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.