Well, I applied for and got the go ahead to be a part of Pool Synergy which is a blog carnival all about pool and billiard themes.  Thanks for the opportunity.  I was not in time to get in on the What's in the Case edition but I am doing one retroactively because I think it's a natural fit to what I do.  I know you all are just DYING to know what's in the case maker's case right?

So I did a video blog for this one where I do a concise history of cases from the 70's until now to show just how we ended up even being able to do these What's in The Case segments for more than 30 seconds.   I will give you the summary in case you don't want to watch the video.

Pre-80s most players only carried one cue with them, sometimes with two shafts.  So the prevalent cases were slim tubes and sleeves that only held one butt and at most two shafts.  No pockets.  The most famous case of the 70's was the Fellini.  It inspired a bunch of imitators.  Most famous among the imitators was It's George.  It's George introduced the 2×4 and even the 3×6 Tour Edition.  With big pockets these cases inspired players to fill them up and they did.  Parallel to it's George we had Jay Flowers and Nora Van Horn making cases that were plumbing tubes covered with leather and those also had a pair of small pockets.  In the mid 80's Joe Porper came out with a molded foam core case in sizes all the way up to 3×6 with roomy pockets.

And so these three styles of case came to define the modern cue case as a place to carry around everything you need to play except for talent.  And the inventors in pooldom were only too happy to keep inventing more and more tools and gadgets to fill those case pockets.

Also three other factors played a big role in cases needing to get bigger, Texas Express One Foul Nine Ball Rules and the advent of break cues being used.  Under the Texas Express rules jump shots became more important than ever and so jump cues were invented.  Also the break became much more important and so players started breaking harder and not wanting to damage the tips they had carefully shaped they started carrying a dedicated cue just to use for the break.  And in the 90's we started to see a lot of specialty shaft companies  coming out with a lot of varieties of shafts and so players needed a place for all those extra shafts.

In the past three years I have made all sorts of cases of varying configurations with specialty pockets of all shapes and sizes.  I often wonder what all my customers keep in their cases.

I do have an interesting story along those lines.

In the beginning, way back in 1991, I made cases with all kinds of funky pockets and one customer asked me if I could do a hidden compartment.  I said sure and asked him how big it should be.  He said it should be about big enough for a kilo of sugar.  Really, he did.  So I made it and called it the 007 case.  I never did find out if he was really carrying sugar in that secret compartment.

So what's in my case?  Well being that I am in the business I am constantly being given tools and gadgets to evaluate.  So my gear rotates a lot but essentially I always like to have a Tip Pik, a burnisher for the tip, something to trim and sand the tip and something to condition the shaft.  So that's my core gear and everything else rotates with whatever the projects of the moment happen to be.

So check out the video below and see what's in my case right now. 

This subject is in eternal debate among players and cue makers.  My take on it is that how a cue feels is a very personal thing based on a person’s experience and influences.  However here is a very interesting experiment performed by the late John McChesney one of the three founders of the Texas Express Nine Ball Tour, and the two surviving members Randy Goetlicher and Robin Adair,

Here’s something interesting we tried in 1991:
At an event we had 16 cues with the butt, joint and the ferrules covered with masking tape…then numbered. No one could “see” if the cue was a steel, plastic or wood joint (as in a Pete), nor detect by the style of ferrule. We had 70 players…each hit balls with the cues throughout the weekend.

The results:
Of nearly 800 attempts over the time period, the players guessed wrong about what type joint was in the cue more than 7 out of 10 times. A top pro (Meucci staffer) happened to be there, having done an exhibition and the cuehe liked the most during the attempts: He thought was surely a Meucci, plastic joint when in reality it was an older Adams with a piloted steel joint; and additionally guessed the Meucci he shot with as a cue with a steel joint.

Again, I maintain that cues with different joint materials may sound differently; may be balanced differently, but what is “hit” ? Doesn’t “hit” have to do with all the senses: Vibration (feel), sound, balance, etc. What is a “soft” hit? What is a “hard” hit? (what does this mean, if not the sound the cue makes upon impact, or are people ref. to the vibration in the butt?) Does a hard hit vibrate more and make a different sound? A soft hit vibrate less with a different sound? I  maintain that the primary criteria that differentiates one cue from another begins with: The tip (soft, med or hard) The shaft diameter and density of the wood The taper (or stiffness of the shaft) To this day, I still don’t believe the joint has
much to do with the reaction of the cueball off the shaft, rather it is the 3 aforementioned that have far more bearing on how a cue plays than anything else. Remember, what makes the predator shaft play differently is what is located at the tip, inside the shaft, the ferrule and the laminations….not the joint or butt.

In closing, our experiment asked which cue the players liked best: Of the 70 players, nearly 55 liked the hit of two cues with different numbers: When the two were exposed, they both were sneaky petes, wood to wood joints, (one a Scruggs and the other a Huebler); both about 19 oz., both about 13 1/4mm and tended to be on the stiff side of “hit”. By the way, the 55 who liked the hit of these two cues: more than half thought they would be steel jointed.

- John McChesney Posted on Rec.Sport.Billiards circa 1999

For the best value in Sneaky Pete style pool cues with wood-to-wood joints please check out the ones from Sterling Cues and Fury Cues.

The BCA is supposed to be the organization that promotes the billiard sports in the USA. That supposition would be in error though. The BCA is a membership organization consisting primarily of business members. Their mandate at one time was to promote billiards an activity and to bring some governance to the sport.

Along the way however the BCA has come to be dominated by a few large companies and has shown that all dues paying voting members do not have equal votes.

Essentially the voting power of the BCA resides with those members who purchase the most space at the annual trade show. A trade show which carries the title of Billiard Congress of America Billiards and Home Recreation Expo.

Which brings me to where the BCA is now. It is, by the admission of the board at last year’s annual meeting, an organization whose primary focus is to put on a trade show. And a large part of that job is to sell as much booth space as they possibly can. In years past BCA staff has attended shows outside the billiards industry around the country not as an exhibitor but instead to entice exhibitors at those shows to purchase booth space and the BCA Expo to sell their products. Sounds fairly innocent right?

Well, the problem with this approach is that it doesn’t bring any new buyers into the billiard industry and it further spreads the purchasing budget of existing buyers among non-industry companies. The BCA says they are providing value to the attendees by providing them a lot of choice at the show.

When did the billiard industry become Wal Mart? We need more people to decide to become billiard players and proprietors, not to encourage the ones that already are to diversify into other activities. Offering poker tables, foosball tables, ping-pong suppliers, video games and a plethora of other activities at the BCA Expo does nothing for the billiard industry.

Why doesn’t the BCA spend the money to purchase booth space at the other shows and sell the visitors there on the virtues of being in the billiard business? Perhaps because that would be a little too much like work to man a booth for the duration of the show and to try and sell a product. The BCA doesn’t understand what their members, especially the members with no power, have to deal with when they show up at the billiard trade show and they have to compete with non-industry folks for the few buyers that do show up. Perhaps if the BCA had to do some selling themselves instead of spending then they would understand how the dynamic is supposed to work.

The billiard industry is at a low spot right now. Table rentals are off. League participation is down. Men’s professional pool is all but dead and our best players are not considered much of a threat to the international competition. In a recent survey only Steve Mizerak was identified as a famous player and then only because the clerk at the sports store sold cues with the Steve’s name on them.

In other parts of the world the equivalent organizations to the BCA who are operating with a fraction of the funds at the BCA’s disposal have managed to get pool on television regularly, uncut and exciting. They are getting pool into the public consciousness. Why can’t the BCA do this as well?

What does the BCA stand for? Find out for yourself at www.bca-pool.com