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.