I used to have a cue called a Sneaky Pete. I only paid $80 for it and bought it off another team member from we league we were in. It looked exactly like a typical bar cue and had a really nice tip and very nice weight. I usually prefer a 21oz cue for breaking and a 20oz cue for playing, but this was a 21 oz cue and I used it for everything. I don't think I would spend over $100, considering with that $80 cue, I was crushing people with $400 cues. I watched drunken former pool pro's crushing people with the house/bar cues.
Interesting story about that cue is that a guy I used to work with had 2 small daughters and could not go out and party at night anymore, so one day he says to me that he is going to learn how to be a pool master. I could beat him pretty consistently, but then he bought a table and started practicing every night by himself after the kids went to bed, doing all kinds of drills.
I gave him that cue to practice with. He would record his drills in a pad of paper, then created all sorts of charts to track his progress and within a couple months he was routinely crushing me. A few months later he was routinely winning local tournaments and a year or so later he was playing in Vegas. It was amazing how good he became with serious dedicated practice.
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