Inspecting the Tip of a Pool Cue: Online Billiards Lessons for Beginners

Video Transcript

"Hello I'm Richard with expertvillage.com and in this segment I'm going to show you some tips on tip selection and the different types of tips that are available. First off when you do have your cue and you have your tip, you want to keep your tip with a round crown on it. About the radius of a dime. You do not want the tip to get flat. The tip starts to get flat it will mushroom. Once it begins to mushroom and then it beings to fall over the farrow and it just leads to more problems and you just loose the whole purpose of having a tip on your cue basically. There are three types of tips. They run from soft tip, medium to hard and there will be a variance in between. They all have their pros and cons. If you go with a hard tip or an extremely hard tip, the tip is going to last, it will last for a long time. It is going to hold its shape for a long time but you also have to take into consideration that with a hard tip and you are hitting a round surface you are going to have a more tendency to miss cue often. Therefore the necessity of having to chalk your cue and having to use an item such as this which is a porcupine which breaks up the leather and it helps so that your tip will hold the chalk a little bit better. If you are going to soft of a tip, your soft tip will hit the ball better. You are going to have less miss cues but the thing about soft tip is that it is going to wear a little bit quicker. It is going to start mushroom. You are going to start getting a flat surface on it, you are going to be reshaping and what you are going to find is that you are replacing your tip a little bit more often. Normal tip life probably last anywhere from 4-6 months depending on how much you play and the extent of your shot selections and the force that you are using on your shots or what you are using your cue for. If you are using a playing cue to break naturally your tip is not going to last as long because a little bit more force is used during the break. "