If someone is practicing 2 hours a day and is making NO progress then they should see a PBIA billiards instructor, I believe vision center is the nastiest flaw in learning billiards, the reason is that when you are lining up a shot, if you are not truly straight you will be imparting english on the shot, you learn how to pocket balls but always with english, the nasty part is when you learn your vision center the shot looks EXACTLY like the one that is wrong, the difference is you are lined up properly now, my vision center is in the corner of my right eye, when I line up shots I have to use the corner of my right eye to see the shot line properly and when I am shooting the shot, it has taken about 8 months for this to be my new normal way of shooting, without this everything I learned didn't work properly, a friend of mine was a sharpshooter in the military, he is right handed but left eye dominant, check out John Morra's story, all I can say is I can't believe the difference it made for me.
Take it or leave it. Whatever you are doing, just make sure you do it every time. Exactly the same. You can tell because the cue ball will react the same way. Once you have perfected exactly how to miss shots, you at least know you can be consistent. Now, look for each and every flaw, one at a time, and correct it. As you correct your flaws, you will start to get better. What are your flaws? You've got two eyes, don't you. If you still can't see, maybe get a coach. In the movie, Chariots of Fire, the coach, Mussabini , tells Abrahams that he needs to shorten each stride by a couple of inches. This is where knowledge comes in. Mussabini had "secret" knowledge that he, and only he, was offering Abrahams. I hope you can find a honest and sincere instructor who is not only in it for the money. One like Sax: "You either got it or you don't." And will cut you loose if you ain't got it.
Make sure what you are doing, do it exactly the same every time.....that's kinda what I was doing, I could draw the ball pretty well so my instructor Kim from Dragon Billiards asked me to draw the cueball straight back into the side pocket, everytime I tried I made the shot but the cueball missed the the side pocket to the right, I tried several times, the cueball missed the pocket the same way every time, it became clear to me why I was struggling to learn how to play position, because I was not lined up properly I could not predict the way the cueball would move, I was not lined up properly because of where my eyes told my brain where true center was, I only had to move my head about a quarter of an inch to get MY vision center, I now aim shots before getting down on the table using vision center. in the 8 months of working on this my game has progressed more than all my years of playing pool, it's not eye hand coordination, it's eye brain hand coordination, all you are doing is teaching your brain how YOUR eyes see what true center is, I use it in everything I need to see a straight line in now.
3,840,000
Getting to a million balls isn't nearly as hard as the OP thought if you work in a pool hall or just have a serious pool jones. I never worked in a hall but I put in more hours in a pool hall than I did working. I made a bit more with my businesses but working my entire pool career union journeyman was from nine to fourteen dollars an hour. I could always make twenty an hour on a table just playing cheap and it was a lot more fun. Never knew when a decent score would come along too. For a few years I could get into twenty a game every night, fifty a game once or twice a week. That beat hell out of wages!
I've often wondered how many balls Efren has hit in his lifetime, and whether it's more than any other human being has ever hit. If not, I wonder who did hit the most balls in their lifetime and what that number is.
If you're smart, you pass on that matchup. Hard won money. Most guys I know don't want to work that hard. There are plenty of other fish. Unless your ego demands it.
I had a problem similar to yours. Couldn't figure out why I was imparting a bit of outside on every shot.
Money won is twice as sweet as money earned. And no blisters.
I have to agree. And you bring up an excellent point bro. Chess. In many of the places I've hit over the years, a chessboard wasn't far out of view, no more so than the deck of cards or dice. If you've been around this game for more than a minute or two, you know that we will play just about any game for a sawbuck or three.
My original post was intended to show that repeating the same mistakes over a million times won't improve your game. The assumption is that shooting a million balls will insure you will break old habits. Obviously this is not necessarily true. It is all about close observation of what you are actually doing. For each flaw in your game, using your eyes to evaluate what you are seeing and doing will accelerate your learning curve by orders of magnitude. (Keep in mind, we all see the same thing. But we don't all know what we are looking at. To remedy any flaw, you have to understand the nature of the flaw.) Sounds like you moved your eye into the vertical plane of the actual shot line. You eliminated parallax which was the consistent reason for your misalignment. I talked about this in my post about Aiming. Your experience is anecdotal proof of what I am advocating. You call it brain. Once you have determined the nature of your flaw, I call it judgement, intent, control.
We all see the same thing....we don't, some people can sight down the center of the shaft and the eye tells the brain you cue is straight and it is, some people need to shift their head some for the shaft to be straight, how much? That is what finding your vision center is all about, look at Joshua Filler, his cue is almost outside of his left eye, he doesn't miss often and he plays fantastic position, it's eye, brain, hand coordination, your eye can lie to you.
I have to agree. And you bring up an excellent point bro. Chess. In many of the places I've hit over the years, a chessboard wasn't far out of view, no more so than the deck of cards or dice. If you've been around this game for more than a minute or two, you know that we will play just about any game for a sawbuck or three.
One thing that has helped my game lately, after a brief warm up I only practice until I can't give 100% attention/focus to the shot. When I get unfocused I'll try to force it a few times but then I just go do something else.
