In an earlier video post, I discussed a technique for shooting the ball down the rail. A few YouTube subscribers like @MrSubhash1418 had some questions about the exact method for doing this technique, so I’m following that video up with this one.

A lot of the confusion likely comes from the amount of deflection your cue has. You need to test your cue to see how much it’s going to curve off. For example, if I put the cue ball dead on, edge-to-edge and I aim for that, I’m going to miss it. You can see that if give it the English and I aim perfectly dead-on, it deflects and misses the ball completely.

I have to compensate for that deflection. Unfortunately, everybody’s cue deflects differently so I can’t tell you how much to compensate by. For me, I’m aiming more into the object ball because I know my cue will deflect by that certain amount. I’m spinning it with inside English, towards the ball. You absolutely need to know how much your particular cue deflects or else the earlier technique will be completely guess-work instead of an actual proven strategy for success.

Today I’m going to show you a shot that is very common. Higher still level players have no problem making this shot. For the beginner players, this is a shot that scares them. Here’s a simple way so that it will never be scary again.

Imagine you’re playing a game of 8 Ball. You have the 8 ball in the jaws of the pocket and the cue ball has a little bit of distance behind it. Most players would just shoot the ball in and stop it, or draw it back or put the cue ball wherever they want. But what if you don’t know how to draw the ball back that far?

The best, simplest way to get this shot is to aim for the crack; the gap between the rail and the 8 ball. Don’t try to aim for the rail just before the ball or else you’ll miss it because the ball is too deep in the pocket.

You will never, ever miss this shot if you aim for the cracks between the ball and the pocket. You’ll make your ball and it’s virtually impossible to scratch. The best part about this technique is that it works even if the gaps are small or the gaps are large. You’ll make it every time.

Today we’re going to learn how to do Kill Shots. The Kill Shot is for when you’re shooting close to the rail and you want to keep your shape down close to it.

You can see in the video that when I shoot the ball softly with no English, the cue ball takes off after making contact with the object ball. That’s not to say that the resulting shot is “unmakeable” but it’s certainly harder when the cue ball gets that far away.

The way to do it better is to use low English and to use the English with cue ball going away from my object ball. In this particular shot, I’d be using Right English so that the cue ball goes away from my next ball to-be-sunk. The low English should be hit with the right speed so that it dies by the time it hits the rail.

As you can see, shooting with this low, right English, the cue ball dies shortly after making contact with the object ball. This gives me much a better position to shoot my next shot from. That low English makes the ball spin backwards which will stop the cue ball.