Rating: 
Summary: Not just for idiots
Review: This comprehensive guide to billiards truly deserve five stars -- or more. Well-written and well-organized, this book introduces the game to beginners but can also be used as a reference for experienced players. Everything you need to know about pool is here: a brief history, choosing your equipment, proper stance and strike, how to aim and control your speed, rules, variations, etc. The authors not only give you a thorough grounding in the mechanics of pool playing, but also discuss the proper mental state when you approach the pool table. Every one of the almost 500 pages -- this is a big book for the Complete Idiot's Guide series! -- is filled with valuable information.Whether you play pool for social fun or for tournament, this is a must-have book.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty Good, but Best for Beginners
Review: This is a useful book, but beginners will probably get more out of it than intermediates. It does cover some useful intermediate material, like buying your own cue or table, how to apply english, and some useful practice drills. But it is a curious mix of material for beginners also. It spends too much time explaining things (for idiots, I suppose). Explaining that balls are round and what 'cue' and 'scratch' mean. This may be useful for someone who's never ever played a game of pool before and decides to buy a book to learn, but most readers will have to flip over lots of rudimentary explanations to get to something useful. So, it's got all the really basic material that intermediates don't need, and lots of good intermediate material that beginners can't use. It's also a bit repetitive, you'll find identical explanations of 8-ball and 9-ball breaks in two different chapters. And sometimes it's contradictory, Mataya explains twice that if you miscue on the break that you can grab the cueball because the game doesn't start till the cueball hits the rack. But in the official rules in the appendix, it seems that the game starts when your stick hits the cueball. I couldn't figure this out. Having said all this, it's not a bad book at all. It's simple, the layout is engaging. You can read a few pages and come back later. You can flip around easily, the index is ample so you can quickly find what you need. So it may be a bit schizophrenic, and it could seriously use some re-organization in the next edition, but it's not too bad at all.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a great book for beginners!
Review: When I first started to play pool, I didn't know how to play at all. So, I looked for some books and I luckily found this book. It helped me out a lot!!!!
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