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.
	Lesson 7: Judging The Angle & Establishing The Right Technique By Nick Prinsloo  More of this Series •  Introduction • 1.) Philosophy Of Pool • 2.) Learning To Play Pool • 3.) Overcoming The Physical Barriers • 4.) Overcoming The Mental Barriers • 5.) Why Pool? • 6.) Becoming A Natural Player • 7.) Judging The Angle & Establishing The Right Technique • 7e.) Sighting The Shot • 7f.) The Practice Strokes • 7g.) Pausing For Perfection • 7h.) Final Cue Delivery Here we will have the sub-gradient of: Shot selection Judging the angle Approaching the shot Taking up position and going down on the shot Sighting the shot The Practice Strokes Pause #1, pause #2 and the backstroke Cue delivery Completing the stroke Once you have mastered all these, you will have to go through this routine in this exact order every time you play a shot. It may sound complicated and involved, but once automatic it will make the shot easier than you thought. For now, I will take you up to (d) taking up position and going down on the shot. A. SHOT SELECTION When you are about to play a shot you must first select the ball you want to pocket. It is all that needs to be said about shot selection for now - we will get to exactly how this is done later. B. JUDGING THE ANGLE Judging the angle is a term used to describe where exactly - from where you are standing behind the cue ball - to send the cue ball for it to make contact with the object ball so that the object ball will enter the pocket. There are different approaches to judging the potting angle, and as long as they REALLY work, the one would not be more right than the other. If you already have a sure-fire way of judging the angle, do not try anything else; rather tend to your technique itself. There is always just one contact point between cue ball and object ball, regardless of the angle, and that is the point on the object ball which is furthest from the center of the pocket. If the cue ball makes contact with that point the object ball will enter the pocket in question every time, without fail (provided, of course, the table doesn't roll off or something). So, to find the right way of judging the angle, we have to work from that principle. We can, of course, memorize the angles and then just play from memory, like some books say, but one's memory can often let one down. That is why we will establish one way to judge every angle individually - to be sure that no human error enters into this. It doesn't mean that you will have to stand there mentally computing before you can play the shot, but it will be necessary at first while you are still learning, until it becomes an automatic action. Now that we have the point of contact, we must visualize the cue ball in position of contact with the object ball. You must actually see an imaginary white ball statically touching the object ball, as in Diagram 2 above. At first, this will not seem very easy for some people, but persist and this too will become automatic. To make this a little easier for yourself, you can visualize a line running from the center of the pocket through the cue ball. A better way is to visualize a three-dimensional path the object ball will follow to the pocket; an imaginary "tunnel" the size of the ball. Extend that "tunnel" to end in that imaginary cue ball. And there you have the exact position the cue ball should be in when it makes contact. Now simply send the cue ball to fill the space of the imaginary cue ball, and pocket the ball. I will now tell you how to send the cue ball to that position. Next page >> Previous Features Copyright © About.com