A little three-cushion practice

Have you ever played three-cushion billiards? It is much, much more difficult than it looks. A couple months ago I checked out a place in Queens on a Saturday night and lo and behold there was a billiards tournament underway. There was one 5x10 Chevillotte table that wasn't being used, so I took it for an hour. But I spent a lot of that time surreptitiously eyeing other people's matches. I didn't know if it had to go ball-cushion-cushion-cushion-ball or if it could go cushion-ball-cushion-cushion-ball, etc. After I was done playing (it's a real workout, you literally work up a sweat because the table surfaces are electrically heated so that the balls roll longer) I kicked back with a Heineken and watched some of the tournament matches. One guy was studying his shot for about two minutes before he hit. He was shooting the white ball from near a rail while the red and yellow balls were close to each other in the middle of the table. I swear he must've gone seven rails before the white clipped both the red and the yellow at the very end of the roll. I couldn't help myself from letting out an audible "damn" after I saw that.

The photo above is of me practicing at Billiards Sports Plaza in my hometown of Wichita, Kansas this past July 22. I played for an hour and only made one successful billiard shot.