When Ghost Ball isn't
- Thread starter duckie
- Start date
The aiming point arc, the contact patch and the ghost ball are all imaginary objects. The contact point is only .0194" wide and resting on sphere. It's not easy for some people to properly pick and hold that also invisible point (as in not marked and not distinguishable from all the points around it) nor to see an invisible spot on the cloth with sufficiently consistent accuracy.
The geometry is crystal clear. It's easy to diagram. It's super easy to show. It's not as easy to execute without real concrete visual aids. Which is why there are so many Ghost Ball aim trainers out there. From do it yourself ones like the Arrow or notched business cards to electronic ones that project a disk of light on the table with tangent lines like The Spider.
I think it should be clear to just about everyone that Ghost Ball is not intuitive. It is something that someone somewhere made up to be able to easily explain aiming. And it works to explain where a person should be aiming. But the plethora of aim trainers centered around it, and there are many many many, should be a clue that not everyone is able to just get it from the simple explanation.
I think that you are right to think of the "whole shot". But you really have to get away from ghost ball to really see the whole shot picture. In my opinion that is. And no, I am not going "there". I just think that Ghost Ball is not nearly as easy as it looks on paper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-L4QMNiVxk My homegrown experiment on how difficult it is to accurately judge distance using Ghost Ball.
The geometry is crystal clear. It's easy to diagram. It's super easy to show. It's not as easy to execute without real concrete visual aids. Which is why there are so many Ghost Ball aim trainers out there. From do it yourself ones like the Arrow or notched business cards to electronic ones that project a disk of light on the table with tangent lines like The Spider.
I think it should be clear to just about everyone that Ghost Ball is not intuitive. It is something that someone somewhere made up to be able to easily explain aiming. And it works to explain where a person should be aiming. But the plethora of aim trainers centered around it, and there are many many many, should be a clue that not everyone is able to just get it from the simple explanation.
I think that you are right to think of the "whole shot". But you really have to get away from ghost ball to really see the whole shot picture. In my opinion that is. And no, I am not going "there". I just think that Ghost Ball is not nearly as easy as it looks on paper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-L4QMNiVxk My homegrown experiment on how difficult it is to accurately judge distance using Ghost Ball.
Just make the cueball hit the contact point on the object ball. It's very simple.
I just visualize a line coming from where the ball should go in the pocket through the contact point and make the cueball hit the contact point. Another important point, you do not aim the center of the cueball at the contact point. You have to make the contact point on the cueball hit the contact point on the object ball.
I just visualize a line coming from where the ball should go in the pocket through the contact point and make the cueball hit the contact point. Another important point, you do not aim the center of the cueball at the contact point. You have to make the contact point on the cueball hit the contact point on the object ball.
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The aiming point arc, the contact patch and the ghost ball are all imaginary objects. The contact point is only .0194" wide and resting on sphere. It's not easy for some people to properly pick and hold that also invisible point (as in not marked and not distinguishable from all the points around it) nor to see an invisible spot on the cloth with sufficiently consistent accuracy.
The geometry is crystal clear. It's easy to diagram. It's super easy to show. It's not as easy to execute without real concrete visual aids. Which is why there are so many Ghost Ball aim trainers out there. From do it yourself ones like the Arrow or notched business cards to electronic ones that project a disk of light on the table with tangent lines like The Spider.
I think it should be clear to just about everyone that Ghost Ball is not intuitive. It is something that someone somewhere made up to be able to easily explain aiming. And it works to explain where a person should be aiming. But the plethora of aim trainers centered around it, and there are many many many, should be a clue that not everyone is able to just get it from the simple explanation.
I think that you are right to think of the "whole shot". But you really have to get away from ghost ball to really see the whole shot picture. In my opinion that is. And no, I am not going "there". I just think that Ghost Ball is not nearly as easy as it looks on paper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-L4QMNiVxk My homegrown experiment on how difficult it is to accurately judge distance using Ghost Ball.
Now do your little test 1000 times more. While not being able to judge distance accurately the first 8 or 9 times it has nothing to do with learning the method while practicing it over and over, just like any other system. Your test also has you peering over the top of the OB to find a spot on the back side of the ball, not something you do much in pool as even when your kicking a ball close to the rail you would go to the contact side of the shot to visualize the ghost ball position.
I believe the ghost ball aid is for someone who is a beginner. To show them how to make a ball,,and that is it!!!
After that,,its no longer any help. Just a basic visual aide to help someone that does not know how to make a ball go into the pocket from an angle or even straight in.
Once someone is making balls and can run a table ,,or even 5 balls. I don't believe anyone should be trying to visualize the ghost ball ,anymore,, more looking for the point of contact. (the eye has learned to adjust)
And then they start seeing natural throw on a extreme cut and english starts to become aware,,messing up everything about the ghost ball aid!! lol:grin: "I hit it right where I was suppose to and it didn't go!" Yep!! English?? Throw??
Ghost Ball is a aid,,not a solution!!
After that,,its no longer any help. Just a basic visual aide to help someone that does not know how to make a ball go into the pocket from an angle or even straight in.
Once someone is making balls and can run a table ,,or even 5 balls. I don't believe anyone should be trying to visualize the ghost ball ,anymore,, more looking for the point of contact. (the eye has learned to adjust)
And then they start seeing natural throw on a extreme cut and english starts to become aware,,messing up everything about the ghost ball aid!! lol:grin: "I hit it right where I was suppose to and it didn't go!" Yep!! English?? Throw??
Ghost Ball is a aid,,not a solution!!
^^^^ What shooter said.
Also, the fact that there are a bunch of aids for people to learn ghost ball in no way reflects the validity or simplicity of the system. There will always be someone willing to make a gimmicky device to "help" people to do whatever it is they're trying to do. From driving and putting a golf ball, to aiming a pool ball, to hitting a baseball. If a pool player has a decent stroke and can align him/herself properly, no aid in necessary. Aids are there for people who don't want to put the time in to learn the shots in my opinion. I took a couple years off and started playing again this past November. I wasn't very accurate and started looking into aiming systems and what not. I finally just went into the basement and started doing my drills for a couple hours a day for maybe three weeks and it all came back. All I needed was table time and repetition. If you've never been very good, absolutely nothing will benefit you more than live instruction imho. You can spout out the facts about how small the contact area is to accurately pocket a ball all you want. That has nothing to do with aiming but rather your delivery of the CB to the OB. Systems just help you find the contact point and it's then up to you to get the CB there. When I miss it's never because my contact point was wrong but rather that I failed to hit it with the OB or didn't allow for the correct amount of squirt or swerve, or put too much/not enough english on the ball. If you can't look at the OB and the pocket, and determine where you need to hit the OB to pocket the ball, pool isn't for you.
Also, the fact that there are a bunch of aids for people to learn ghost ball in no way reflects the validity or simplicity of the system. There will always be someone willing to make a gimmicky device to "help" people to do whatever it is they're trying to do. From driving and putting a golf ball, to aiming a pool ball, to hitting a baseball. If a pool player has a decent stroke and can align him/herself properly, no aid in necessary. Aids are there for people who don't want to put the time in to learn the shots in my opinion. I took a couple years off and started playing again this past November. I wasn't very accurate and started looking into aiming systems and what not. I finally just went into the basement and started doing my drills for a couple hours a day for maybe three weeks and it all came back. All I needed was table time and repetition. If you've never been very good, absolutely nothing will benefit you more than live instruction imho. You can spout out the facts about how small the contact area is to accurately pocket a ball all you want. That has nothing to do with aiming but rather your delivery of the CB to the OB. Systems just help you find the contact point and it's then up to you to get the CB there. When I miss it's never because my contact point was wrong but rather that I failed to hit it with the OB or didn't allow for the correct amount of squirt or swerve, or put too much/not enough english on the ball. If you can't look at the OB and the pocket, and determine where you need to hit the OB to pocket the ball, pool isn't for you.
Whatever. If you want to gamble some day then we can get a ghost ball template and you can put your cue tip down on the cloth where you think that the ghost ball center is. Then we will put the template there and see just where the contact point is and where the balls are lined up. I will bet you $500 every try that you are wrong.
Now, when you use GB you are estimating it and you are getting in the general area. You mind is making up the difference. And of course the more you practice this the better you SHOULD get at getting close enough to count.
My test was to prove a point and that point is that it's difficult to pick out the GB center even when you are RIGHT ON TOP of the ball. So why do you think that you will be MORE ACCURATE from five feet away and using a cue stick?
And for SOME PEOPLE (like me) it's difficult to use the GB method no matter how much we practice it. We don't have the visualization or estimation skills to be able to use it consistently shot for shot over and over again. For people like me other methods work better to produce the consistency we are looking for in our game.
So don't assume that I haven't put my time in. I have a good 15 years of Ghost Ball experience. After I graduated from it then I started getting much better.
Yeah ok.
We all suck, you're great. Do those drills, that's all it takes.
Just like Sarah Palin said, "Drill baby, Drill!"
No one ever misses because they aimed wrong, everyone always aims perfectly. Got it thanks.
So all the GB Aim Trainers are gimmicks? I suppose all the training devices in all sports are also gimmicks as well right?
How do you think a player develops a nice straight stroke? Well I used to use the "gimmick" of a beer bottle to stroke into. And I used to use the gimmick of a mirror to check my stroke.
The fact is that there wouldn't BE so many GB trainers if GB was so easy to grasp in practice.
Let's do a little experiment. Since you say aids are there for people who don't want to put in the time.
How about you and I take two player who have never hit a ball in their life and trains them for two weeks.
You get no training aids and I get whatever training aids I want. At the end of two weeks we let our two players play some for say $5000.
Now if I am right my player will have shortened his learning curve considerably in the first week since he didn't have to do all the endless "putting in the time" and in the second week I can take him to some more advanced stuff that should give him the edge in the match.
Are you in or out on that test of whose theory about how to learn is better?
Hey jackhole, I never said a mirror was a gimmick, it's a piece of furniture. Mirrors do help peole see what's wrong with THEIR STROKE. That's not what we're talking about here. It was about aiming. You didn't use a bottle to groove your aim did you?
BTW I watched one of your Youtube videos ***(my apologies if it wasn't you/yours)*** that viewed the table from above. It had something to do with the stance -the guy in the video was wearing a pair of creepy sandals. Anyway, whoever he was chicken winged his stroke and missed a few in a row so I stopped watching. Whoever he was, he doesn't need an aiming aid as much as some instruction to stop his elbow from beating his hand through the stroke.
I never said everyone sucked or that I was great. I stated why I miss when I miss. Stop being such a douche.
BTW I watched one of your Youtube videos ***(my apologies if it wasn't you/yours)*** that viewed the table from above. It had something to do with the stance -the guy in the video was wearing a pair of creepy sandals. Anyway, whoever he was chicken winged his stroke and missed a few in a row so I stopped watching. Whoever he was, he doesn't need an aiming aid as much as some instruction to stop his elbow from beating his hand through the stroke.
I never said everyone sucked or that I was great. I stated why I miss when I miss. Stop being such a douche.
Oh gee the name calling. Wow so eloquent. I guess that means you don't want to take the training aid bet?
Don't worry about my videos, that's the new way to hustle in the internet age. Put up a bunch of videos and get everyone thinking that this is how you play and then later you bust them with your perfect stroke and perfect aim. Don't you know anything?
As for you little douche comment why don't you take you own advice? As in don't simplify everything down to asinine comments like this,
"If you can't look at the OB and the pocket, and determine where you need to hit the OB to pocket the ball, pool isn't for you."
Because that is really an ignorant thing to say.
Don't worry John. As usual your right and everyone else is wrong. Your impeccable logic and understanding of the human mind is beyond the pale of ordinary human beings. The light from your razor sharp mind in blinding and makes mere mortals quake and the rightness of your statement is only proven by the amount of money someone can refute you with.
Bob Danielson
www.bdcuesandcomix.com
Bob Danielson
www.bdcuesandcomix.com
That is called "natural ability", some got it and some don't. Then some like you will spend hours on scientific methods to only show progression in your mind when the fact is it simply don't matter what you do, you are as good as you will ever be because your body's hand / eye coordination is what it is.
Actually no one ever takes me up these bets because they know that they would lose.
So if you're right and you think that you pick out an invisible spot on the table that is 2.25" from the object ball's center and in line with the pocket every time then take my money. You can bet comic books if you like.
Or perhaps you want the training aids vs. no training aids bet? Again you can bet with comic books.
I don't care. The offers to bet are not intended to be taken they are just a pool room way of having a conversation. But if you care to try then go ahead. I will be happy to snap off your whole comic book store when you go broke trying to do things that only your fantasy heroes could do.
Perhaps I should not have called you any names but not having children of my own, I didn't know how to react to your little temper tantrum. Sorry for that. If we lived near one another and could agree on how the student would be chosen and what qualifies as a training aid -FOR AIMING, I would love to take that bet. It would be fun to throw a dart at a list of bars that have leagues, go there, have a couple beers, and pick who our apa 3 students will be. Honestly, this test has merit. Of course, in fairness it may need to be repeated due to the variance in natural ability. I know guys who just picked up a stick and could play. Others of us had to put in the thousands of hours to get just to the level of a B player.
Kudos to making such a good hustle video then -it's every bit as good as a vincent shirt.
Kudos to making such a good hustle video then -it's every bit as good as a vincent shirt.
Sure some people are better than others at certain things at certain times. This is because everyone's brain is wired differently.
That doesn't mean that I can't train myself to be as good as someone who started off better.
Think you're right? Would you be willing to bet on it?
You think hand/eye coordination can't be learned and trained? How about someone who is naturally gifted at math vs. someone who can't do math very well? Can the one who doesn't understand math well ever do better than the gifted one? Is the gifted one actually gifted?
You want to make the argument that nature is the driving force between whether or not someone is good at something. But it's actually nurture that plays a bigger part in most cases. Most world class athletes and performers are made not born.
Of course I agree that there is always that extra "something" that takes some people over the top of all the other world class competitors. Whether that's truly a natural advantage or some sort of higher will to exceed who knows. But I firmly believe that very few people in the world are truly stuck at any given level because of an innate lack of natural ability. What they lack is the right conditions and perhaps the drive to put in the work.
You don't know any person on the planet who picked up a stick and could play at a B level. That's exaggeration.
We would pick people who have never played a game of pool in their life. Who knows you might get lucky and get the most naturally gifted person on earth and I might Clumsy Chuck.
All of us have played thousands of hours to get where we are. I am jsut tired of the 'hit a million balls' people who claim that this is the only way. It's not the only way. You can cut down that number significantly by learning the right techniques.
Or lets put it another way. I think we all agree on the value of instruction.
Let's take our players and give them each an instructor. You get joe blow instructor from Podunk Idaho who is an APA5 and I get Buddy Hall.
After two weeks of training our novices who do you like if our our players match up?
In other words there are shortcuts to getting good. You can waste a lot of hours practicing the wrong things.
Such as Ghost Ball in my opinion. GB is good for about five minutes of training to get the concept of contact points, throw, swerve and deflection. After that I am done with it and would advise anyone I teach to forget about it. I probably won't ever get a BCA Instructor certification with that attitude though.
Just mark me down as an escapee from the cult of GB. I am heretic I know.
There is some truth to this. Look at John Mcenroe, arguably the most gifted tennis player ever. By that I mean he was immediately great and could make the tennis ball do things noone else can. His brother Patrick sucked but hit a couple million balls and went pro too. He never made it to the top level of pro tennis but he worked hard enough to make the pro tour. I think I read that Greg Norman shot a 71 or something like that on his very first round of golf he ever played as a child. That's natural ability! Sure he wasn't born the best player in the world but what a starting platform to work with to get to the top of the game!
In regards to your last comment, I've never used ghost ball. I see the shots by the lines I draw from the OB to the pocket as I mentioned in my first post. I don't think most advanced players use it either but hat's my opinion.
BTW, I said I know people who picked up a stick and could play -not play at a B level. I have to agree noone has ever been that good from the start. If they were, I hate them.
In regards to your last comment, I've never used ghost ball. I see the shots by the lines I draw from the OB to the pocket as I mentioned in my first post. I don't think most advanced players use it either but hat's my opinion.
BTW, I said I know people who picked up a stick and could play -not play at a B level. I have to agree noone has ever been that good from the start. If they were, I hate them.
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As I said, your right and everyone else is wrong. You know that because no one will ever take you up on one of your bets. Proves your right every time. And by the way, I deal in comix not comics, but you knew that.
Bob Danielson
www.bdcuesandcomix.com
Bob Danielson
www.bdcuesandcomix.com
If your assumptions are true everyone would be a world beater. But theres that thing called natural ability or let's take the word drive you used above. That little word in itself separates ability to reach that upper level or stay below. Some people have natural drive to be millionares, presidents, etc. and will acheive it, others think about it but will only shovel sh** for a check. You don't build what someone is born inside with, anyone can become better then they currently are at anything, but the level of how good will have limitations on each individual.
And no thanks for the bet, I haven't got time for a 15 page woofing contest on actual terms & techniques of the game. I'd likely lose anyway on that subject, I am not real up on the techno talk, I prefer the HAM style, Hit A Million Balls.
