Being precise with your English is an important thing to master as a pool player. Luckily, I’ve got a very easy to understand technique that will work wonders on improving your precision when using English.

First, you want to imagine that your cue ball is the same size as half of the pool table. There are 15 different spots to hit on this imaginary large cue ball. Why 15 spots? Because there are 15 different intersections between the diamonds on half of the pool table.

Imagine there are 15 different spots to hit, you want to think of the center of the ball as being like the center of the table. There are 5 spots in the center that can be hit. If you want to move the ball one diamond to the right, you go over one diamond/spot to the right on the ball. If you want to go over two diamonds, just go over two diamonds/spots on the ball.

Now, if you want to subtract the English, you want to use high. When you go high, it always subtracts half of one diamond. So, if I want to go to half of a diamond, I’ll start at the center of the ball and then go over one and up one. Conversely, low English adds a half. If I want to go over one and a half diamonds, I’ll go over one from the center and I want to add a half so I’ll go down one.

These same rules apply on the long side of the table as well, but you’re traveling twice the distance so things are halved. If i want to go over two diamonds (with the ball being on the spot), I would go over one diamond. One diamond on the long side equals two on the short end.

This technique seems complicated but it’s really just hard to explain. Once you begin using this technique, you’ll begin to understand how truly easy (and powerful) it is. If you need help and you’re in the San Diego area, be sure to stop into Billiards and Darts Direct because we offer personal training to help you learn things just like this.

I’m going to show you a few basic safeties that happen a lot in a game. In the first situation, we have a few balls close to the short rail, and a few balls scattered around the table. There are two choices in this scenario. I can shoot my ball in and break the 11 ball out. The other way to do this is to play defensively and shoot your ball in nice and easily. Strike the balls softly and you can force the cue up against another ball which will force your opponent to double hit the ball.

Taking the opposite point of view, if your opponent puts you in a situation where you have no shot, it may be better to simply fowl the ball as opposed to trying a kick-shot to make the other ball. In this situation, the balls are frozen so I’m going to double hit it. I don’t need to waste time trying to jack up. Now my opponent has ball in hand and he can’t do anything with it.

Another basic safety is when your opponent’s ball is in pocket and you have no shot. What I want to do in this situation is bank my ball toward his ball which will block it completely and hook him. He’ll have to kick at his ball and he won’t have clean shot. Now he has no shot and it took very little force on my end.

If you like to play Ring Game or Rotation, you know about spotting the ball. For those unfamiliar with it, whenever a player scratches the cue ball, the ball gets spotted (placed in the center spot market on the table). I’ve got an easy technique for you to hit it reliably every time.

First, you need to be “in the kitchen”, which are those first two diamonds on the long side of the table. The technique is go up to the far edge of the Kitchen (the second diamond up on the longer rail) and one diamond up from the corner pocket.

Now that you’ve got your cue ball placed exactly where you want it, it’s time to aim for the object ball that’s been spotted. Aim for the far edge of the object ball with the very center of the cue ball. You’re not shooting this ball like a normal shot. You’re not trying to make contact there, but rather you are aiming specifically at the edge of the object ball.

You’re basically splitting the cue ball directly in half with the edge of the object ball. Take your shot. With some practice, you should be able to get nearly 100% success with this technique.

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.

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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.