Continuing with the Cue Stroke

In my last blog, erroneously entitled "All about billiards", I talked about a method of isolating the stroke from sighting and setup. In that method the margin of error was fairly large, much larger than what your stroke error should be.

In this second method, the margin for error is very small, almost certainly smaller than the error margin of your stroke. This test/exercise should help you reduce your stroke error margin and as a bonus you can use this same method to help reduce the error margin of your jacked-up stroke as well.

For this method, place an object ball somewhere near the center of the table. Place your cue ball frozen to the side rail somewhere between the pocket and the first diamond. You can adjust the cue ball and object ball positions anywhere to provide any shot between dead straight and three-quarter ball into the far corner pocket.

Setup and stroke with as level a cue as you can, 10 degrees is about the best you can hope for, 15 degrees should be the max and 20 degrees would almost certainly be excessive. I know trying to judge degrees is iffy at best but try and get a feel trying for level.

The object is to pot the object ball into the far corner pocket. If the cue ball follows in on a straight in shot, bonus. Be pleased, if not happy, with about an 80% sucess rate, 60% jacked-up. If you can better 90% level and 75 or 80% jacked-up you're doing great.

The real goal here is to minimize your stroke error. If your misses are within a ball's width of the pocket you're doing okay. If you're missing by more than that something needs work. Be certain your setup is correct and try to isolate each factor of your stroke. Do you feel yourself jerking. Is the tip swerving to one side. Are you constantly missing to one side. If the latter you may not be hitting center ball. Use a mirror or have someone watch you.

Unfortunately, this off center hit can be very tiny. Joe Tucker has a device that can help, but just being aware of it and forcing yourself to make a correction on shot setups like this one can do wonders.

Cheers and play well,

The old professor