Play Pool for your Tuition Fees

If neither your brains nor your muscles can gain you a college scholarship, you still got hope. Assuming you know how to play pool. The University of Akron, Ohio has founded a unique scholarship program for extremely talented pool players.

Founded by the UA alumni Barry Lefkowitz and a former billiards champion of the institute, the program will cover $1,000 tuition fees or books of three students each fall or spring semester. Due to his generous contribution to the university billiards culture, the billiards parlor is named after him.

If you reckon your pool shooting skill are scholarship worthy, you can reveal them at the upcoming Lefkowitz scholarship tournament scheduled to Saturday, March 29 at the Barry Lefkowitz Billiard Parlor. The 9-ball pool tournament offers $1,000 prize to the winner, $500 to the finalist and $250 prize to the semi finalist.

Unfortunately, no one pays you to play online pool yet...

Is Pool Bad for your Masculine Image?

Georgina Chang, the host presenter of the Guinness 9 Ball Tour on STAR Sports, writes to The Star Online about the low sex appeal of pool, especially when compared to more sweaty, muscular and masculine sports such as football, car racing and even swimming.

You must admit that her points are quite convincing. Pool players are not the typical alpha males, yet playing pool has some advantages to your self esteem.

On one hand, you don't have to look like this to play pool:

On the other hand, pool players get to wear suits and compete in air conditioned halls and they hardly ever face this kind of danger:

And to be serious for a moment, the level of concentration demanded from pool players is very high or in Chang's words: "They need a computer-like brain that works in lightning speed to compute and process the many permutations one can take to pocket a ball… under the pressure of just three minutes".

How to avoid common pool injuries

Speaking of pains, strains and wrist aches, what about you pool players? Do you feel any physical inconvenience following hours of pool shooting? As the online pool shark that I am, I must admit that my right palm tends to hurt sometimes from cueing with the mouse, but what does a real pool cue can do to your body?

In fact, professional pool players suffer from the same syndrome as grey mouse people. Repetitive Strain Injuries also known as RSI or more specifically Tendinitis is the inflammation of a tendon following chronic overuse of a specific body area. This type of injury is common to most athletes and may appear at several body parts mainly the lower and upper limbs.

So, now what? How can you avoid the inevitable future of unbearable pain? If you play pool, as in real-life pool, they say by using proper pool technique and some special pool accessories can help. If you play online pool, as in playing wii, maybe you should take longer breaks between one pool session to another. (or at least do not run to type all about it).

Playing Wii can risk your wrists

Lee Harvey, an osteopath of Weston Chiropractic Clinic in Weston Mercury, UK, says he's been treating patients who suffer from neck and wrist pains after playing Wii games, especially older gamer who stretch their limit, literally, to give a fight to the younger competitors.

As an expert in the field of Wii pains and complaints, Harvey wrote a brief guide to Wii gamers. In the do's section he suggests:

Straighten up the wrists and keep them in the same level as the elbows
Play right in front of the screen

And in the don's section he warns the gamers from:

Playing over 20 successive minutes
Gripping the controller forcefully

I here by give credit to the Online Edition of The Weston Mercury.

Sharks Serve Drinks to Pool Sharks

Hockey players found an original way to thank their sponsors. Continue reading to find out what it has to do with pool.



Members of the American Hockey League Worcester Sharks served as bartenders for one night at the Boston Billiard Club, one of the league's proud sponsors. This gratitude gesture took place on Saturday night, January 19, right after the Sharks game against the Providence Bruins at the DCU Center, a game in which they eventually lost 4-3.

With its selection of Brunswick Gold Crown, and large TV sets Boston Billiard Club is one of the top pool halls in Worcester, New England and a leading entertainment destination for local sports fans. On Saturday night, the disappointed fans of the Worcester Sharks had a unique opportunity to drown their sorrows in drinks mixed by their favorite Hockey stars. And it sure ain't a common comfort for sports fans!

What a way to get rid of your billiards table...

Two guys in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic had to chop down their billiard table after both men's hands got stuck inside the table while looking for lost billiards balls. Just like me, the folks thought it was funny, but spending too much time motionless they had to use their spare hands to call the fire squad, which had to slice the billiards table to set the men hands' free.

Ha, what a relief. It reminds the time I had to cut off a straw chair when my cat's got his head stuck. :-)

On Billiards and Physics

What sets apart a natural born pool player from the average one? On top of the obvious gifts (focused eye, steady hand and good correlation between them), a pool player usually has an intuitive understanding of physics.

In an interview to Frontline – India's National Magazine, Sheldon Lee Glashow, co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and the proud owner of a home antique billiards table, talks about his upcoming book on the relations between billiards and physics. Prof. Glashow bases the billiards part of the book on his past experience as a student who has been spending long hours at the university pool room studying the movements of billiards balls.

"Physics and the Game of Billiards" will discuss "variety of mathematical methods and applies them to the motions and impacts of hypothetical spherical bodies" such as the interactions between billiards balls, cue tips, billiards table rails during a pool game. The book intends to be approachable to every pool fan, including those who've majored in arts, but its main objective is to introduce mathematical physics theories to students in a very vivid way.