Bill Kurrek has designed something rather unusual for pool players everywhere to consider—a triangular-shaped cue stick! I’ve play tested one and it does a lot for my students including making for far more accurate, powerful breaks.

The unusual shape is used as an aid for feel and even for sighting shots. In Kurrek’s words from our interview:

I came up with the idea of the triangle cue after searching for my idea of the perfect cue.


When I would visit a pool room or bar with a pool table I had to check on every cue in the place looking for the one that felt just right, only to settle for the “best of the worst” cues on hand. As a beginner then, I didn’t own a cue stick.

I am a left-handed pool shooter, so I sort of compare my search for a workable cue to a bowling alley visit without my personal ball (just try to find a house ball to fit a lefty well, which is impossible). So after a lot of searching, and some heavy-lifting thinking, too, something kept nagging inside me to do something for a pool cue to improve it.

After many trials and errors with stick modifications, one morning when I woke up from a deep sleep, “bang” it had hit me, as I remembered a dream I had where I was holding my right hand in the air and a bright light shone through the triangle of my closed bridge on my bridge hand. Immediately, I knew this was it, what I’ve been searching for, and I set for myself a not-so-easy task indeed.

What happened next? And is your new innovation protected by a manufacturing patent?

I do have a design patent for my invention providing some 14 years of protection. The process of the patent search consists of some intense research, as some of your readers know.

If anyone remembers newsprint and magazines on microfiche, that’s what I had to search through between the late 1980s and early 1990s while home computers were nonexistent as I explored opportunities for a triangle cue. I had to commute daily to Cincinnati to conduct my search in libraries! I had librarians fetching their old archives for the past century down from their attic storage and everywhere else.

Finally satisfied no one had ever came patented my idea, I was relieved thinking the hard work was over, but I was wrong. How little did I know how fraught with difficulty would be my next step to visit a patent attorney.

When I walked into his office I could tell by his demeanor, the look in his eyes and his body language he was thinking, “What kind of nut have we here?” A pool nut! That’ just the way it rolls.

Anyway, I explained my idea that a triangle-shaped cue shaft could help make a better player out of someone—anyone—and he still had that faraway look in his eyes. From experimentation, I knew a triangle cue the cue would slide back and forth in the hand, providing sensitive, discreet feedback of any misalignment.

That was it?

Not quite, when I discovered my back hand was trying to roll or twist the cue through my follow through. This was fouling up (pun intended) my playing comfort zone and was very distracting, so I discarded the triangular shaft as a bad idea after all and returned to a traditional cue. I felt comfortable during play and forgot about my experiments for a few years.

So the triangle thing sort of lay dormant in the back of my mind, but I found I couldn’t stop thinking about it and my patent search. But until then I didn’t have a good working model to show anyone, couldn’t get anyone to commit to making one properly. Instead, some scam artists who promised to think outside the billiards box took my hard-earned money.

Next article: More from my interview with "The Triangle Shooter" and how the triangle cue might just change your game