Lots of people ask what that “weird looking plastic thing” is for when they’re playing pool. It’s called a Bridge and it can help you do some pretty cool things.

The bridge is basically used for shots that you can’t reach all the way across the table. For example, if I wanted to shoot the 1 ball and cut it in, I can’t really reach far enough to do that on my own. I’ll need a little help and that’s exactly what the bridge is for.

Some people may call it the Cheater’s Stick but it’s a real tool and it can certainly help you to make some shots. There are problems to using a bridge though; for the most part, you don’t want to be holding it in your hand while shooting your shot. You’ll generally want it on the table and want it pinned.

The only time you wouldn’t want it pinned is when the cue ball is really close to the shot and you had to shoot it in. If you did it that way, the cue ball would bounce back too quickly and you wouldn’t be able to remove the bridge in time.

Generally though, you’re a bit farther back from the cue ball and you don’t have to worry about it. Sometimes you’ll want to put a slight angle on it like I’m doing in the video above. That angle will hold the shaft of the cue a little bit better and keep it from being too loose.

Today I’m going to show you how to break 10-ball. It’s essentially the same process as when you break 8 ball: Hit the 1 ball head-on, not off to the side. You want ALL your force to go into the ball.

I personally go one diamond up and one diamond over but you can hit it anywhere, as long as you hit it with straight-on force. You still want to keep your body weight leaning back so you can throw that body weight forward when you break. That will transmit the full force of your body to the shot.

You can also break off the rail if you prefer. The biggest thing is getting that force moving forward and hitting the lead ball head-on. If you do it correctly, the balls should scatter pretty well and the cue ball should end up close to the center of the table.

Today we’re going to learn how to do a 9 Ball Break. You can break anywhere for 9 ball or 8 ball but ideally you want to try to start from the center and begin working your way to the outsides. The reason for this is because it’s going to increase your chances of pocketing the ball.

The further you get to the outsides, the more that the ball will swing the other balls around when it breaks. It’s a better chance of making the ball.

In the example video above, I want to hit the 1 ball head-on, not off to the sides. The reason I want to get it head-on is because I’m going to get full impact into it and I’m going to try to keep my cue ball in the center of the table. Another reason to keep my cue ball in the center is that it will increase my chances of getting shape on the 1 ball.

After we take the shot, we can see that the cue ball stayed mainly in the center, my 1 ball flew into the side pocket, I can see the 2 ball and I’ve got a good break that allows me some decent shots for my next shot.

Today let’s learn how to shoot with Jump Bank. In this example, let’s pretend that I’m solids and to make my shot, I’m going to need to bank the shot but, oh no, there’s a striped ball in front of me that’s blocking my shot. We’ve all seen this happen: A great, relatively easy shot is obstructed by an opponent’s ball. What do we do? Jump Bank to the rescue!

Jump Bank is just like it sounds. Basically, your doing a bank shot and the ball is going to jump over another ball (or two) that otherwise would have been in your way. I sometimes call this a “chop shot” as well. Here’s how to do the technique yourself:

You first want your cue stick to be elevated and go through the center of the cue ball. You’re basically hopping the ball, you’re not jumping it though. That jump will happen when you hit the rail so don’t try to do it before then. It’s just a little hop. So, once you’ve got your hop down, you want to line it up just like your regular bank shots. Hit it with the hop and it should jump right over the ball that’s in your way.

Summing up: the key is to elevate and shoot through the center of the ball. Take your shot just like a regular bank shot and you’re all set!

By popular request, I’m going to explain how to play a game of Cowboy Pool. Cowboy is basically a game of 8 Ball except it’s all backwards. So instead of shooting the cue ball into an object ball and pocketing it, I’m going to do the reverse; I’m going to shoot the object ball off the cue ball and pocket it. In the video below, I’m playing stripes so I’ll start with shooting the 14 ball. As you can see, I’m not shooting with a great deal of force. I’m just lining up the ball to the edge.

So, when I want to shoot the next ball in (the 15). Instead of lining it up to the center of the pocket, I want to line it up to the edge of the pocket. Then I want to line up the 15 sight along the edge of that. I’ll take my shot and it’ll go in. I’ll continue as long as I can until I miss, at that point it’s the next players turn (they’re playing solids). That player continutes to keep shooting until he misses. And so on and so forth.

Basically, the whole point of playing Cowboy is teaching yourself to scratch on purpose. While this may seem counter-intuitive, you’ll discover that when you play a regular game, those techniques you used will work their way into that game and you’ll have a much better understanding of the game now that you’ve (literally) been on the other side of all those tricky shots.

Today I’m going to show you how to properly break a game of 8 Ball. There’s definitely a technique to doing it correctly, so here’s my general routine when I play 8 Ball. So, it’s your break so you can put your cue ball anywhere you want on the table. Pick a place you’re comfortable with. It’s mostly going to come down to the force of your body and not so much the placement of your ball. Note that you’ll still want to hit the 1 ball full-on with maximum force.

We’ll starting with your body stance; you shouldn’t be too wide with your feet, just a regular stance is enough. Lean your body weight back. The reason for this is so that when you lean forward, you have room to move without suddenly hitting the pool table. When you strike the cue ball, bring your body forward which will add extra force to your shot. Now, since you’re going to be moving your mass forward this will mean that your cue stick will rise. To compensate for this, aim low on the cue ball that way, when you take your shot, the cue stick will naturally rise and hit the ball center.

It’s very important to lean forward so that the shaft goes through with your body weight. Finally, a benefit to putting on those few extra pounds! After you take your shot, you should notice a fairly even disbursement of balls around the table (if you did the break correctly). If you’re lucky, you probably even got a few balls in.

Today we’re going to discuss the always exciting topic of “How to draw the ball when breaking out of a shot.” In this hypothetical situation, we’ll say that you’re stripes and you need to shoot your ball in but you’ll also to break the two balls out on the rail.

Often times I’ll see inexperienced players come across this shot and they’ll see the angle and figure out where their cue ball is going to go but they don’t consider that draw means “coming back” and high means “going forward”. As a result they’ll make their ball just fine, but the cue wont continue on in the right direction to break up those two balls on the rail.

So, if we want the cue ball to go to the middle of the rail, I need to gauge where that 90 degree angle is, where the cue ball is going to naturally go and then gauge how strong my draw needs to be to come back. In this particular example, I’m going to need to have my cue ball come back about a whole diamond further. So now I know that I want to move my cue ball one full diamond, I’ll be able to figure out how much draw to put on my ball. In this particular case, my draw doesn’t need to be that much stronger than it would be normally. I’ll be able to make my ball and still break up those two balls, thus allowing me to complete my (hopefully successful) run.

Today we’re going to learn how to do a forced-follow shot breaking out the balls. As you can see below, we’re playing 8 ball and I have ball-in-hand so I can put the cue ball just about anywhere I want it. There are two more balls up against the rail though and I’ll need to break them up with my shot too. I need to make the 6 ball and I need to break these balls out so I can continue my run out. Is this an impossible shot? Hardly. The trick is to understand all the angles.

Frequent mistakes that players make in this situation is to give their shot too much angle, too much of a cut shot. When they do this, the cue ball always comes up way too wide and doesn’t go for their desired angle. What you want to do is instead just make your shot with a slight angle. It’s important also to hit high on the cue ball. With your combination of a slight angle and a high up hit to the cue ball, you’ll make your ball and it will deflect over to your other balls to break them out of being frozen against the rail.

Making the 8 Ball on a break is no easy feat. It’s a bit of a luck shot. It’s so difficult that nobody can do it with 100% accuracy every time. That being said, there are certain steps you can take to ensure that you have the best chance of making the 8 ball on a break. First thing we need to do is position our cue ball.

You’ll need to be all the way to the side rail. Next, you need to avoid the head ball and instead focus on the second ball down (in the video below, the second ball down is the 15 ball). You need to hit that second ball down head-on. You don’t want to clip the ball in front of or behind the 15 ball because that will ruin the shot. You can’t hit the cue ball in the center either, since you’ll scratch it after making contact. So you want to draw the ball, so that after you hit the 15 ball, it will come off to the side.

Take your time and line up your shot, again being careful not to clip the other balls. Shoot the cue and watch the 8 ball (hopefully) land in that side pocket. Now again, this is a technique that takes a TON of practice and just as much luck to get absolutely right. Expect to miss the shot the majority of the time. Take solace in the fact that even if you don’t make the 8 ball any of the time, you’re still getting some good practice in on breaking.

Here’s another combo shot. For this particular example, the balls are frozen but are not quite lined up in the pocket. Since these balls are frozen together and they’re not lined up exactly with the pocket we want to get them into, we’ll need to use throw to make our ball. Throw is a frequently used pool technique. If you’re looking for a refresher course on how to use Throw, here’s a previously demonstrated write-up from the Billiards and Darts Direct Blog.

As you can see, the 4 ball is not lined up directly with the pocket. If we shot it straight thru, it would bounce off the corner of the pocket and we’d miss the shot. So we need to throw the 4 ball. Normally, if the 6 ball wasn’t here, we’d use right-hand English. But, since the 6 is there, we’ll have to use left-hand English. The reason we use the opposite English is that when the 6 hits the 4, it will transfer it’s English to the ball, except it will be the opposite English that it transfers.

So, when shooting frozen combo shots, use the opposite English on your first ball than you would normally and you’ll make your shot just fine. As to how much English to use, you’ll have to determine that on a case-by-case basis but I’d say to put a little more English into it than if it were just one ball since you’ll be losing some of that in the transition. So, in this case, overcompensation is a good thing.