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Nick Prinsloo has been playing pool for a total of 21 years, 15 years competitively. Originally a pro-level snooker player and instructor, Nick discovered 9-ball and came to the US in 1998, where he has been playing on regional tours ever since.
Lately, Nick writes more about the game than he actually plays. Nick was the Guide for Billiards at About.com for almost four years. Nick's column archive is located here. |
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Introduction
About nine years ago, after having studied every available source about mastering the game of snooker - from reading the multitude of instructional handbooks, to tapping the knowledge of one or two old masters I happened to know personally - I started writing my own manual on the modern technique, favored by stars like Stephen Hendry, Steve Davis and Jimmy White. I was a snooker player back then, in pursuit of the technical perfection of these modern-day legends. What I was looking for at the time was some kind of common denominator. What was it that made these guys pocket long, table-length (12 ft.) power shots with such amazing consistency? In my quest, I found a few things, also emphasized by one or two other manuals. I took those common factors and combined them with what worked for me, and what followed was twelve lessons, which I wrote on a friend's old pre-Windows 186 machine, and later turned into my own little instructional Web site around 1996. Despite being a snooker freak (before taking to American Pool, I had dedicated my entire life to learning, playing and teaching snooker), I always had a strong attraction to 9-Ball. Problem is, where I'm from, 9-Ball is a virtually unknown game. There was only one way to remedy this: to experience the game by playing it where it originated. Shortly after starting to write for this Web site, I ventured to the US to expand my knowledge of pool - as played the American way. I have since rewritten those twelve lessons to reflect the American terminology (pocket the ball, as opposed to "pot" the ball, etc.), and what follows here is a newly edited version of those lessons, after having become a full-blown American pool player, if you could call it that. So, if you want to learn what makes former snooker players like Allison Fisher and Karen Corr such consistent shotmakers, then read on. Starting on the next page is lesson number one, and as a little bonus, I am including Lesson 2, and every two weeks from here on, two new lessons will be published. The lessons are as follows:
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