Here’s an easy technique for shooting the cue ball off the rail. It starts with the way you hold your cue. Many people hold their cue with their whole hand, their middle finger, their front two fingers, etc. The easiest style for just a clean, simple shot is to hold the cue with your back two fingers.
This technique will give you very little error. When you follow-through the cue is perfectly straight. However, you can’t get a lot of force behind shots like this, so it’s not ideal for most other shots and that’s why you don’t want to use this technique for general playing.
So, holding your cue with your back two fingers, go ahead and line up your shot and take it. Shoot normally and you’ll more than likely make your ball.
Here’s a great technique for how to properly draw the ball when you’re jacked up on the rail. There will be plenty of times when your cue will be up against the rail (jacked up) and you wont be able to get below the ball to draw it and you can’t get the shot using high English because you have traffic. So, what do you do? Focus on your cue ball.
Although it is contradictory to what you may have been taught over the years, this is one instance where you’ll want to bring your attention to your cue ball while preparing your shot. Before you can focus on your cue ball though, you need to change your grip a bit.
Ordinarily, when shooting pool you want to have a very loose wrist. For this particular shot, you want to have the opposite. You want to lock out your wrist. Don’t let it move freely. This will help you to get the angles correct when lining up your shot.
Now go back to your shot. Line it up like you normally do. When it’s time to actually hit the cue ball, shift your focus to the cue ball. I’m going to hit it low and my wrist is locked. That’s how you do it. Have fun!
Lets admit it; a lot of people have no clue where the cue ball is going to end up after they strike their object ball. What follows will be a technique for how to properly shoot at a 90 degree angle. Take a look at the video below for specifications on each shooting situation I mention.
First, you need to know where your point of contact is. The point of contact is where you’d have to hit the cue ball on the object ball to make it in the pocket. Once you know where your point of contact is, you can begin to work out this 90 degree technique.
Take note of that point of contact. Now you want to line your cue up along that point of contact leading into the pocket. Take your cue and move it 90 degrees (to the left, in this case). Put a piece of chalk right there to provide a visual marker for yourself. When you’re just hitting center ball, the ball will bounce off the rail at 90 degree angles.
Once you have that technique down, let’s try using some English. In this situation, I’ll do the same as before and set a piece of chalk as a marker. But I don’t want to hit that chalk. I want to hit further up on the rail, so I’ll have to put low English on it. The ball will travel at 90 degrees for a moment and then pull away. The same principles apply with high English.
A lot of people have a problem where they say “my shot was straight-in and that’s why I missed it”. This terminology is incorrect. The problem is that when a ball is perfectly straight in, there’s no defined spot to aim at and you’re stuck aiming at the whole ball. This makes it hard to find just the right spot to aim for.
Most people will just line up their shot, they’ll look at the center of the object ball and try to hit that. They may be successful half the time, but that means they’re unsuccessful the other half of the time. Using the technique below, you should be able to adjust those odds heavily in your favor.
First, adjust how you look at the ball. When you look at the object ball, try to match up the left and right sides with the cue and object ball. Imagine that there are imaginary rails on the left and right sides of the cue ball and they extend toward the object ball. When you get down to aim, make sure you can see those two lines in your head. Take your shot and listen for the sound of your ball going in the pocket.
Previously on the Billiards Direct Blog, we’ve discussed how to throw the ball when the balls were frozen together. Now I’m going to show you how to throw the ball when they’re not frozen. In the video below, you’ll see that there is actually a 1 mm gap between them. This means you need to take a completely different technique.
When the balls are frozen together all you need to do is aim for the opposite diamond. However, when there’s a gap you run the risk of double-hitting your ball. So, instead of aiming to the opposite diamond, you now want to find the diamond that the balls are aimed at, and move one diamond up on the same side. Again, we want to use left-hand English in this example because we need to throw the ball to the right.
Make sure when you take your shot that you are jacked up at a 45 degree angle. If you shoot it with a level stroke, you’re going to double hit it and fowl the cue ball. Jacking your cue up avoids this issue.
We’ve covered Throw before on the Billiards Direct Blog. I’m now going to get a little more in-depth and explain how to use throw when the balls are locked up together (also called “frozen”). In the video below, you can see where they’re aimed and they’re not aimed toward the pocket at all.
Instead of simply noting that the balls are not aimed at a convenient pocket, look instead to see what diamond they’re aimed closest to. In the example below, the balls are aimed right at the first diamond. What I will do is aim for the opposite diamond on the adjacent rail. I’m going to then hit the ball with outside English. With my right-hand English, I’ll aim for that opposite diamond and strike the cue ball as normally. This will help me to make my shot.
Today we’re going to discuss how to throw the object ball. Essentially, throw is a way of making a shot even if you don’t have a clear path to your ball. To properly throw the ball, you’ll need to have command over using English. In the video below, you can see that the ball we want to make is obstructed by another ball and we can’t see a clear path to it.
To make this shot using throw, you’ll want to use outside English. In this situation, we want the object ball to go to the right, so we use left hand English. When you use left-hand English, you’re trying to get the spin the ball as much as possible without a lot of force going forward.
The spin grabs the ball and throws it. It’s essentially throwing it to the right, which helps you make your ball while leaving the obstructing ball untouched. This is a great technique that should help you quite a bit the next time you come across a shot that’s impossible to see.
We’ve all been in the situation in a game where the your balls are frozen up against the rail. Wait, that doesn’t sound too good out of context. Let me start again. Occasionally, when playing a game of pool your object ball and cue ball may end up being pressed up all the way to the rail. When a ball comes to rest against part of the rail, that’s called being frozen. When one or more balls become frozen against the rail, you have a bit of a tricky shot on your hands. Luckily for you, I’ve got a great technique for making shots when balls are frozen against the rail.
When your balls are frozen against the rail, your first instinct will probably be to try to shoot the balls “straight out”. This will usually cause your balls to come off the rail because your shot was not perfectly accurate. What you should do instead is hit the ball with inside English. Again, make sure you use English that is inside, relative to the rail.
In the above video, I’m using left-hand English because the ball is on the the left rail (relative to my position). I’m also sure to aim directly straight and keep my cue perfectly parallel. This keeps the pressure going forward and doesn’t allow the ball to come into the rail. This keeps the balls trajectory much straighter. The reason it stays on the rail so well is because of the English you put on the ball.
Check back next week and we’ll go over how to shoot the balls off the rail while also getting good shape with your cue ball after pocketing the object ball.
Pool players often have trouble with drawing the ball. I get lots of players in my store coming in and asking me what they can do to improve their draw. Before I show them the proper way to draw the ball, I first like to go over the mistakes that they are likely making when attempting their shot.
The first mistake players make when trying to draw the ball is to lift the butt of their cue up so as not to jump it off the table. This is a very inefficient technique because of all the wasted energy that your cue is putting into the table. Shooting at a high angle like this also yields poor rotation on the cue ball. A much more efficient and powerful way of drawing the ball is to level out against the table. Shooting at this angle (or rather, lack of angle) will help transfer all of your energy through the ball.
Some people may know the correct techniques but they fail to implement them consistently. I don’t believe that any technique is worth doing unless it can be done every time. The best way to fix this inconsistency is to always start on the felt. Line up your shot using the leveling technique mentioned above. Next, stroke the cue tip on the felt a few times. Once you feel comfortable and you’re ready to shoot, bring it up one tip length. That ensures that you’re not guessing anymore and you can accurately hit the ball where you intend to.
Some players will do all the above techniques properly but when it’s time to actually hit the ball, they hit it just like it’s a normal stroke. That player may sink their shot but the cue ball will not draw very far after impact. To draw the ball properly, you need to snap it while also following through. This will make the cue ball spin backwards after impact.
When you’re looking to buy a new pool cue, there are many things you might be considering: the weight, the wrap, the kind of tip. Of course, all these considerations are important but there is one crucial factor that is often overlooked by pool cue buyers. That one overlooked factor is, “how does it sound” ?
More than anything, you can tell if you’re using a quality pool cue by the sound it makes when coming into contact with a ball. Cheaper cues will make a loud click when hitting balls and that’s vibration. You don’t want to feel vibration because that will interfere with your ability to gauge how much pressure you are exerting. Cues like this are generally found in the $50 to $100 range, although some manufacturers are closing the gap and starting to make very high quality cues for just about $100.
When you upgrade to a nicer cue, you will notice a distinct difference in it’s sound. They will have a quieter, softer sound when striking balls. That is a sign that it has less vibration and that is what we are ultimately looking for, the least amount of vibration. Some higher quality brands are McDermott, Viking and Pechauer. These are all exceptionally well made and they will give you the feedback that you need to improve your shots. Finally, at the upper end of the spectrum are your cues like Predator. Predator cues are world-renowned for the their low vibration and overall quality.
If you are serious about taking your game to the next level, you should definitely consider upgrading your cue. It’s one of the few upgrades you can make that will start improving your game the first time you start using it. Of course, if you have questions, you are welcome to ask me using the comment box. If you’re in the San Diego Area, you can also come on down to Billiards and Darts Direct and I can show you around and we can find the cue that works best for you personally.
