Aim/Alignment or Stroke

Humans have somewhat different issues. I see students whose aim is off and who swerve their stroke to compensate. They have to commit to a straight stroke even if missing shots to confirm aim.

BeiberLvr said:

Look at videos of robots playing pool. Perfectly straight strokes, but the shots are also programmed and everything is lined up correctly.
Now what happens if they line up the robot incorrectly (say off by 2")? The shot will be missed. But why? The stroke was perfectly straight.

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Bingo!
You're a wise man.
:thumbup:

BeiberLvr said:

Look at videos of robots playing pool. Perfectly straight strokes, but the shots are also programmed and everything is lined up correctly.

Now what happens if they line up the robot incorrectly (say off by 2")? The shot will be missed. But why? The stroke was perfectly straight.

Click to expand...

This post reminds me of the most useful tip I've stumbled across in my journey when it comes to aiming. I've played around with different systems and techniques, finally just settling on overlapping the contact point, that is -- when I'm not playing entirely subconsciously.

The one thing that has helped my aiming more than any system is locking in. Once down on the ball, I force myself to cue straight, EVEN if that means I will miss the ball. I'll sometimes even take this a step further and purposely get down on the ball NOT aligned to pocket it and FORCE myself to cue straight and watch the ball fly into the rail. When I do this, it makes me realize how much aiming information is actually locked away in my subconscious mind. Doing this a few times will even help me get my aiming back online. It sort of helps awaken the aiming muscle within.

I did a stroke/aiming study with my wife as the subject. She is not a pool player. Her stroke is so inconsistent that I had to put the CB 10" from the OB to minimize the effects of her lack of basic fundamentals. I had her hit over a 100 shots, the OB being only about 2 ft from the corner pocket. When she used her own perception of aim, based on the ghostball method, she did very poorly. But when I told her exactly where to aim, using the tip of her cue aligned for fractional aim point on or near the OB, she improved her pocketing percentage by 600%.

By keeping the CB close to the OB I was able to basically ignore the stroke errors and focus primarily on alignment and aiming abilities. If she works on her stroke, a lot, she could pocket balls better than most average players simply by knowing where to aim, instead of guessing or using her inexperience.

BeiberLvr said:

The point is that the straightest stroke in the world is useless if you don't aim correctly and have poor alignment.

Also the better your alignment the more likely it is you'll have a straight stroke.

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You are 100% correct IMHO on both points.

However, many amateur players aim perfectly well at the object balls but have a stroke that wobbles like a Florida palm tree in a hurricane. And between shots their stance changes--exactly what you're warning them against.