ChrisinNC said:

I’m not sure how many players do this, but the contact point on the object ball is meaningless to me and I never look at it at any point before the shot. I see the shot, I see the angle required to make the shot, then I aim to hit whatever portion of the object ball I need to hit to pocket it, or aim completely full if it’s a straight shot.

For a considerable cut, I might initially go down in my aim with a half ball hit, aiming at the edge of the object ball, and then make fine-tuning adjustments, more or less than a half ball hit depending on the severity of the cut. On a shot that has a smaller cut angle , I likely initially start with close to a full ball hit, and then make the aiming adjustments off of full ball, depending on the angle.

After many years of playing, you subconsciously know the angles you have to aim the cue ball at to send the object ball towards the pocket. Of course it gets a lot more complicated once you are applying spin (calculating deflection and swerve) but that’s also learned over years, from trial and error.

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I do this with many shots, and have tried to teach it to "learning" players. At the very least, I think they should master 'seeing' the resulting angle of the half-ball hit, because it's one of the most reliable/repeatable shots to aim and execute. My thought is that they should easily learn to adjust from the half-ball, once they have it down.

For moving off the full-ball aim/hit, I get people to shoot parallel to a rail, just off the cushion a bit, and then show how the aim and path changes as the target ball moves farther from the cushion--at first, only the target ball, and later both balls (staying parallel to the rail). What I try to pass on with this, is that they can look at where the full-hit will send the target ball, and then adjust for the angle towards the pocket. Note, that the contact point is there, it's just mostly lost in the idea of sending the cue ball straight at the other ball. It's still there for small angle cuts, but it's basically ignored, in favor of simply aiming off-straight.