A cue stab is a type of wear you commonly find on English pool table cloths. They normally take the appearance of small marks or scratches where a cue has dug into the cloth.
In a way, a ‘cue stab’ could be seen as the English pool equivalent of ‘ball burn’ on an American table.
What causes Cue Stab?
A Cue Stab is rather implied in the title – It’s a spot on a pool table cloth, where the cue tip has stabbed into the fuzzy texture of the cloth, then taken away a little of the fuzzy texture. This leaves behind what looks like an area of the cloth that appears to be ‘roughed up’ or ‘scratched’, sometimes revealing the base weave of the cloth.
These marks come about from a cue tip being forced down into the cloth on shots, which results in this grazing. You typically tend to see more cue stabs on a table from inexperienced players, or players who have problems with accuracy, where they will strike the cloth more often on their shots.
A cue stab tends to only be possible on English pool cloths, due to their furry texture. As a result, American pool cloths avoid this problem (due to the cloth being more of a simple weave).
What a Cue Stab Isn’t
A common misconception is that a cue-stab may lead to what you sometimes see on pub tables, where the cloth has been torn right through to the slate, and you have actual parts of the physical cloth missing (even showing through to the slate in some cases), however this is extremely unlikely to have come about from a single event.
Usually in cases like this, either the cloth has been deliberately vandalised by cutting the cloth with a blade, or the cloth is in fact so worn and threadbare over several years of constant use without maintenance.
Are Cue Stabs a Problem? What can you do about them?
Cue stabs are unfortunately, just a part of playing pool. There’s very little you can do to ‘fix’ a cue stab. The positive to this however is that there’s actually little to no affect on your game play at all. It’s not uncommon to have a table littered with cue stabs in various places as a result of missed shots or just general wear over time.
If a table eventually becomes so covered in stabs that it begins to affect your game as a whole, then it’s time to consider the option of having your table re-clothed.
If you have any further questions about cue stabs, or any other aspec about table care, feel free to chat to our team on 0800 622 6464.
