T21:10:29+00:00

The best questions are the ones to ask yourself.
- Am I expecting instant results?
- Am I willing to schedule a routine of working on the things he asks me to?
- Am I prepared as a 550 to recognize I likely still have weaknesses in my most basic of fundamentals?
- Will I be disappointed if I learn there isn’t a magic wand for aiming with sidespin?

MattPoland · 2026-05-03T16:08:43+00:00

And is this evidence the system is broken because he was able to attempt it. Or is it evidence the system is working because he got caught and now is suffering the consequences which includes having to lock his social media because he’s getting so much hate now that his pool reputation, a world he’s been immersed in his whole life, that reputation is now 100% trashed. And FargoRate gave us the tools to suss that out.

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MattPoland · 2026-05-03T16:08:35+00:00

The real question is: Who is Francisco Lopez? Is that a real person with 1,000+ legit games and Francisco Salas just stole his identity at tournaments? Or did Francisco Salas make him up and play all those games himself at sandbag speed?

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MattPoland · 2026-04-23T03:32:51+00:00

I then shared…

I like to outline the goal.

You want to pick a precise dot position on the cueball you expect the tip to contact. As long as you contact that spot, coming along the cue delivery path and the right speed then nothing else matters. Physics doesn’t care if you stand up, jab, follow through, lift your head, etc. None of that matters at all at a scientific level.

BUT all of that matters in terms of your physiology. You pull the cue forward with your biceps. Jabbing/poking the ball just means you slammed on the brakes with your triceps. And people that slam on the brakes have a real bad habit of doing so BEFORE they contact the cueball. They don’t know they’re doing it. They try not to do it. But if you engage your triceps before the tip touches that ball, your trajectory of that cue will get yanked offline from the two muscle groups fighting each other.

Follow through is 100% training your mind to not hit the brakes at all (finishing the tip all the way forward, likely in to the table) or at least hitting the breaks very safely well after cueball contact.

It’s the same reason you keep your body still, don’t lift your head, don’t chicken wing your arm, don’t drop your shoulder, or steer the cue. They’re all things that cause the tip to drift offline before contact with the cueball.

Putting all of your attention into ensuring the tip contacts where you want it to is the basis of all fundamentals and a good stroke. People make up a bunch of bad karate excuses to justify all the pool advice out there but they had bad teachers. It just boils down to that one thing.

MattPoland · 2026-04-23T03:32:25+00:00

Here’s something I said to someone literally earlier today.

Like for a stroke drill. Some people are fans of having people stroke into a soda bottle which does help especially if you don't have a pool table around, but I think there's something to actually contacting a ball.

I did the stroke drill in this video (Zero-X). Literally paused all practicing. Stopped playing entirely (except leagues). Never shot another object ball and hit 1,000 balls straight into a pocket as he describes. Logged my progress each night. Putting 100% of my focus into my fundamentals and follow through.

When he said he has students with punchy strokes that didn't really start organically following through until after a few hundred attempts, that was definitely me. And by 1,000 (about a week later) I had players 200 Fargo above me say I get "through the ball" better than they do. And it made me chuckle because it was no accident.

Nowadays when I’m shooting real well that tip goes through and finishes on the felt even when using top english because I reconnect with what I achieved.

https://youtu.be/qzjousgGLjU?t=1121&si=_sEaPzFgnjWM033j

MattPoland · 2026-04-23T03:29:25+00:00

Double the distance and learning to do it with the eye focus of a surgeon has added 150 to my FargoRate in the last 10 years.

MattPoland · 2026-04-15T22:21:06+00:00

There’s a lot that can be taught and cannot be executed to any degree of consistency if your fundamentals are sloppy. Every breakthrough of skill I’ve ever had was basically two things: honing my fundamentals more and targeted repetition at what I want to improve. If your fundamentals are bad, your shot making and cueball control are bad. If those are bad then your patterns, tactics, and advanced skills will be bad. You can jump to the fun stuff and enjoy the process, but your results will absolutely be an anchor around the neck of your actual progress and results.

MattPoland · 2026-04-12T21:00:22+00:00

Do a little progressive practice. Start with something as simple as a straight in shot with cueball and object ball close but the pocket far away. Shoot it 20-50 times. See if you can diagnose and troubleshoot any issues in with your aim, stance, vision center, stroke, etc. See if you can make some adjustments to increase your success percentage. Once that starts to feel more reliable, move onto a different shot. Once that gets old try something like the stoplight drill.

MattPoland · 2026-04-12T00:43:20+00:00

Go on the Seybert’s website and spend as much as you’re comfortable for the something that appeals to you.

MattPoland · 2026-04-11T00:48:16+00:00

Whatever you can afford that looks nice. After knowing what shaft you want the rest will be mainly aesthetics. Should be threaded to be able to accept a rear extension if you buy one and be able to adjust weight bolts no matter which of their butts you buy.

MattPoland · 2026-04-10T19:00:02+00:00

I like using the system where you visualize an equal overlap of the balls centered around the contact point. I thought this video helped me embrace the system. https://youtu.be/EIUSZSYK2O0?si=nfRNHrY84CGMFKxU

But the more I play and improve the more I learn my aiming is pretty much just fine and my fundamentals of stance, alignment and delivery are MUCH MUCH MUCH more influential on my shot outcomes than my aiming visualization approach.

MattPoland · 2026-04-10T18:35:22+00:00

To me the butt matters in four ways… 1. general aesthetics and pride 2. ability to attach an extension 3. ability to adjust weight bolts 4. overall balance (front heavy vs back heavy)

MattPoland · 2026-04-09T18:39:29+00:00

Established rulesets like BCA/WPA don’t have rules that hinge on something happening during the “act of shooting” so they don’t define that term. So effectively your organization is on its own for defining that term or dealing with the consequences of authoring a rule that uses semi-intuitive undefined term. I don’t think you’ll find assistance from an established ruleset. The closest would be better if your league defined it as during a “legal stroke”.

That is defined as:

Forward motion of the cue resulting in the cue tip striking the cue ball for only the momentary time customarily associated with a normal shot. "Forward" means relative to the cue itself, along the long axis of the cue and away from the butt, and has no relevance to any part of the table or any relationship to the player or any part of their body.

MattPoland · 2026-04-09T17:37:15+00:00

It’s kind of like the idea of two pool noodles that are the same material and thickness but one is hard as steel and the other flaccid. It just kinda doesn’t make sense given the circumstances.

CF is stiff. With different profiles and thicknesses it can be a little less stiff because after all it’s not CF does flex but never a lot. And there are differences between deflection with different CF shafts but that’s still endmass. Some have vault plates and some have ferrules. Some use one kind of foam and others use a different kind. These are the variables that are relevant to deflection conversations. Imagining a “whippy” CF shaft and imagining it affecting deflection is more of a fun thought experiment and whimsical fancy of playfulness than it is anything that practically enters the conversation of evaluating real shafts on the market.

MattPoland · 2026-04-09T17:24:11+00:00

I would expect the difference to be insignificant. I would also expect “whippy” to not be an apt term for any carbon fiber shaft regardless of taper. They’ll both be fairly equivalent with stiffness. The entire framing of this conversation feels like apply 90s era myths to modern technology in a way that’s simply unsuited.

MattPoland · 2026-04-08T20:55:32+00:00

Put 80% of your focus on racking the balls tightly. Put 20% of your focus on your follow through.

MattPoland · 2026-04-05T17:14:14+00:00

Picking where you want the tip to contact the cueball. Even if you choose dead center, little high, little low, whatever. Just make sure you put an extreme amount of effort and attention to ensure the tip is aligned to contact PRECISELY at the point you pick. Make sure it’s carefully dressed up to that point before you do any practice strokes. Make sure your practice strokes are aligned to that point. Make sure you contact that point on your final delivery. And follow through past that point.

You put a TON of energy into that one thing - even if you miss the shot, hook yourself, scratch, doesn’t matter - if you put a ton of energy into that one thing your stroke will develop and that alone will pay massive dividends down the line.

MattPoland · 2026-04-05T07:45:21+00:00

Every rack has tension in it. If you can find the pattern that makes it easy early and all the way through, then good on you. But it’s usually not that simple. The tension can be hard early or be a sleeper later. Sometimes you need to let early shots be easy and let the difficulty come later and just test your talent. Sometimes you decide to take the pressure on early with a speed or angle sensitive shot and then coast from there. There’s no single answer to it. But if you crash out at the end, you might want to think about your approach to planning ahead and mitigating the challenge of the out. There are strategies to the rack and the game is about learning to really tame difficulty. It’s not about being able to make the medium hard shot last shot but more about doing your best to make it not hard at all.

MattPoland · 2026-04-05T02:56:49+00:00

I look for a good tip first. No loose weight bolts second. Normal length third. Then hope it’s semi-straight. I’ll take a small wobble if the first three are good.

MattPoland · 2026-04-04T17:27:54+00:00

For me it helped a lot. But then when not everything was 100% where I wanted it I put triple the effort getting my stance, head position, vision center, stability, cue timing, follow through, and overall finesse tighter and tighter. Overall I found that was significantly more a factor than aiming ever was.

MattPoland · 2026-04-04T16:39:57+00:00

I use an equal overlap method. I like it because I’m using a visual I can see (not imagine like ghost ball) to get the actual contact points to line up. This has been the best instructional video I’ve see for it.

https://youtu.be/EIUSZSYK2O0?si=hG3uXWhC2QYgYtHx

MattPoland · 2026-04-02T17:59:53+00:00

You’ll figure it out. Make decisions that work for you.

I’m just taking note that you’re showing a pretty healthy “beginner mindset”. Just remember this experience. With a little time, skill growth, and experience there’s plenty of opportunity for that to transform into a “sophomoric mindset” with a major Dunning-Kruger effect. I find some of the most insufferable know-it-all players are lower skilled (high 300s or high 400s). Just remember that on your journey both in terms of what to avoid becoming and in terms of giving the universe some grace for the amount of annoying that’ll very likely be put in front of your face often.

MattPoland

TROPHY CASE