2.25 - but since you're eyeballing it, not measuring it, the actual number may not matter.
pj
chgo
Center Pocket Music, the long-awaited CTE Pro One book, by Stan Shuffett.
- Thread starter JoeyA
- Start date
pj
chgo
yes, thats what i meant. thanks for the correction
1 inch and 1/8 from the contact point is a lot easier to visualize.
Last edited:
And it is actually the name of an aiming system. Cranfield's Arrow is a good tool to help with the "inch-and-an-eighth" system.
You can use the object ball as a reference and drop a line from the actual contact point to the cloth and out along the pocket line the same distance, forming a ghost triangle. It's easy to see but I find that by the time I visualize this object, I've already formulated a socket for the cue ball with the exit tangent. Kind of a ghost cube.
I'm a contact point aimer, but often visualize the ghostball center this way as a starting alignment and as a crosscheck for my final aim line.
pj
chgo
And if you need help finding the OB contact point, here's a "triangulation" method for that.
Doesn't help you hit the contact point, but it's a start...
pj
chgo
Last edited:
Yes, you CAN always go back to ghost ball or whatever you were doing before learning CTE or any other method. You have completely missed my point but that's ok.
Sure you can paste my words. Enthusiasm is not a crime. I went in a different direction and became a top pool cue case maker. I can honestly say that objective aiming has kept me interested in playing pool so at the very least pool has retained one enthusiast who has spent a lot of money to play pool since learning how to aim objectively.
Making a ball or two during a demonstration? I guess you're speaking about me. If so you might be right, unlikely but you might be. Wanna know a secret? Even I knew NOTHING about CTE, even if I couldn't make a ball at all ever, even if I didn't even play pool, wouldn't change the fact that CTE is valid and beneficial.
And that's been a problem for you and your tiny hater gang.....always looking for a person to discredit....always looking to shoot the messenger. It's never been enough to knock the system, you all have always felt like you must destroy whomever dares to makes comments about their system that you don't like. Because the messengers had the audacity to speak up enthusiastically about their experiences and not back down to you bullies you all have chosen to knock them any way you can get away with. And you have gotten away with a LOT.
Last night two enthusiastic players, who are in training and whose fundamentals after less than 2 years of playing are better than mine are likely to ever be, learned basic CTE in less than an hour and put it into practice successfully. Am I lying to you? I would propose a bet if you think so but I know your answers already so I won't bother. The point is that regardless of whether I personally have mastered the method I can state truthfully that 3 players I know have successfully learned basic CTE in the past week. One of those players used it four days after learning it to help him win a 700 and under tournament in Texas, earning him over $3000 profit for the weekend. So, again, THANK YOU for keeping these conversations going. I am pretty sure that more people decide to explore CTE and other objective aiming based on my words and videos than anything you have ever written in the negative. Every single time you give me an opportunity to answer it is an opportunity for a reader to hear something that piques their interest and I do my part to honor Hal's wish that I introduce people to his systems.
I like this view. There's something going on with the bottom tangent where if you go a little higher -
45 degree perpendicular through the center, a vertical line through that point gives you the section of ball being eclipsed. Simply match the reciprocal section on the cue ball and bang. Give or take anyway.
That's looks super easy (not)....... How do you know the cut angle without knowing the ghost ball center? The shot you chose to diagram has a center to edge sight line and you chose 30 degrees so it's convenient that you use a 30 degree cut for this but what if the actual cut angle is 31 degrees or 34.4? Can you still use the center to edge sight line? Does pocket margin of error cover it? In all situations? Is this "easy" do for all shots? Once again you are asking a player to imagine something that you can diagram easily but which is unlikely to work well when playing.
The directions here are to imagine (visualize) the overhead view of the table.
Then ESTIMATE the cut angle which is the angle produced by the crossing of the center to edge sight line and the center object ball travel line.
This then is supposed to give the shooter the contact point. From which the player does what? Oh, you said "doesn't help to HIT the contact point but it's a start."
Shoots down the center to edge line? Determines a ghost ball center exactly 2.25” from object ball centeror 1.125” off the contact point and then shoot down that line? Works for a 30 degree cut as diagrammed by you but not for other angles.
Assuming a player could do the visualizing correctly and then could GUESS the cut angle and then superimpose a projection of that angle onto the object ball it is still not clear how this works on anything but a half-ball hit to get to the GB center without further estimation and adjustment.
I rate this as next to useless for practical use. It is way worse than just getting the contact point (in as much as it can be found accurately) by pointing the cue through the object ball towards the pocket. That you deliberately chose a 30 degree cut to illustrate it says to me that you WANT to sow confusion by using the CTE line to pretend that you can diagram something from 2d to 3d that works and "looks" geometrically correct. So I want to ask you if this is what the fidgeting you do is for? Are you guessing the angle and fidgeting until it feels/looks right?
Matching the reciprocal section is a well known method called equal/opposite. Joe Tucker calls it Aiming by The Numbers. Easy to diagram, hard to execute over a wide range of shots.
Not at all. I understood you clearly. The end of it can be when you decide to stop making inaccurate claims and stop the mocking. Keep doing that and I will keep rebutting your statements when I see them.
See here you go again with the mocking, maybe if you actually TRY it you might find that the eyes can pick up lines independently. I personally would need to do more research to find out but when use the INSTRUCTIONS given I find that I can see the lines as described.
And, yes the idea that one would DROP in and shoot based on fractional overlap HAS BEEN said by the knockers many times.
The subject here is not physics. I understand appeal to authority and you did exactly that, without a valid basis for doing so.
STFU? And what then would define OBJECTIVE for you? What percentage satisfies you? 99.99% 85% What's the scale? Sayiing things like hit the rail and ball at the same time are examples of references intended to give a general idea of what to look at. A player who practices that way will quickly learn the nuances of the shot and how to hit it. Dr. Dave has done excellent work to show the effects of rail first and ball first hits. That is an example of taking conventional wisdom and applying ON TABLE examples and analytics to prove the concept. Keep the cue level IS simply a way to tell the shooter to develop a comfortable and consistent stroke for shots that don't require raising the cue into uncomfortable positions. And it is possible to shoot with a level cue on a lot of shots.
This is different. This is a visual method of using objective references in a precise manner. Is it robotically objective where the entire playing field is mapped to the fraction of a millimeter to find positions? No, it is a way to use one's eyes to lead the body alignment from standing to shooting position and be consistently accurate when the cue is rested at ball address. Objectivity refers to the fact that easy to see reference points are used coupled with set instructions which leads to a correct result. If I said find the center of the cue ball and the center of the object ball and put the cue down in shooting position on that line no one would argue that this is not objective aiming.
Here is the thing that you fail to understand. Whatever guessing might be present subconsciously is so slight that the shooter never consciously feels it. So if I give objective instructions and the shooter follows them and lands on the shot line, over and over and over and over for a wide range of shots from easy to difficult then what conclusion can be drawn from that? If the previous method, call it ghost ball, produces the right shot line 85% of the time and the objective aiming method, call it CTE, produces the right shot line 98% of the time what then would be the reason for the significant improvement in finding the shot line? What might be the added benefit that a player could realize from a vast improvement in that area?
How SHOULD one describe such a method other than OBJECTIVE? You want to nitpick because someone said it works for shots at all angles but when people find that to be true when they apply it why are they wrong? Because you think it's impossible? You're fond of dissecting video frame by frame. So show us where the subjective/subconscious adjustments are. The fact is that you can't but using the subconscious as a cover-all for what you can't prove is convenient.
Well if you have never tried to pocket two and three rail banks then maybe this conversation isn't for you. Yes there are students of Stan's who can duplicate his curtain demos. Are you willing to pay to $500 to find out? I am willing to pay you if you can do it without CTE. You do however miss the point. If Usain Bolt (greatest runner name ever) were to come out with a set of instructions on how to run faster those instructions would not and could not guarantee that those following them would or could achieve his level of speed. But they could make a lot of people faster and if that were the case someone like you who wanted to quibble about the terminology used wouldn't change the fact that the instructions work. Unless Bolt is straight up lying and made up a bunch of nonsense that at best could have a placebo effect on some people the default position would be for me that the instructions are his best way to communicate what he does. That's my point.
As I have said, the proof is on the table. As one student last night said to me when I asked him how he felt after learning and applying basic CTE for two hours, "it feels like cheating". So for you to tell me that that person IS NOT capable of understanding the before and after results of his effort is really crappy. And that is exactly what you are saying when you use the religious zealot remarks and when you attack based on descriptions that are far closer to accurate, such as IS OBJECTIVE and HANDLES ALL SHOTS than the knocker contentions of impossible/must be subconscious adjustment.
Maybe you should get some.
Useless for practical use, lol.
Try two DVDs and a book several hundred pages long.
Lou Figueroa
JC
Coos Cues
CTE is very simple. 3 angles will center pocket every shot on the table.
Now if you would just watch this 18 hours of video and read this 400 page book you'll understand just how simple it is.
Or maybe not if you're not smart enough.
The absurdity of this thing exceeds the English language's current ability to accurately characterize it.
Now if you would just watch this 18 hours of video and read this 400 page book you'll understand just how simple it is.
Or maybe not if you're not smart enough.
The absurdity of this thing exceeds the English language's current ability to accurately characterize it.
Certainly. I did a video where I showed how hard it is to accurately identify the GB center from a foot above the ball. I am going to nitpick your words above to make an example of how inconsistent this is? You said 2.75" from the OB center. It's 2.25", you wrote it twice. I very much doubt that players are actively saying to themselves let me visually find 2.25" from OB center or 1.125" from contact point and then see a non-existent marker on the table to perfectly align to. They estimate based on experience. And that means that they need to either REALLY try hard to "see" and hold this spot or they are essentially winging it with a loose approximation. This is nearly impossible to do with consistency and if anyone would get up and bet something I am sure I could prove it using the proper setup.
Furthermore the task gets harder depending on the severity of the shot. Shallow angles are fairly easy to do ghost ball well enough even if not really accurate (thank you pocket size) and larger angles get harder as well as producing some perceptual dysfunction that complicates the task. In other words what you think you see and line up using isn't actually correct.
Now let's talk about the spot the cueball is to roll over. I have done experiments where I use a ghost ball template and have as consciously as possible tried to roll the center of the cueball over the center of the GB. It is easier with shallow angles and tougher with larger angles and tougher with distance. And that's when you have a dead-nuts perfectly placed template to use. The reason for this to me is that you have a single point to aim at BUT you are not aware of whether you are using the right cueball center or not, in effect you can be fooling yourself by not getting the correct center of the cueball. WHAT? How can there be more than one center of the cueball. There is only one true center of the cueball in space but where that is to your eyes depends on your perspective. In other words you could lay your cue down where it slices the cueball in half but that line could be a fraction off or even more from the center of the gb that you think you laid the cue down on. Also provable.
So then to answer your question I will say this. Ghost Ball is easy to learn and actually difficult to implement precisely with consistency. Hence the plethora of Ghost Ball aim trainers out there. CTE is more complicated to learn but the end result is that you do get to the correct shot line (and by default the correct GB center line) easier and quicker with WAY WAY WAY more accuracy and consistency.
Here is the video.
Last edited:
Yep, counter intuitive but works. Plenty of people are smart enough but if they have decided that they think it's one way and they won't/can't bring themselves off of that. Especially when they are heavily invested in the knock. When you have 24 years invested in knocking then I imagine it's kind of tough to empty your cup and really try to learn that which you mocked.
Some statements about observed phenomena are simple but actually have thousands of hours of research and descriptions of the underlying mechanics.
When I sold jump cues I would tell people that it worked for almost every jump shot that they would face. Then a person would get up and try it and blow several shots and conclude that it doesn't work. What didn't work was their mechanics. Sometimes I had to explain the principles of the physical actions taking place to get them to understand. Sometimes I had to demonstrate it. Sometimes I had to rebuild their stroke and stance to get them out of ingrained habits.
So my take on all of this is if something works and is adequately described so that many if not most who try it can get it to work and an individual can't get it to work then the problem IS on the individual. Having said that I will add the caveat that people receive information differently. Thus it is absolutely possible that an individual might be flustered because the way the information is presented is not in synch with the way they best receive information. I found that to be the case rather quickly when I taught jumping. I had to develop about five different ways to explain the same concepts. It was initially frustrating for me but ultimately better as I discovered better ways to teach that part of the game.
Those who WANT to learn CTE have people other than Stan to learn from. It is not necessary to ingest Stan's instructions, whether by video or book, to learn CTE. If one wants to learn CTE with the "state of the art" recommended methods then absorbing Stan's information is super helpful. But one can learn it though qualified teachers who have themselves mastered it.
I get it that you really want to mock the effort here. No one can ever stop you from mocking whatever you want to mock. And I get that it is frustrating to see others claim to be able to use a method that you could not. No one likes to think of themselves as stupid. And frankly, when I got Stan's first DVD I thought it was hard to digest. I thought it would be pretty straightforward but the fact is that there are terms and language used that are not part of the normal way one thinks about doing anything in pool. So I had to take it bit by bit to let the information marinate for a bit and then once I saw one part other parts fell into place.
There are other systems that despite being clear that they work the method of description doesn't really come though well for me. As a result I didn't develop any motivation to continue trying to learn them. So I get it. But what I don't accept is the mocking as if it doesn't work. It works whether or not you get it. Just because you don't agree with the premise doesn't mean you're correct.
Me claiming you core with wadded up newpapers in your cues would obviously not be true. Me not getting cores glued in like you instructed would not invalidate your method. I hope you have the grace to think about it.