John, according to the latest CTE/Pro One video, certain alignments are claimed to lead to a shot that is geometrically over-cut, but that actually relies on throw to straighten the shot out. Throw is a variable, the amount of which is dictated by angle, shot speed, and ball condition. How can an aiming system be "pure" if it includes a variable as part of the system itself?
Anyway, I paid my money, I got my peak. I can't make it work so far, but that doesn't mean I have to blast it on AZB with claims that it is all snake oil. Instead, I'm gonna "put it on the shelf", as old CJ likes to say. Come back to it when I'm ready, or consider it part of my pool education to find out what
doesn't work for me. I'm with Joey. There is no reason to run around trying to invent windmills to tilt with, there's too much real evil in the world I'd rather dedicate my time to try and correct.
The overcut is the automatic compensation as I understand it.
Here is the layman version.
I follow the directions without adjusting and the shoot the cue ball straight and the ball goes in. I don't know why.
Here is Stan's findings, using the system the correct visual and sweep leads to a cue position that is sitting in the same position as if the shooter had used ghost ball and chosen consciously to correctly compensate for cut-induced-throw.
He finds that to be true regardless of the shot. For whatever reason using the CTE perceptions leads the shooter to a position that overlaps the correct shot line precisely.
I don't know why this is. To me this would all be fairly easy to figure out IF anyone were willing to spend some time doing some really good measurements. I think that you could build a room where the table, floor and walls were mapped out on a grid. Or at least cameras were set up in such a way that an exact 3d grid could be overlaid over the video later.
Then you put out dozens of reference shots and let CTE users shoot them. Each reference shot would have a line mapped out virtually that is the 100% correct shot line compensated for contact induced throw at say a medium speed. The shooters would be unaware of this line. The shots would vary from straight in to almost 90 degree cuts.
The test would indicate a few things.
1. Is there consistency in the physical approach to the shot from shooter to shooter.
2. Does the shooter choose the right shot line regardless of their ability to actually execute the shot?
3. Is the shooter compensating subconsciously or consciously deviating from the system instructions to find the shot line? (this I guess would be indicated by indecision)
4. Of the shooters who chose the right shot line how much then does execution matter?
I would use this setup to test all sorts of players - those who profess to not use any system whatsoever - point and shoot, those who claim to use ghost ball, those who use contact point, those who use other systems. Obviously the biggest challenge would be finding a large enough group of decent players to pick your subjects from. I submit that the BCAPL-CSI events in Vegas are the perfect place to find that group of players and that such a room could be set up there.
It would also be a perfect place to take players who don't use any system and test their shotmaking ability before and after learning a system and to record their physical approach to the shots before and after.
For me the systems work, they work as claimed even if the proponents don't know exactly why they work. All I can say to this is that man figured out how to make fire long before man could explain why what they did makes fire. Long before man had a word for combustion and understood fire on a molecular level man used fire to get shit done.
I honestly feel that this is the case with aiming systems now. We use them and go holy crap this works without knowing exactly why.
I want to go back in time a little bit. In the late eighties at Jamacia Joes I think in Oklahoma City, could have been any pool room I frequented back then, a man showed me a cut shot, a seemingly impossible shot to cut the ball backwards into the corner pocket. Try as I might with both eyes open this shot would not go. Always hit it too thick.
Then he says to me close one eye. And the eye would be one or the other depending on the cut direction. Close one eye and shoot it he says. I do and the object ball splits the pocket. I say damn that's weird. But it works. Why does it work? Obviously there is something going on with the perception with both eyes open that led me to believe I was choosing the right shot line but I wasn't. With one eye the illusion was eliminated and I guess I saw the shot clearly and was able to cut it in cleanly.
I am sure someone could explain the math of this as relates to optics and 3d space but why would that matter to me? The point is that if I was betting someone on this shot and I knew the one eye method and they didn't then I would win the lunch money all day because no matter how hard they tried they would be inconsistent at best with two eyes on the shot.
Now, with CTE/ProOne and with other methods, I feel like the illusion is taken out and the right shot line is there for me. I don't need to know exactly why it works with the underpinning math and science. As a player I only want to make balls.
And the flipside to using a method that gets me to the shot line confidently is that now I have to focus even more on my physical ability to control my stroke. Now it's not just lackadaisical whatever aiming and shooting but instead focused precision aiming which SHOULD BE coupled with rigorous dedicated physical control. In my case the physical control is lacking but the aiming is there.
