Having Trouble on the Big Tables... Please Help!

Mikey Town

Mikey Town

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Hello all,

Up until this point I've played almost all of my pool on a bar box. Lately, I've been trying my hand at a tournament here an there on the 9 footers. Needless to say, I have realized how crooked my stroke really is. I also never new how important the safety game is in 8-ball... Not nearly as many run-outs as on the small table.

I'm a decent bar table player, but am having tons of trouble translating my game to the big boy table (especially the Diamond tables... I was having A LOT of trouble with the longer shelves last weekend!). I imagine that I'm not the only person to run across this problem, so I was hoping that some of you may have some pointers.

If you could share your knowledge of any stroke-straightening drills and/or general tips for pool on the big table I would really appreciate it. Also, I have a bar box at home to practice on, so any drills that I can do on the small table that would help my stroke to transfer over to the big tables would be ideal.


Thank you in advance for all of your support!
 
Mikey Town said:
Hello all,

Up until this point I've played almost all of my pool on a bar box. Lately, I've been trying my hand at a tournament here an there on the 9 footers. Needless to say, I have realized how crooked my stroke really is. I also never new how important the safety game is in 8-ball... Not nearly as many run-outs as on the small table.

I'm a decent bar table player, but am having tons of trouble translating my game to the big boy table (especially the Diamond tables... I was having A LOT of trouble with the longer shelves last weekend!). I imagine that I'm not the only person to run across this problem, so I was hoping that some of you may have some pointers.

If you could share your knowledge of any stroke-straightening drills and/or general tips for pool on the big table I would really appreciate it. Also, I have a bar box at home to practice on, so any drills that I can do on the small table that would help my stroke to transfer over to the big tables would be ideal.


Thank you in advance for all of your support!
Click to expand...

I'm sure there are a ton of drills out there but for me it's straight in draw shots. Try to draw the cue ball straight back from where you started, the longer the shot the tougher this is to achieve.
 
I'm sure there are better drills out there, but this is the one I use for stroke-straightening. Place the cueball near the corner pocket, in whatever position allows you to bridge comfortably and hit the bottom of the ball with a fairly level cue. Shooting an equal number of shots at each position, work from position 1 to position 4, attempting to pocket the object ball in the bottom corner and stop the cueball. Your mileage may vary, but I find that an hour or so of this drill gets my stroke in a groove. I'll put it this way: this drill will either straighten your stroke or make you jump off a bridge. :-) I am not much of a drill person, and this is the only drill I ever use.

I also sometimes tack an additional thing onto this drill where I try to draw/follow the ball a certain distance on each shot, like shoot 10 shots where you try to follow 1 diamond, and then 10 shots where you try to draw 1 diamond, but you probably want to wait until you are seeing 60% or better success on the stop shots before you progress to the draw/follow thing.

CueTable Help



Good luck,
Aaron
 
Trouble moving to a big table from a small one? The cure for that? Play on a 5 X 10 until a 4.5 X 9 seems small. :)
 
On a 9 ft table, the trick is to hit balls more along the lines of pocket speed. The softer you can hit them, the more the pocket will accept them.
 
Get a lesson from one of the good BCA instructors on this site that can teach you how to stroke straight and give you the mother drills. Other drills will help, but until you get the knowledge of what to do and how to tell if you are, you will not get where you want. A lesson and application of the info with practice and drilling will greatly shorten your learning curve.
 
Mikey Town...It's difficult to offer advice on how to "straighten" your stroke, without seeing what you're doing. It might be a good investment to get some video analysis done by a qualified instructor. Otherwise you're reduced to "trial and error"...which is okay, but takes a LOT longer to figure out.

The stop shot drill offered by Aaron is good, but imo, too far apart between the CB and OB, for starters. Here's what I'd recommend...use some of those little paper donuts (hole reinforcments). Set up a DEAD straight line on your table. In order to do this you must use either a laser level, or pull a string tight. Start from the middle of the pocket opening, from the perspective of the shot you're setting up. Start with a donut on the head string (this is where the CB goes), and place three more in line with pocket mark/laser, placed 1, 2 and 3 diamonds from the CB. The reason you do it this way, is that without the absolute straight line, you may think you shot a perfect stop shop, but the CB may have traveled a little up, back or sideways. Shoot these stop shots, and before you move the CB, try to reset the OB back on the appropriate donut. You will likely find that even at 3 diamonds, you're introducing slight errors into the shot.

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com

Mikey Town said:
Hello all,

Up until this point I've played almost all of my pool on a bar box. Lately, I've been trying my hand at a tournament here an there on the 9 footers. Needless to say, I have realized how crooked my stroke really is. I also never new how important the safety game is in 8-ball... Not nearly as many run-outs as on the small table.

I'm a decent bar table player, but am having tons of trouble translating my game to the big boy table (especially the Diamond tables... I was having A LOT of trouble with the longer shelves last weekend!). I imagine that I'm not the only person to run across this problem, so I was hoping that some of you may have some pointers.

If you could share your knowledge of any stroke-straightening drills and/or general tips for pool on the big table I would really appreciate it. Also, I have a bar box at home to practice on, so any drills that I can do on the small table that would help my stroke to transfer over to the big tables would be ideal.


Thank you in advance for all of your support!
Click to expand...
 
Mikey Town said:
Hello all,

Up until this point I've played almost all of my pool on a bar box. Lately, I've been trying my hand at a tournament here an there on the 9 footers. Needless to say, I have realized how crooked my stroke really is. I also never new how important the safety game is in 8-ball... Not nearly as many run-outs as on the small table.

I'm a decent bar table player, but am having tons of trouble translating my game to the big boy table (especially the Diamond tables... I was having A LOT of trouble with the longer shelves last weekend!). I imagine that I'm not the only person to run across this problem, so I was hoping that some of you may have some pointers.

If you could share your knowledge of any stroke-straightening drills and/or general tips for pool on the big table I would really appreciate it. Also, I have a bar box at home to practice on, so any drills that I can do on the small table that would help my stroke to transfer over to the big tables would be ideal.


Thank you in advance for all of your support!
Click to expand...
I went through the same issue you are going through a few years ago. The only pool I was involved in around my area was bar box action and leagues. Sadly for my area there aren't any good 9' table rooms here and the money is in league pool and bar boxes so there's not a lot of incentive for someone to open a room with 9' tables.

A friend of mine bought a 9' Gold Crown and we practiced every week at his home on the 9' GC and since this was new to me I struggled trying to keep up with my friend on the 9' table. I couldn't run out if I tried and i'm a better than average bar box table player. I couldn't understand why I was having so much trouble until it finally dawned on me that the bad habits i'd developed on the bar boxes that I got away with were showing up big time on the 9' table and that's why I was having so much trouble.

This is what I did to better my game on the 9' table. I went back to square one and studied the fundamentals, my stance, stroke, follow through, don't jump up etc. and I worked on them over and over and my game jumped up on the 9' table. Bad habits that you can get away with on a bar box are show stoppers on a 9' table. You have to concentrate and execute each shot like it was the last shot to win a tournament and you'll be surprised how well you can play. Don't take any shot for granted on a 9' table and your game will improve quickly........

James
 
Aaron_S said:
I'm sure there are better drills out there, but this is the one I use for stroke-straightening. Place the cueball near the corner pocket, in whatever position allows you to bridge comfortably and hit the bottom of the ball with a fairly level cue. Shooting an equal number of shots at each position, work from position 1 to position 4, attempting to pocket the object ball in the bottom corner and stop the cueball. Your mileage may vary, but I find that an hour or so of this drill gets my stroke in a groove. I'll put it this way: this drill will either straighten your stroke or make you jump off a bridge. :-) I am not much of a drill person, and this is the only drill I ever use.

I also sometimes tack an additional thing onto this drill where I try to draw/follow the ball a certain distance on each shot, like shoot 10 shots where you try to follow 1 diamond, and then 10 shots where you try to draw 1 diamond, but you probably want to wait until you are seeing 60% or better success on the stop shots before you progress to the draw/follow thing.

CueTable Help



Good luck,
Aaron
Click to expand...

That's a great drill, but if you want to take it a step further, try drawing the CB back to scratch in the pocket nearest your bridge hand. If you can do that 5 out of 10 times, your stroke is pretty damn straight, imo.
 
Thanks for all of the great feedback!

I just picked up some hole reinforcements to spot the table yesterday... now that I have some direction on where to go with them, I'm excited to put them to use with a few of the drills described here.

If anyone else has any other tips or drills, keep em' coming... :)


Thanks again!
 
Scott Lee said:
Mikey Town...It's difficult to offer advice on how to "straighten" your stroke, without seeing what you're doing. It might be a good investment to get some video analysis done by a qualified instructor. Otherwise you're reduced to "trial and error"...which is okay, but takes a LOT longer to figure out.

The stop shot drill offered by Aaron is good, but imo, too far apart between the CB and OB, for starters. Here's what I'd recommend...use some of those little paper donuts (hole reinforcments). Set up a DEAD straight line on your table. In order to do this you must use either a laser level, or pull a string tight. Start from the middle of the pocket opening, from the perspective of the shot you're setting up. Start with a donut on the head string (this is where the CB goes), and place three more in line with pocket mark/laser, placed 1, 2 and 3 diamonds from the CB. The reason you do it this way, is that without the absolute straight line, you may think you shot a perfect stop shop, but the CB may have traveled a little up, back or sideways. Shoot these stop shots, and before you move the CB, try to reset the OB back on the appropriate donut. You will likely find that even at 3 diamonds, you're introducing slight errors into the shot.

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com
Click to expand...

Good stuff, Scott. Do you think there's any value in shooting follow shots? I'm wondering if following the object ball into the same pocket might actually require a more precise hit than drawing the cueball back into the opposite pocket (assuming the same distance of follow/draw, of course). Maybe it's just me, but I think I'd have more confidence in my ability to draw the ball perfectly straight than in my ability to follow it perfectly straight.

Aaron
 
Here is my straight stroking drill.

Put a ball one diamond off the side rail and two diamonds from the foot rail.

Put the cue ball about 6 inches straight behind that ball such that you are shooting toward the head of the table.

Now stroke such that the cue ball stops dead and the object goes down to the head rail and comes back to hit the cue ball dead center.

But there is only one thing that will help, spend more time on the big table. If thats not possible, then while you are on the small table, you better realize that anything that isn't center pocket made on the small table will more than likely be a miss on a big table. Thats how you have to approach your practice.

Hitting center pocket is the key to playing on any size table, well cept a 3 cushion table.

FWIW
 
There are a number of fundamental differences.
A) the length of the shot is longer
B) the pockets are more difficult (narrow and deap)
C) the cloth is faster (generally)
D) tables are more square

A means the margin of error at the contact point is smaller, so you have to aim smaller, and stroke striaghter.

A & B means that its harder to roll a ball into the pocket and have it drop. So when you practice on that bar box, you want to aim at a smaller pocket (or even better have the ones you have shimmed--tight). While there is not much you can do about the shelf distance, you can, in practice, only congradulate yourself when the OB rolls into the absolute center of the pocket.

B means any error at the contact point or any error of sidespin will be penalized at the pocket. Which means your stroke must be more true. The tight pockets on larger tables almost spit/rattle balls out that do not enter perfectly.

C means that you have to adjust the amount of energy you hit the CB with, generally to significantly less energy (speed). Many times larger tables have better rails, and thus you need less (still) energy, and less sidespin. Long draw shots on fast cloth also means that you can back the CB up farther after OB contact. But A & B means that you have to have a more pure stroke for this to have any chance.

D means that larger tables roll more true with respect to diamond systems--a 10 foot table should be dead square (3-rail shots). Rail shots (kicks and banks) will also be more square, and simply different angles than the bar box--so practice on the table you will be playing upon.
 
I suggest:

1) See a BCA qualified instructor.

2) Learn to follow for position, especially two rail position. The bar box game is heavy in stop, draw and one rail position.

3) Learn the shots in the "Pro Book" so well that you can name them by number from memory.

4) See a BCA qualified instructor.
 
chevybob20 said:
2) Learn to follow for position, especially two rail position. The bar box game is heavy in stop, draw and one rail position.

3) Learn the shots in the "Pro Book" so well that you can name them by number from memory.
Click to expand...

That is great advice.

What is the book that you refer to. The only time I've heard of the "book" referred to is for trick shots. How many shots are there in this book? Is there a website that references it, or a place I might be able to download it from?

Also, does anyone know of a qualified BCA instructor in the Orange County, CA area? I'm sure I could look one up online, but if some of you have worked with anyone (or happen to be one) it would be helpful.


Thanks!
 
Mikey Town said:
That is great advice.

What is the book that you refer to. The only time I've heard of the "book" referred to is for trick shots. How many shots are there in this book? Is there a website that references it, or a place I might be able to download it from?

Also, does anyone know of a qualified BCA instructor in the Orange County, CA area? I'm sure I could look one up online, but if some of you have worked with anyone (or happen to be one) it would be helpful.


Thanks!
Click to expand...

You can find the Pro Book on AZ Market place (http://www.azbmarketplace.com/products/The_Pro_Book-299-313.html)
 
I used to try to get on a 6x12 snooker table at least once a month. if you can make it happen there you can make it happen anywhere. also, if possible stay off the small table altogether, the little table wont help your game on a
9'. for the same reasoning my baseball coach forbid us to play softball. or swim, and he would have told us no sex if we were old enough.
steven
 
Aaron...I agree with you. I think if you set up the drill you showed on cuetable, most players would have a rough time following the CB into the same corner pocket. I set the OB in the middle of the table, with the CB a diamond away (straight in), and tell my students to see if they can make both balls in the side pocket. Most fail if they try to stroke with any speed at all...and this is an easy shot! :grin:

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com

Aaron_S said:
Good stuff, Scott. Do you think there's any value in shooting follow shots? I'm wondering if following the object ball into the same pocket might actually require a more precise hit than drawing the cueball back into the opposite pocket (assuming the same distance of follow/draw, of course). Maybe it's just me, but I think I'd have more confidence in my ability to draw the ball perfectly straight than in my ability to follow it perfectly straight.

Aaron
Click to expand...
 
Scott Lee said:
Aaron...I agree with you. I think if you set up the drill you showed on cuetable, most players would have a rough time following the CB into the same corner pocket. I set the OB in the middle of the table, with the CB a diamond away (straight in), and tell my students to see if they can make both balls in the side pocket. Most fail if they try to stroke with any speed at all...and this is an easy shot! :grin:

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com
Click to expand...

Good to know I'm not the only one. :smile:

Aaron
 
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