00:00 This is the machine gun jump shot.
00:02 Meet Florian Kohler, better known in the pool community as Venom,
00:11 one of the best trick shot artists in the world.
00:13 I've probably invented over 10,000 new shots.
00:17 Can you name all of them?
00:18 I don't bother naming them.
00:19 Sting shots, machine gun shots, satellite shots.
00:23 I really don't know, they don't have a name.
00:25 Having spent years honing his craft,
00:27 Florian's ability to spin and control pole balls borders on the supernatural.
00:31 I always thought it was going to be two years, then five years, then ten years.
00:35 Now it's going on to 15 plus years.
00:37 This is a criss-cross twin massey.
00:43 So it's a very technical shot.
00:50 I'm going to have two cues.
00:52 I'm going to have to hit those two cue balls at the same time.
00:54 The left ball is right spin and the right ball is left spin,
00:57 meaning this ball I'm going to hit on the right side and this ball on the far left side.
01:01 The next part I've got to avoid is contact in the middle.
01:03 If both balls touch each other, usually no good.
01:05 If I put too much right spin, I may not have enough back spin.
01:08 And if I put too much back spin, then the balls will come back in the middle.
01:11 This is a long rail massey.
01:22 A massey is when you put a lot of spin on the cue ball
01:25 by doing a vertical motion and impacting a lot of force down.
01:28 So you're going to do bottom and attach a left spin.
01:31 That's going to propel the ball forward, making the corner.
01:34 The cue ball is going to then come back into the other red ball.
01:37 This is also using what we call a massey cue, so it's a little heavier than normal pole cue.
01:41 The shaft is made out of Kevlar and carbon because it has to be resistant
01:44 because there's a lot of impact and it's a very damaging shot.
01:49 Florian's high-intensity trick shots have garnered him thousands of fans,
01:53 as well as a poisonous nickname.
01:55 Every pool player kind of has a nickname, right?
01:57 It's either given or kind of chosen. It sort of depends, right?
02:00 When I first started, because I didn't have any idea how to play normal pool,
02:03 I went right away with the very technical, damaging shots to learn how to massey and jump.
02:07 And that obviously doesn't go very well for your class.
02:09 My dad called me in French a poison for the table
02:11 because he originally bought this table for himself, couldn't really play on it
02:14 because it's too broken up.
02:15 So then somebody's like, "Oh, we should call you a venom," and it kind of stuck.
02:18 This is a salad massey. Super pretty, but very difficult shot.
02:22 A few years back, it was deemed almost impossible to do live.
02:30 You're going to shoot the ball into the rail, this short rail back, then this long rail,
02:34 then it's going to curve back into the three ball.
02:36 If you just shoot the ball to the rail, it will do something like this.
02:39 As you can see, our cue ball moves away, right?
02:41 To make that salad massey, we've got to go maximum, maximum left spin.
02:45 And a little bit of top spin even, and try to fight the current to make the red ball.
02:49 Very, very difficult.
02:50 I'm probably one of the rare in the world that can do this shot consistently.
02:54 I was supposed to be by trade an optometrist, but that was a bit boring for me,
02:59 and I love pool too much, so I decided to scrap it and went pool for a career.
03:03 I can't really advise kids to do the same because it's kind of a gamble,
03:06 but I would say I spent a good part of my college years being in a pool room till 2 in the morning,
03:10 doing a lot more pool than studying.
03:12 Even to this day, even running four businesses now at the same time,
03:15 I still probably put 30 hours a week in the pool table.
03:18 The biggest misconception for trick shot is that it's easy, that you can do it all the time.
03:23 It couldn't be further from the truth.
03:25 You never learn how to make a shot, you learn how to miss them.
03:28 You learn how to miss on the left, you learn how to miss on the right,
03:30 you learn to miss in the middle.
03:31 And that's why even in tournaments we have three tries.
03:33 In the world championship, you'll have three tries.
03:35 Story of my life.
03:38 Stupid game.
03:39 While it can take several tries to get each trick right,
03:42 some of Florian's interactive shots require expert precision.
03:45 For this one I need a volunteer.
03:47 Lucky for us, we already have one.
03:48 This is what I call the nutcracker.
03:50 Let's wish him good luck.
03:51 That was amazing.
03:58 You almost got killed because you moved, so.
04:00 This is the jump out of the rock massey.
04:07 The trick is to jump the ball, but instead of just going forward,
04:10 it has to come back.
04:11 So you've got to find a happy medium between enough air and the side spin and the back spin.
04:16 I try to be very loose on the backhand too, and hit that with a very pure stroke.
04:20 Spreading his passion for the game,
04:25 Florian took us to a pool hall to show us that with the right setup,
04:28 anyone can make a trick shot.
04:30 Even me.
04:35 So this was the butterfly shot.
04:37 I'm going to take an extra ball here.
04:40 Let's grab the 14.
04:41 Move it right in front of the cue ball.
04:43 The 9 ball on this side.
04:44 Make a line with my cue.
04:46 One ball there.
04:47 Right on.
04:48 Line up the 2 ball.
04:50 So as you can see, the 2 ball is not lined up towards the pocket at all.
04:54 Same thing here for the 3.
04:55 We're going to just repeat the process.
04:57 The 10 ball is pointed out of it, and the 11 is pointed out this way.
05:00 And the reason is because of friction.
05:02 So friction was going to make my ball turn.
05:04 If it was newer, there would be less friction.
05:06 It would be more aimed towards the pocket.
05:08 Still a bit off, but not quite as far.
05:10 With Florian's assurances it was easy, I decided to give it a try.
05:14 Oh my god, that was so close.
05:18 So close.
05:19 I don't know if I hit it hard enough.
05:22 It's a little soft.
05:24 Oh, robbed. I was robbed.
05:26 The same-- well, it's a little soft.
05:29 Down the wire now.
05:30 Oh, it's looking good.
05:33 What? That's so cool!
05:34 There you go.
05:35 That's awesome!
05:36 It's all physics. Once the setup is right, pretty much anybody can do it.
05:39 There's a little bit of skill if you hit it perfect.
05:41 But you made all 6 balls.
05:43 New personal record, right?
05:44 By far. By at least 4 balls.
05:46 And now you're going to show off with your friends.
05:48 Why do I think people love watching pool?
05:50 I think simply because there's something fascinating about it.
05:53 You could put a 4-year-old on a pool table,
05:55 and they'll love to just throw the balls around and see what happens, right?
05:58 Making the balls bend and curve to his will,
06:01 Florian has to see the pool table in a way that no one else does.
06:04 First, the size.
06:05 You're going to go from a bar that has usually what's called a bar box
06:08 to a professional table which is 9 foot.
06:10 They even make 10 foot now.
06:11 There's an adjustment there.
06:12 Then the size of the pockets.
06:14 Again, bar, you can have wide pockets.
06:16 Newer, professional table, much smaller.
06:18 The felt itself, its thickness.
06:19 And then the ball.
06:20 From low-end plastic ball, they are very heavy,
06:23 to what we have now, phenolic resin, which is the top of the line.
06:26 Now, on top of that, you're going to have to think about the weather.
06:29 I know it sounds crazy, but humidity affects pool in a way that's unimaginable.
06:33 Changes everything from your aiming to the way the ball reacts.
06:37 People think there's a lot of math involved.
06:39 Yes and no.
06:40 It's not quite as far as the formula goes.
06:42 You don't necessarily have to explain it, put it black on white,
06:45 because at the end of the day, there's so much feel to it that it doesn't really work.
06:48 But if you don't visualize the angle, it's very tricky to go far with this.
06:52 This is a railroad shot.
06:55 [thud]
06:56 Railroad is a pretty old shot.
07:02 So in my way, I'm hitting it here.
07:06 It's going up table.
07:07 It's coming back down table.
07:09 Then it's going to have enough backspin to climb on top of the cues.
07:12 And then with the speed and the way the cues are slanted,
07:14 they're going to roll down and make the red ball here.
07:16 The hardest part of this trick is to hit the ball that perfect on the speed
07:19 so it doesn't go off the table or back down.
07:22 So you just got to find the right amount of speed and right amount of spin.
07:25 This is the Russian Doll Curve Shot.
07:31 [thud]
07:33 [thud]
07:34 [thud]
07:35 [thud]
07:36 [thud]
07:37 [thud]
07:38 [thud]
07:39 [thud]
07:40 [thud]
07:41 [thud]
07:42 So normal cue ball, English pub cue ball,
07:44 and then this gets very interesting last trick.
07:46 So this is from a toe table already, like a three-foot table.
07:49 And then now we're going even smaller.
07:51 And those, I think, are like one-foot tables.
07:53 It's so little that I'm going to have to deliver it just right.
07:56 Just like that.
07:57 This is the Egg Shot.
08:00 [thud]
08:03 So I'm going to put a lot of left spin on the egg,
08:06 which is, by the way, the same material as a normal pool ball.
08:09 The egg is going to raise on its side, stand up for a bit, and spin.
08:12 No matter how much time Florian spends on his home tables or in pool halls,
08:17 he still views pool in a one-of-a-kind way.
08:20 A normal player, they'll learn a bunch of preconceived ideas
08:23 about what the game is and how the ball should move and what's possible, right?
08:27 I think this is the main difference, really.
08:29 I just had no preconceived idea.
08:31 Just everything was possible and never put any stop to anything.
08:34 [thud]
08:35 (door closing)
08:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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