Here’s a shot that comes up periodically. Basically it’s about following the ball in or “following the combo”. Imagine you’re playing a game of 8 ball. You’re on the 8 but your opponent has a ball in front of the pocket. So you can’t get your 8 ball by that other ball. Since you’ve got the 8 ball, you want to hit both balls into the same pocket and end the game.

You can can accomplish this shot by putting draw on your cue ball. Draw, which is essentially “backspin”, will hit the 8 ball and immediately give the 8 ball forward spin. This forward spin is what will propel the 8 ball all the way into the pocket after hitting the other object ball. The two things you need to make sure with this shot are: that you hit low on the cue ball and that you hit the object ball full and square. You need to be dead-on with this shot or it won’t work. Take your time lining up this shot, it will be well worth it.

Once you’ve lined up your shot and are confident in your stroke, take your shot and (ideally) both balls will make it into the pocket. This shot is simple to set up, so I encourage you to spend some time practicing it with different amounts of draw put on the cue ball. This will definitely help you to make not just this shot but a variety of others.

Today we’re going to learn to control your draw. This is a complementary technique to the original tip I gave you about drawing the ball. The trick is in your hand position, specifically your back hand and where it lands on the wrap of your pool cue. Now, this technique is great for beginners and inexperienced players but more seasoned players might not benefit from this because you already have a feel for your draw and your own abilities.

Let’s start with shooting with your back hand toward the front of the wrap. Take your shot. You should notice a fairly soft draw with a ball that comes back just 6 or 8 inches.

Move your back hand toward the middle of the wrap and take your same shot again. This time the ball should draw further back maybe a few feet.

Now move your back hand all the way to the back of the wrap. This should result in a draw that comes much farther, almost to the other side of the table.

So, how does this all work? It’s actually prettty simple. When your hand is toward the begining of the wrap, you’re not using as much weight in front of it. When you move it to the middle, you’re using a little bit more. When you move it to the back, you’re using even more power and weight. It just happens naturally and it automatically applies to your shots.

Best of all, these same principles apply to your bridge as well. Give it some experiments and see how it affects your draw.

Welcome back for another exciting how-to billiards tip from Billiards and Darts Direct. Today we’re going to learn how to shoot combination shots, these are also often called simply “Combos”. Combos are a very important aspect of playing pool and mastering this concept will pay very large dividends in real-world games.

So, lets imagine we’re playing a game of 8 ball and we want to shoot the nine ball into the side pocket. First thing I’ll need to do is line up and figure out where my point of contact is. The point of contact in this particular case is where I want the eleven ball to hit the nine ball. Once I’ve figured out my first point of contact, then I’ll move on to the eleven ball and I’ll figure out where it’s going to make contact on the nine ball. After that, I’m going to see where my spot is on the eleven ball, where my cue ball is going to hit the eleven. So basically, I’m just working backwards from the very last ball and going until my cue ball.

Now all I’m looking at is that spot on the eleven ball where the cue ball is going to make contact. I’ll go ahead and take my shot and, like magic, my object ball will go in. Of course, like any technique, this will take some practice to master but once you do, it’ll be an often used and much appreciated technique in your repertoire.

Just as before when we learned about Bank Shots, everybody is trying to find the half-way distance between the ball and the rail and the pocket. So, here’s a technique for how to figure that out with better accuracy than just eyeballing it.

Please note: There are some techniques that are far easier to understand visually than to read about them. This is one of them. I highly recommend watching the video for this particular example.

To successfully make kick shots, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with the diamonds on your table. You’ll need to use the diamonds for all your measuring. It’s important to remember that even though they aren’t labeled, each pocket is a diamond. Remember this!

So, imagine you’ve got your ball stuck right next to the corner pocket. Your cue ball is near the center pocket.We’re going to figure out how to make the cue ball go into that pocket. For now, we’re only going to focus on making our cue ball into the pocket (we’ll adjust for the object ball later).

I don’t want to use the diamonds behind the cue ball, I want to use the ones in front of it. I want to find the closest diamond to the cue ball. Now I’m going to parallel it and split it. It’s useful ,when you’re just starting out with this technique, to bring another cue over to perform the paralleling and splitting. After you’ve split it, you want to come straight out on the rail, so that your point will be accurate.

Now you’ve got your cue stick set up on your point. It’s time to figure out the where I want to make contact on the object ball. Again, we just want to parallel it and split the difference.

If you’d rather not have to keep looking at the rail, just visualize it in your head, pick the point, the center of your cue and figure out what the distance is. In this example, it’s a little over an inch. Now just move the cue over an inch that direction. This is where you’re going to make contact on the object ball. So, you’ve set your halfway point with far greater accuracy than eyeballing it. It’s time to make your shot.

Let’s talk about Bank Shots. They’re not so hard once you understand the fundamentals. First, understand that with bank shots, everybody is trying to find the half-way distance between the ball and the rail and the pocket. So, here’s a technique for how to figure that out with far greater accuracy than just eyeballing it. This is also one of those techniques that’s easier to learn by actually doing it. I encourage you to watch and rewatch the video below because that will illustrate what I’m talking about far better than the text alone can.

To successfully make bank shots, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with the diamonds on your table. You’ll need to use the diamonds for all your measuring. It’s important to remember that even though they aren’t labeled, each pocket is a diamond. Remember this!

So, imagine you’ve got your ball stuck on one end of the table, between 2nd and 3rd diamonds on the long rail. The pocket to the center diamond will go to the pocket. It’s not the diamond itself that you’re going to actually end up aiming at (we’ll make that correction at the end) but they’ll work for the initial figuring out we need to do.

I need to figure out which line, which diamond, I’ll be using to make my ball. I’ll always start with the pocket near me since that’s the easiest to visualize because pockets always go to the middle diamonds. Using my cue as a visual reference, I’ll place the butt end of the my cue in the side pocket near me. I‘ll put the tip of my cue on the diamond that that pocket would go toward. Next, I’ll move from the side pocket near me all the way to the next diamond. While doing this, I’m careful to maintain the angle that I’ve created with the cue.

I’ll then want to move the butt of my cue over to next diamond nearest to me, this is the diamond that’s in front of the ball I want to strike. I don’t use the diamonds on the other side of the table because they’re too far away. You want to use they’re too far away. I want to use the closest diamond so I can be accurate.

Next I’ll find the halfway point. For the purposes of illustration, I’ll be using two cues for this next portion. Using that second cue, make a parallel line over the object ball. Now I just need to split the difference between the two cues. This is going to give me my point. Again, you’ll eventually be able to do this in your head.

Now you have your point to aim at. Take your cue and move it straight out on the rail, retaining that point you set. Pull your cue in toward you a little bit and note there the tip of your cue hits the rail. That is where you want to aim. Take your shot and watch the ball hit your pocket.

Today I’m going to show you how to get Jump Shape. The cool thing about Jump Shape is that you don’t need to switch cues to use it. You can use this Jump Shape technique with your regular cue.

Imagine you’re shooting solids and you want to make a shot and get shape on the other end of the table but your object ball is blocked by two other striped balls. You don’t want to run into the striped balls because you might knock them down to the other end of the table, messing up your next shot. Jump Shape will get you out of this situation.

We’re going to get Jump Shape on the ball by elevating the butt end of my cue. Striking the ball with an elevated cue will cause the cue ball to hop slightly. Line up your shot exactly like you normally would, but the key difference is that you want to elevate the butt end of your cue 30 – 40 degrees higher than you normally would have it for a straight shot. Take your shot.

Lets learn how to do Three-Rail Kick Shots. Just like Two-Rail Kick Shots, this is a very useful technique to learn for general gameplay. You’ll find that the basic principles of kick-shots apply to just about everything else in the game, so this is a great technique to learn.

Everybody is a little different on how they approach their three-rail kick shots. You’ll want to use running English for your kick-shots. This means that once the cue ball hits the rail, it’ll take off faster.

You next need to find a spot somewhere in the room that’s approximately 20 feet out from where you are. This is where you want to aim your ball using running English. Once you have your spot picked out, and you’ve taken a few successful shots to verify that it’s the correct spot to be aiming at, you can then position the cue ball anywhere on the table and still use that spot to make your shot.

Let’s learn how to do Two-Rail Kick Shots. This is a very useful technique to learn for general gameplay. You’ll find that the basic principles of kick-shots apply to just about everything else in the game, so this is a great technique to learn.

You’ll want to use running English (left hand English) for any multiple rail kick-shots, including this one. You then need to imagine a spot somewhere in the room that’s about 20 feet away from where you are standing. This spot is where you want to make the ball come into contact with the first rail. You then need to aim for that spot and strike the ball using running English. You’ll likely need to practice this “spot visualization” technique quite a bit to get really good at it.

The cool thing about this technique is that, once you have your spot picked out, you can keep using that exact same spot no matter where your cue ball is. As long as you keep aiming through that spot, you’ll make your shot every time.

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.