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Carey and I are (eventually) considering adding a game room over our garage. The house was built to do just this.

When I get an idea in my head, I tend to run with it. I obsess a little bit and do a lot of research, typically online. I prefer forums because I can ask questions or, most of the time, simply read the backlogs to get the knowledge I need. I like other informative sites as well, or even newsgroups and the like, but each has their minuses and plusses.

A quick Google search turned up a few interesting sites. I'll list them here. If I'm missing of any and you know of some, by all means, add a comment and pass on the URL. I appreciate it.

Sites

Dr. Dave's
This site is the home page for a book (The Illustrated Principles of Pool and Billiards) that looked the best of the books I saw at Barnes & Noble today. It contains high-speed videos of pool shots (and errors), technical proofs (great for pool-playing science geeks), lessons, and more. Basically, the author ("Dr. Dave") is a physics nut who also has a passion for pool. For understanding how to play pool, this site may be the best out there.

Billiard Resource
Billiard Resource has a forum that seems to be semi-active. It uses phpBB, so it's a clean looking site with some functionality. I'll be stopping back here. If it's not worth visiting (or it turns out to be great) I'll append this entry later. Otherwise, assume I found it to be adequate or average. Nobody visits this site.

Billiards Digest
It's a campy billiards magazine! And it too has a forum. It uses UBB.threads 6.2, which means it's uglier than Billiards Resource, but it also appears to be a little more active. Ditto the above about appending comments later.

Billiards.com
The obviously named billiards.com has a forum that is the ugliest of the three listed so far. It's using DCForum v6.0 and is not terribly active (the most recent post in many of the categories is two weeks ago). I won't come back here unless the above turn out to be flops.

AZBilliards.com
I originally avoided AZBilliards.com because I thought it was for Arizona. Instead, it's for A-Z, and they too have a forum. It's running vBulletin 3.5.1, though it has the default skin. Perhaps they would let me donate a skin to them…

Easy Pool Tutor
This is one of the first sites I found. It too has a forum, though you have to request membership. It's free, but apparently someone decides whether you're worthy or not. You can download lessons here or donate $4 to download a PDF. The site uses phpBB so it is, again, reasonbly decent.

That's it. Those are the sites I found with a quickie Google search that didn't look completely ugly, outdated, etc.

More on the Plans

Litehouse Pool & Spa may be the only retailer near us (within 30 miles) that sells pool tables. They carry Legacy brand pool tables. They're running a special right now wherein we would get a free table tennis conversion kit (~$299 normally) even if we just put $100 down. I'll have to check with them to see if it's refundable, as this project may be a year or two away.

At this point, my concerns are obviously: a) getting the builder here to estimate the cost. Carey says $10k, I say more like $20k. We'll see. b) figuring out what makes a good billiards table, cue, etc. I should also figure out whether it's a "pool table" or a "billiards table." c) decorating the room, etc. We probably want a little bar, maybe a little couch, and my old 36" TV in the corner with OTA programming. Maybe an old DVD player hooked up, or the old game systems when they get old… And, of course, a dart board on the wall.

It's a long ways off, but I've always been motivated to find extra work by being able to apply it to something, so this will spur me on to earn some more money, if nothing else. That way I can justify all of this. 🙂

Anyway…

But yeah, any help or ideas or tips or URLs anyone wants to pass along, by all means, please do so. Thanks.

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