You don’t have to Snap the 8 ball, or snap the 9 ball and have no one see your eight or nine ball break. Now you can get a shirt that says it for you! (Just don’t over-promise and under-shoot! Great pool league shirts. Check em out at Blue-Collar-Tees.com!
One common mistake I see players make a lot is not resetting on their shot when they need to change their angle. If you need to correct your angle any more then just slightly, you should stand up and reset your entire stance. This will keep your cue stick at the correct angle to the object ball. If you change the angle of your shot by moving your bridge hand and not your body, the cue stick hit the ball at a slightly different angle which can effect the spin on the ball and slightly change the trajectory of the cue ball, making you miss tight cuts and bank shots, or even cause you to follow a ball in to the pocket and give your opponent ball-in-hand.
9-ball Tricups for OPAL-APA Summer Session is this Friday, then 2 weeks after is the 8-ball Tricups. Wish us luck! If you haven’t seen it, here is the video for the APA National Championships… this is what we’re aiming for!
Follow shots are something every player needs in their game to shoot well, however many players do not practice follow shots because they naturally follow the object ball when they hit it. Here’s some good follow shot tips.
A good follow shot is hit by striking the cue ball centered on the horizontal axis of the ball. No right or left english or you will affect both the follow of the cue and the direction of the object ball. Anything from about a quarter tip of top english to a full tip will give you a different amount of follow on the shot. The more top, the more follow compared the the travel distance of the object ball.
To practice this, place an object ball on the third diamond and your cue ball on the second diamond. Shoot the ball with a quarter tip of top, then again with half a tip, then a full tip worth of top english. If you are striking the ball with the same amount of force each time, the object ball should move the same distance each time but the cue ball will end up further up table each time you use more top english.
Another good drill is to set the balls up again on the second and third diamond and trying to shoot the object ball and follow the cue ball exactly half a diamond past the object ball’s original third-diamond position. Then reset and try to shoot with a full diamond of follow distance, then one and half diamonds, etc. This will allow you to get used to the distance you will get from different amounts of follow and is very useful for game positions.
Fury Shots are (in my opinion) where you are using more then a full tip worth of top english and are over-following-through on your stroke. This make the object ball travel quickly and the cue ball follow it with just slightly less speed the the object ball. This is useful for a number of position shots, but my favorite is when I need to shoot my ball into an opponents ball that is blocking a pocket and then I want the cue ball to follow behind it and strike my object ball a second time. Try it out and see how it works!
Place the Cue Ball in the center of the table and place 5 balls along the 1st diamond line toward one end of the table, 1 in the middle, 1 on each diamond and two in between like this: | * * * * * | so that they make a straight line.
Pocket each ball starting with a ball on either side and use enough bottom English to bring the ball back to center table area (using rail is ok). The shoot a ball on the opposite side and rotate back and forth and then put in center ball and return to center table area.
This will help you learn to run out shots on either end of the table, on both side of the table and comes up in game situations regularly.
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