Customer Reviews

Byrne's Treasury of Trick Shots in Pool and Billiards

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book covers the classics, such as the football shot, butterfly shot, machine gun shot, just showin' off, etc, plus variations, (i.e. masse machine gun shot) lesser known shots, and shots by the author. Some require almost no skill at all, while making others could keep pros happy all day.
Every shot has information about its history, how to do it, and sometimes even suggestions on what to say before you attempt it, plus a clear yet detailed digram of the setup and shot.
Almost any book will tell you how to do a few, common trick shots, but this one has them all.

The book is interesting, but I tried a number of the supposedly "easy" trick shots.. They're not easy and I'm a fairly decent shot (play in leagues etc..). I'm sure with consistent practice, you could actually make 1 or 2 of these shots, but even then they would be "low percentage" shots. The placement of the balls must be perfect and no text can tell where to place these balls with the kind of precision you'll need to make these shots. Just don't expect to buy this book and be making trick shots the next day.. - You'll be disappointed. Even so, it's fun just to see these shots diagramed and the historical facts/anecdotes are interesting.

This book has nearly every trick shot around. Also included are references for many of the shots to let you know where they came from. This is one of the ten essential books for any student of cue games.

Once again Byrne delivers concise info in an easy understandable manner. I currently own several of his books and videos; all of which are helpful. Some of his info may be found in earlier writings, but that's the case with many tomes in this area. It's no surprise he was inducted into the BCA Hall of Fame for his wonderful contributions to this sport via his writings/videos.

As soon as my husband started flipping through this book, he was so excited. I surprised him with it on Valentine's Day, and within a couple of minutes, he was checking out trick shots that had always eluded him, shots that he always wanted to learn, some he had never seen before, and some that he was doing incorrectly. It has great diagrams and excellent explanations. We whole-heartedly recommend this book!

This is entertaining as well as informative, as plenty of it is narrative rather than instructional and many of the instructional tips are actually applicable to real pool games, not just trick shot displays. Anyone who already has Byrne's Standard Book of Pool and Byrne's Advanced should also get this, and his Wonderful World of Pool & Billiards book, as all four volumes regularly refer to (useful) information in each other. While this is MOSTLY a fun book about nifty tricks shots (and possibly profitable ones, if you can master them and find suckers for bar bets), your casual, league and even tournament player can learn a few good pointers from the materials herein.