Short safety game

1) Play kick safe - https://billiards.colostate.edu/faq... Safe” is pool safety,first with a legal shot.

Warning - this can be an obscenely boring game; or an exciting game. If it's boring, then short safeties aren't your thing

2) Incorporate short safety play into your training sessions.

3) Incorporate short safety play into your warm session before matches.

The first thing I do when warming up is put the CB about 4" from the rail and put an OB on the first diamond lined up straight for a far corner. Play a stop shot, shoot again and draw it back an 1", shoot again and draw it back 2", move OB up 2-4" and do it again. If I have time to run through enough of those drills I start doing the same setup but with follow. Follow an 1", follow 2", etc.

One practice that helped was lining up 10 balls (1 through 10 for this purpose) on an end rail (you can put them on the rail or 2/4/6/8" away, irrelevant). Then strike the 1 ball and hit is as short as possible, then strike the 2 ball and hit is further than the 1 but as little as possible, then the 3 ball goes past the 2, etc. See how long it takes you to reach the other end rail.

I can also say that harder tips and lighter cues seem to be a bit more of a challenge to control softer shots. I have multiple cues in the 16oz, 17oz, 18oz and 20oz ranges and have cue lathe and change tips often and when I play with my lighter cues with a hard tip those soft shots become challenging and I find myself miscuing. Heavy cue/hard tip, medium cue/medium tip, light cue/soft tip is my personal opinion.
 
Chili Palmer said:
I'm going to have to watch that. To me, having not played it, it would seem it would be very monotonous towards the end? I guess I need to see the full rules first.
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Straight rail is three ball billiards on a pocketless table. Make your cueball hit both the other balls. There is an area marked in the corners where you are not allowed to trap the balls. One point per billiard. Matches are typically to a few hundred points. That's it for the rules.

The interesting part for pool players is learning the shots you need to gather the balls on the rail. It requires control of all three balls.

Once you have all three balls together near a cushion, the standard play for high runs is the rail nurse (or série Américaine in French). It has a lot of repetitive shots. Here is an example:


Towards the end you can see the marking for the triangular forbidden area near the corner (only two shots in there).
 
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Chili Palmer said:
I'm going to have to watch that. To me, having not played it, it would seem it would be very monotonous towards the end? I guess I need to see the full rules first.
Click to expand...
Well not so much the game but the stroke; mostly elevated and from any angle required. There was a spanish guy in So Cal I watched a couple times do that rail nurse thing. Effortless back and forth like a musical metronome. Skills like that would make those micro lockups child's play.
 
Bob Jewett said:
Straight rail is three ball billiards on a pocketless table. Make your cueball hit both the other balls. There is an area marked in the corners where you are not allowed to trap the balls. One point per billiard. Matches are typically to a few hundred points. That's it for the rules.

The interesting part for pool players is learning the shots you need to gather the balls on the rail. It requires control of all three balls.

Once you have all three balls together near a cushion, the standard play for high runs is the rail nurse (or série Américaine in French). It has a lot of repetitive shots. Here is an example:


Towards the end you can see the marking for the triangular forbidden area near the corner (only two shots in there).
Click to expand...
straightline said:
Well not so much the game but the stroke; mostly elevated and from any angle required. There was a spanish guy in So Cal I watched a couple times do that rail nurse thing. Effortless back and forth like a musical metronome. Skills like that would make those micro lockups child's play.
Click to expand...

Yep, that will definitely teach you how to master a short stroke. Probably not a game I could get into but I might play around with it for practice.
 
For those still interested in the idea of a more raised stance for short safeties, here is a video of a straight rail match. There is a fair amount of problem solving at the start and you get to see both players' style. You also get to see how a fully refereed match is played. The audio is in French which will let you practice your counting.

 
the ultra soft touch is easy when youve played straight rail for any length of time

you know how to tap the ball,
back hand on the balance point to have greatest control of hit
1 inch or shorter bridge length and follow through
 
Bob Jewett said:
Straight rail is three ball billiards on a pocketless table. Make your cueball hit both the other balls. There is an area marked in the corners where you are not allowed to trap the balls. One point per billiard. Matches are typically to a few hundred points. That's it for the rules.

The interesting part for pool players is learning the shots you need to gather the balls on the rail. It requires control of all three balls.

Once you have all three balls together near a cushion, the standard play for high runs is the rail nurse (or série Américaine in French). It has a lot of repetitive shots. Here is an example:


Towards the end you can see the marking for the triangular forbidden area near the corner (only two shots in there).
Click to expand...

Great video! And a good example of why crowds wanted to burn down billiard halls after sitting through 4 hours of that.
 
justadub said:
They frustrate me, cuz I can clearly see the safety, and it doesn't look like it should be difficult, and inevitably I hit it too hard, for fear of not getting something to the rail, or some other mishap. Certainly comes from a lack of practice. (And actual skill, heh heh.)
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So I figured out a trick that works! Well it worked twice so far. After JCraig posted about BHE. I thought about it. On two short safes over the weekend I used BHE instead of FHE and it actually was a lot easier to hit the short ones correctly. Think this is due to hitting more straight to the rail rather than hitting through the ball. But those were both sending the cb ball away from the ball not towards it. Haven’t had one that goes towards the ball to try it out yet.
 
Willowbrook Wolfy said:
So I figured out a trick that works! Well it worked twice so far. After JCraig posted about BHE. I thought about it. On two short safes over the weekend I used BHE instead of FHE and it actually was a lot easier to hit the short ones correctly. Think this is due to hitting more straight to the rail rather than hitting through the ball. But those were both sending the cb ball away from the ball not towards it. Haven’t had one that goes towards the ball to try it out yet.
Click to expand...
There.

Not to be a toldyasoer baht eh...
straightline said:
I stroke way outside on the rock for most cramped safeties. The clumsiness gets shunted into rotation.
Click to expand...

:p
 
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