Swimming pools must bear this sign “a swim a day keeps the doctor away”

My parents were both expert swimmers and always took part in the local swimming competitions in our quite and small village. Ever since my childhood our family cultivated the habit of swimming around in many swimming pools surrounding our home. By the way I forgot to mention that my father is a Swimming coach for Olympians and we lived closed to the remains of an Olympic Village! He was also employed by the IOC’s local branch as a maintenance hand for the swimming pools with the thought that one day the Games may come back to this Village. Desirous thinking can sometimes be rewarded with a inspired event.

To maintain a swimming pool one needs to know about cleaning and disinfecting, water quality, about pool construction, swimming pool chemicalsand general hygiene. The facility must be well cleaned absolutely imperatively to ensure that no one develops any water borne sickness. A regular schedule of cleaning is given to the staff so that there is no lapse in the cleaning of the swimming pools. If a pool is not going to be used for some time the cleaning is carried out and the pool is kept dry or even covered till it needs to be used again. Brominating or Chlorination is regularly affected and the water pH is maintained at a neutral state of 7.2 to 7.6.

Other steps include cleaning the skimmer baskets, providing and controlling algaecide and clarifiers, shock method of liberating free chlorine in the pool and some other minor treatments. The physical cleaning are done by skilled pool cleaners as they know the pools inside out and also ensure that the cleaning is done in a regular basis following simple steps of vacuuming, brushing using chemicals and also covering the pool with swimming pool covers. It is no wonder that expert swimmers who know all about swimming pools are thought to be the best people to maintain such Olympic grade pools.

My Play And Billiard Instructions

Many people want to learn or improve their practice about billiards or how to play billiards. What we should know on billiards? 
Learning billiard could be the toughest thing at times with all the effort ant patience required. Not only does it take a lot of practice to master the game but also a lot of patience as well. There are many tricks and many unbelievably amusing body and brain co-operations involved. Because of all these it could all go wrong at the start of your learning process. It isn’t impossible though to master this wonderful game with proper billiard instruction.
Billiard instruction give always are readily available all over the country these days. The first lesson these all instructors will teach you is to get rid of the nervousness, anxiety and build on confidence while ignoring any distractions. It is almost taught at any instructor and any online learning website.
For the convenience of the viewers there are many learning websites available these days to provide billiard instruction. Some of these provide some free information for the beginners to understand the game more and some are professional websites which will provide lessons online. The most popular billiard instruction programs available could be named as the “nine ball” instructions and the “eight ball” instructions. These are the two most popular games amongst many young and middle aged people who would get together for a game of billiard.
It is easier for someone who hasn’t played the game in the higher level to mislead someone else on the information about the game these days with the use of internet. Hence a proper researching is necessary prior to going through of any billiard instruction. Any false information could lead to a very uncomfortable wrong technique to develop in you. Even though you are not playing the game as a profession a wrong play could still affect the satisfaction you gain.
Even the advanced professional players of billiards will at some point of their career have to sit back and go to their basics. Getting a billiard instruction therefore is essential while you are on the climb.
Billiard instruction will always make sure to refresh your brain on the techniques you should learn. It will keep your brain on edge to always be sharp and mindful of the good things you should do. Try it out, and receive a fast growth in your billiards career with a billiard instruction a day.

A Tip For Billiard Balls

Billiards or billiard is widely popular nowaday, but there is something which is not much known in billiards. It is about billiard balls… 
Not having the perfect set of billiard balls can certainly be a sad factor for anyone who loves to play pool. This is one of the essentials of every game. Ask a seasoned player and they will tell you that getting the basic equipment and tools right is the main thing for every player who wants to succeed in each game.

Billiard balls are the round spheres that are used when playing a game of pool. The difference in each ball lies in the friction and coating of it and is an important factor looked for by professionals. Usually players who are quite serious about the game and its rules will use a different set of billiard balls for each game.

Billiard balls come in different colors making them stand out from the rest. Many of the other games that use a ball stick to either one or two colors. Carom is one such game. The difference with the game of pool is that billiard balls come in a range of colors that include yellow, black, purple, blue, red and even burgundy. The mixture of colors set against a green background has actually increased the enjoyment of players who love the game.

Sometimes you may think that the only difference between each of the billiard balls is its color. But think again. An experienced player will tell you that the weight of each ball is different. This can have an impact on the players’ performance. Start to play the game and you will feel the difference in minutes.

Some billiard balls will have a number on them. Games such as Carom may not have this policy, but look closely at some of the billiard balls and you will notice the numbers. The single colored billiard balls are called solids, whilst the two colored ones are called stripes.

The normal type of billiard balls used will be much smaller than the balls used for Carom. If you are a trainee player, there are also billiard balls that could be used for this purpose. Such billiard balls will have target rings marked in them, giving the player an idea as to where he or she needs to strike.

7 Foot pool tables – Why everyone is getting them

7 Foot tables have become very popular these days. There are quite a few reasons for this. First, many tournaments are played on this size of a table. If you only use a six foot table to train, you will be very disadvantaged at tournaments. Since pool is a very common recreational game, many bars another hang outs offer them. They want to buy 7 foot tables so that they can host a tournament. Such events draw crowds on nights when the location would often empty.

Pool tables are so much cheaper than they were a few years ago. Thanks to this, buyers can pay for the 7 foot pool table instead of the smaller 6 foot ones. When you plan on purchasing such an item for your home entertainment purposes, you must surely want the best one. This way your entire family as well as anyone you invite over can have plenty of fun with it.

There are many houses which are built in larger area as compared to 20 years ago. This means that there is definitely room to add a 7 foot pool table without bumping the walls or being crowded for your shots. When you combine both the open space and the fact that you get a good price on a 7 foot pool table it is easy to understand why so many people are looking at them. You will find that in America many pool tables are either 8 foot or 9 foot and that may be too long for you to fit into the space you have as well. Nevertheless, the thrill will be more in case you finalize on the 7 foot version.

There are other options available if you don’t always have the space available for 7 foot pool tables. For instance there exists some versions that can be folded in two for storage purposes. They are quite simple to erect and wind up once you have finished. The table portion of it stands while the legs fold down behind one another. It look very similar to a chalkboard in the folded up position.

This can help you to make the decision about buying one or not. It is important to realize that these folding pool tables though aren’t as durable as those that remain sturdy in place. If you are interested in buying a pool table, make sure you evaluate the benefits that a 7 foot one may have for you. This is definitely a great way for you to get the most value for your money.

The reviews about 7 foot pool tables are very good, and you will find quite a selection of them. Match up the materials in which they are made of, relative to their costs. Once you take a look at them for yourself, you will understand why 7 foot pool tables are becoming more and more well liked.

The Long Forgotten Original Pool Cue (Was A Predator!)

Billiards and pool, according to Wikipedia, began in the 15th century. King Louis XI  (1461-1483) had the first known indoor billiard table. What follows is the unofficial, wildly speculative, and most likely theoretical origin of the game, as told to me by my great grandfather.

Dateline: 5 Million Years B.C. (before cues)..Two cavemen roast and eat a tyrannosaur drumstick, tossing the huge bones aside. Their pet wolf cleans up what’s left, leaving a gleaming 5 foot femur, thick on one end, and narrow on the other. The family twins, 8 years old, fought over the bone, until the stronger of the 2 yanked it away viciously. The end of the bone strikes a small round rock, which rolls into a rodent hole. The twin boys watch this and look on in wonder. The first  Predator Pool Cue is accidentally invented,  and the game of pool is born.

After a few days of playing their new game, the twins are devastated when the rock-striking end of the bone cracks. Their father, Willie, ponders the predicament, and gets to work on the cure. After breaking off the tip of a wooly mammoth tusk, he hollows it out to fit over the end of the fragile bone to make it stronger. The ivory ferrule had now been invented.

The constant clatter of bone striking rock caused the boys’ mother to rack her brain for a solution. She notices a small, round scrap of mammoth hide  as she is making winter parkas, and trims it up and glues it on the end of the bone. The first pool cue tip, a ‘Mammoth’, was invented.

As dinosaurs become wary, the family clan moves with the seasons, hunting game for food. They met other clans along their many journeys, who were fascinated as they watched the boys play their new game. Requests come in constantly for replica ‘bones’, and the family becomes proficient in making sticks and trading them for food and clothes. The first ‘Predator’ group forms.

OK,OK,OK……..I might be guessing at the timeline. Maybe the first cue wasn’t bone, maybe it was a tree limb. If the first tip wasn’t made of mammoth, it was at least mammoth in size….but Mark Twain never let facts get in the way of a good story, and neither do I. And the original “Predator Group?” The  family tree disappeared (or was made into another cue), but there is an actual, living, active Predator Group, and they are widely responsible for the present day evolution of the high-technology pool cue.

In the early 1990′s Predator introduced their 314 shaft, made of 10 pie-shaped pieces of hard rock maple spliced together, with a small hollow space near the tip, and a shorter ferrule. The drastic weight reduction in the end of the shaft reduced cue ball deflection by such a significant amount that it greatly increased accuracy when applying side spin, or ‘english’, on the cue ball. Using ‘english’…striking the cue ball left or right of the vertical axis that runs through the center of the cue ball….is what causes cue ball deflection, which is also know as ‘squirt’. Hitting the cue ball to the right of center causes the cue ball to deflect to the left of its intended path, and vice versa. To hit the contact point on the object ball correctly when using ‘english’ requires compensating for this squirt effect, and usually takes many years to master using a traditional shaft. Pro players switched to the new Predator shafts and cues since less deflection meant fewer missed shots and more money in the bank.

The passing years have seen refinements in the shaft in the form of the second generation 314² shaft, and eventually the Z²  shaft, which has an even shorter ferrule than the 314², and also a reduction in tip diameter from 12.75mm on the 314² to 11.75mm on the Z² shaft. Both changes reduced weight even more at the end of the shaft, reducing deflection even more. Independent testing show the Predator Z² shaft and the 314²  shaft as the top two shafts in the world in least amount of deflection incurred when striking the cue ball left or right of the vertical axis, which means a player has much less deflection to compensate for when using ‘english’ on the cue ball, with a resulting increase in accuracy.

It takes years to learn how to compensate for deflection using a standard shaft. With the evolution of the high-tech, low-deflection shaft, the learning curve is shortened, allowing beginner and intermediate players to become better players much quicker. Speed control and knowledge of angles can make you a good player: mastering spin, or ‘english’, on the cue ball will make you a great player. To play shape for your next shot, in many situations, becomes much easier if you learn to master spin, and mastering spin is much easier with a low-deflection shaft. Predator shafts also put much more spin on the cue ball with less effort, allowing a softer, smoother stroke. There is no comparison between my new Predator 5K3 and any other cue I have ever played with. I believe the 314² shaft is the better option for beginning and intermediate players. The 12.75mm tip is much more forgiving than the 11.75mm tip on the Z², which requires much more precise placement when striking the cue ball.

The long and impressive list of the top professional pool players who play Predator cues and shafts can be found on the Predatorcues.com web site. Over 50% of the top 40 pro men, 3 of the top 5 women, and over 30,000 other players worldwide use Predator cues and/or shafts. They are not compensated to play with a Predator, they use Predator Cues and Predator Shafts for another reason…their accuracy is what puts food on the table.