How This Trick Shot Artist Invented 10,000+ Pool Shots

This is the machine gun jump shot.

[intriguing music]

[billard balls banging]

[Narrator] Meet Florian Kohler,

better known in the pool community as Venom.

One of the best trick shot artists in the world.

I've probably invented over 10,000 new shots.

[Interviewer] Could you name all of them?

I don't bother naming them.

Sting shots,

machine gunshots,

satellite shots.

I really don't know.

They don't have a name.

[Narrator] Having spent years honing his craft,

Florian's ability to spin

and control pool balls borders on the supernatural.

I always thought this was gonna be,

you know, two years,

then five years, then 10 years.

Now it's going into 15 plus years.

[upbeat music]

This is a crisscross twin masse.

[cue stick thuds]

So it's a very technical shot.

[billard balls thudding]

I'm gonna have two cues.

I'm gonna have to hit those two cue ball in the same time.

The left ball is right spin

and the right ball is left spin.

Meaning this ball I'm gonna hit on the right side

and this ball on the far left side.

The next part I gotta avoid is contact in the middle.

If both balls touch each other, usually no good.

If I put too much right spin,

I may not have enough back spin.

And if I put too much back spin then the balls

will come back in the middle.

[cue stick thuds]

[billard balls thudding]

This is a long rail masse.

[billard balls thudding]

A masse is when you put a lot of spin on the cue ball

by doing a vertical motion

and impacting a lot of force down.

So you're gonna do bottom and a touch of left spin.

That's gonna propose the ball forward making the corner.

The cue ball's gonna then come back into the other red ball.

This is also using what we call a masse cue,

so it's a little heavier than normal pool cue.

The shaft is made out of Kevlar carbon

because it has to be resistant,

because there's a lot of impact

and it's a very damaging shot.

[Narrator] Florian's high intensity trick shots

have garnered him thousands of fans,

as well as a poisonous nickname.

Every pool player kind of has a nickname, right?

It's either given or kind of chosen.

It sort of depends, right?

When I first started

because I didn't have any idea how to play normal pool

I went right away with the very technical damaging shots.

So learn how to masse and jump

and that obviously doesn't go very well for your cloths.

My dad called me in French, a poison for the table

because he originally bought this table for himself.

Couldn't really play on it because it's too broken up.

So then somebody's like, oh we should call you a Venom,

and it kind of stuck.

This is a satellite masses, super pretty,

but very difficult shot.

[cue ball banging]

A few years back it was deemed almost impossible to do live.

You're gonna shoot the ball into the rail.

This short rail back, then this long rail,

then it's gonna curve back into the three ball.

If you just shoot the ball to the rail

it will do something like this.

As you can see, our cue ball moves away, right?

To make that solid masse, we've gotta go maximum,

maximum left spin and the little bit of top spin even,

and try to fight the current to make the red ball.

Very, very difficult.

I'm probably one of the rare in the world that

can do this shot consistently.

I was supposed to be by trade an optometrist

but that was a bit boring for me

and I love pool too much, so I decided to scrap it

and went pool for a career.

I can't really advise kids

to do the same 'cause it's kind of a gamble.

But I would say I spent a good part

of my college years being at a pool room

until two in the morning,

doing a lot more pool than studying.

Even to this day, even running four business now

in the same time I still probably put 30 hours a week

in the pool table.

The biggest misconception for trick shot is

that it's easy,

that you can do it all the time.

It's couldn't be further from the truth.

You never learn how to make a shots.

You learn how to miss them.

You learn how to miss on the left, you'll know how to miss

on the right, you learn to miss in the middle

and that's why even in tournaments we had three tries

in the world championship, you'll have three tries.

[cue balls banging]

Story of my life.

Stupid game.

[Narrator] While it can take several tries

to get each trick right some

of Florian's interactive shots require expert precision.

For this one, I need a volunteer.

Lucky for us, we already have one.

This is what I call the Nutcracker.

Let's wish him good luck.

[cue ball banging]

That was amazing.

You almost got killed because you moved, so.

This is the jump out of the rock masse.

[cue ball banging]

The trick is to jump the ball

but instead of just going forward, it has to come back.

So you gotta find a happy medium between enough air

and the side spin and the back spin.

I try to be very loose on the back end too

and hit that with a very pure stroke.

[Narrator] Spreading his passion for the game,

Florian took us to a pool hall to show us

that with the right setup, anyone can make a trick shot.

Even me.

[billard balls thudding]

So this was the butterfly shot.

I'm going to take an extra ball here.

Let's grab the 14, move it right in front of the cue ball.

The nine ball on this side.

Make a line as my cue.

One ball there, right on.

Line up the two ball.

So as you can see the two ball

is not lined up towards the pocket at all.

Same thing here for the three.

We're gonna just repeat the process.

The 10 ball is pointed out of it

and the 11 is pointed out this way.

And the reason is because of friction.

So friction was gonna make my ball turn.

If it was newer it would be less friction.

There'll be more aim towards the pocket.

Still a bit off but not quite as far.

[Narrator] With Florian's assurances, it was easy.

I decided to give it a try.

[billard balls thudding]

Oh my god, that was so close.

So close.

[billard balls thudding]

I don't know if I hit it hard enough.

It's a little soft.

Oh, robbed, I was robbed.

Same, well it's a little soft down the wire now.

[billard balls banging]

Oh it's looking good.

That's so cool.

There you go.

That's awesome.

So physics, once the setup is right,

pretty much anybody can do it.

Now there's a little bit of skill

that you hit it perfect

but you made all six balls.

New personal record, right?

By far, by at least four balls.

And now you gotta show off with your friends.

Why do I think people love watching pool?

I think simply

because there's something fascinating about it.

You could put a four year old on a pool table

and they love to just throw the balls around

and see what happened, right?

[Narrator] Making the balls bend and curve to his will,

Florian has to see the pool table

in a way that no one else does.

First the size.

Are you gonna go from a bar

that has usually what we call bar box

to professional table which is nine foot,

they even make 10 foot now.

There's an adjustment there.

Then the size of the pockets, again,

bar, you can have wide pockets,

newer professional table, much smaller.

The felt itself, its thickness

and then the ball from low end plastic ball,

they're very heavy.

To like what we have now

phenolic resin, which is the top of the line.

Now on top of that

you're gonna have to think about the weather.

I know it sounds crazy, but humidity affects pool

in a way that's unimaginable.

Changes everything from you're aiming

to the way the ball reacts.

People think there's a lot of math involved.

Yes and no.

It's not quite as far as the formula goes.

You don't necessarily have to explain it,

put it black and white

because at the end of the day there's so much feel

to it that it doesn't really work.

But if you don't visualize the angle

it's very tricky to go far with this.

This is a railroad shot.

[cue sticking thuds]

The railroad is a pretty old shot.

So in my way I'm hitting it here.

It's going up table, it's coming back down table

and it's gonna have enough back spin

to climb on top of the cues,

and then with the speed and the way the cues are slanted

they're gonna roll down and make the red ball here.

The hardest part of this trick

is to hit the ball that perfect

on the speed so it doesn't go off the table or back down.

So you just gotta find the right amount of speed

and right amount of spin.

This is the Russian doll curve shot.

[billard balls clanking]

So normal cue ball, English pub cue ball,

and then this gets very interesting last three.

So this is from a toy table already

like a three foot table.

And then now we're going even smaller

and those I think are like one foot tables.

It's so little that I'm gonna have to deliver it just right.

[cue stick thuds]

Just like that.

This is the egg shot.

[billard balls banging]

So I'm gonna put a lot of left spin on the egg,

which is by the way,

the same material as a normal pool ball.

The egg is gonna raise on its side,

stand up for a bit and spin.

[Narrator] No matter how much time Florian spends

on his home tables or in pool halls

he still views pool in a one of a kind way.

A normal player, they'll learn a bunch

of preconceived idea about what the game is

and how the ball should move and what's possible, right?

I think this is the main difference really.

I just had no preconceived idea

and just everything was possible

and never put any stop to anything.

[billard ball thuds]