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.