There's a version of pool instruction that treats the game like folklore — passed down through table time, bar-room osmosis, and "watch what I do." Then there's Dr. Dave Alciatore. He showed up with a PhD in mechanical engineering, a high-speed camera, and twenty years of classroom experience, and quietly changed how serious players think about the physics underneath every shot they take.
If you've spent any real time trying to improve your game, you've almost certainly landed on his work — whether you knew it or not. The cue ball control principles, the deflection diagrams, the VEPS clips, the Billiard University rating system. And what makes it remarkable isn't just the volume of it. It's that it's right.
From New Orleans to Fort Collins — and a Pool Table Along the Way
Dr. Dave grew up in New Orleans, where his mother worked at a bowling alley. By his own account, he spent plenty of afternoons there playing pool, pinball, and anything else that kept him occupied. That's as grassroots an origin story as it gets — not a billiard room steeped in action, but a kid logging table time because the table was there. He earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Orleans in 1986, then moved to Austin for his graduate work, finishing his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989.
He joined Colorado State University as an Assistant Professor in 1991, eventually rising to Associate Professor and staying through 2020, when he retired as Professor Emeritus. Along the way he won CSU's Board of Governors Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award — recognition that tells you something about how he approaches any audience, whether they're engineering students or recreational players trying to figure out why they keep dogging the nine.
The Book That Changed How Players Study the Game
In 2004, Dr. Dave published The Illustrated Principles of Pool and Billiards — and if you haven't read it, you're missing the closest thing this sport has to a definitive physics textbook. Over 80 principles. More than 250 precisely scaled diagrams and photographs. Coverage from grip and stance fundamentals all the way through carom shots, banks, kicks, and break mechanics. It reads like the work of someone who genuinely needed to understand why the cue ball does what it does, not just accept that it does.
The book launched alongside a companion DVD and a website full of supplementary video clips and technical proofs — a multimedia approach to pool instruction that was ahead of its time in 2004 and still feels methodical and rigorous compared to most of what's been published since. Dr. Dave started writing his monthly instructional column for Billiards Digest that same year, a run that continues to this day. Over two decades of consistent, physics-grounded analysis in one of the sport's most respected print publication.
The Video Encyclopedia Series — Nothing Else Touches It
If the book established his credibility, the Video Encyclopedia series cemented his legacy. The Video Encyclopedia of Pool Shots (VEPS) dropped in 2010, co-authored with Tom Ross. The Video Encyclopedia of Pool Practice (VEPP) followed in 2012. Then the Video Encyclopedia of Eight Ball (VEEB) in 2016, Nine-ball and Ten-ball (VENT) in 2018, the System for Aiming With Sidespin (SAWS) in 2019, and most recently the Video Encyclopedia of One Pocket (VEOP) in 2023. That's over a decade of continuous production — a catalog that covers nearly every situation you'll encounter at the table, broken down with the same high-speed video and annotated graphics that make his work so useful.
The high-speed video element deserves particular attention. Understanding what the cue ball actually does at contact — how tip position and stroke speed affect deflection, how spin transfers to the object ball, how the cue ball picks up roll after a stun shot — is next to impossible from real-time viewing. Dr. Dave's slow-motion breakdowns make visible what happens in fractions of a second. This isn't instructional fluff. It's the kind of visual evidence that changes how a player approaches position play and cue ball control permanently.
Billiard University — Building the Infrastructure of Instruction
In 2012, Dr. Dave co-founded Billiard University. BU isn't just a branding exercise — it's a structured instructional framework with its own assessment tools, player rating system, boot camps, and certification pipeline for instructors. The idea that billiards instruction could be systematized and credentialed the same way other technical disciplines are is one that Dr. Dave has pushed harder than anyone, and BU is the institutional expression of that effort.
He's also a PBIA Master Instructor — the top certification level in the Professional Billiard Instructors Association — and has served on the PBIA Instructor Committee and chaired the PBIA Curriculum Subcommittee. In 2021 he was named the recipient of the BCA PBIA Jerry Briesath Instructor of the Year Award. Since 2023, he's been the North America Representative on the WPA Rules Committee. For a guy who started out as an engineering professor, his fingerprints are all over the governing infrastructure of pool instruction in North America.
Taking Pool Physics to a Bigger Stage
In 2021, Dr. Dave appeared as a featured guest on StarTalk Sports Edition with Neil deGrasse Tyson, discussing the physics of billiards to an audience that mostly doesn't know a kick safe from a two-way shot. It's worth watching — not just because it's a good segment, but because it illustrates something important about what Dr. Dave brings to pool that very few people can: he can explain cue ball deflection, throw, and squirt to an astrophysicist and make it interesting. The physics is legitimate, and he understands it well enough to translate it for any audience.
His collaborations speak to the same breadth. His work regularly analyzes elite-level mechanics, including breakdowns featuring Shane Van Boening’s break, plus examples pulled from top pros and legendary shot-makers. When top players and trick shot artists are sitting down with a mechanical engineering professor to talk about how the physics of their game actually works, that's a signal.
What Makes Him Different
Pool has no shortage of people telling you how to play. What it lacks — or has historically lacked — is people who can tell you why something works and prove it. Dr. Dave fills that gap in a way nobody else has. His work is verifiable. The principles are testable. The diagrams are scaled. The slow-motion video is empirical evidence, not opinion.
For serious players — the ones who want to understand why the cue ball kicks long off a cushion with running english, or what actually happens during a stop shot at different distances — that matters. The feel-based approach to pool instruction produces players who can execute what they've practiced. The physics-based approach produces players who can problem-solve at the table, adapt to new equipment and conditions, and understand what adjustment to make when something stops working.
Dr. Dave Alciatore retired from Colorado State in 2020 and is still actively teaching private lessons and BU Boot Camps out of Fort Collins, still writing his Billiards Digest column, still building out his resource library at DrDavePoolInfo.com. The catalog he's built over the past two decades — the book, the Video Encyclopedia series, the SAWS aiming system, the BU framework — represents the most thorough physics-based instructional body of work this sport has ever produced. If you take the game seriously and haven't spent time with his material, that's the gap worth closing.
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