Using a "Touch" of outside on cut shots

Siz said:
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And of course this technique cannot be used when you are playing a shot that requires actual spin to be used. But in such cases the player is more likely to be naturally attending to exactly where the cb needs to be struck.

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Most shots require positional play, dictating optimal spin which very rarely is exactly the TOI point. Exceptions include shots where you don't need to play position and just make the pot (e.g. the last ball in rotation games). The whole TOI concept sounds weird due to this reason. As you said, I can see it being a psychological tool for the minority of shots that don't require side if it helps ones focus in them. But it all just sounds like an unnecessarily complication, can't you just focus on whatever spin you need for each shot and get the same mental benefit?

TOWIR sounds like a better acronym, "Touch of whatever is required", meaning just select the exact spin based on what the shot needs and focus on applying that. Whether it's center ball or not, I fail to see why focusing on hitting exact center is harder than focusing on hitting 1mm off from it.
 
Oikawa said:
.. can't you just focus on whatever spin you need for each shot and get the same mental benefit?
... I fail to see why focusing on hitting exact center is harder than focusing on hitting 1mm off from it.
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Yes, it is interesting.

But that it worked for CJ Willey is an empirical fact (or at least as close to an empirical fact as one can expect in the rather fuzzy world of billiards performance). So when I started thinking about it and I did not understand what the benefit was, I realised that there was a gap in my understanding that I wanted to fill if I could.

Of course I may well be wrong in my explanation; I would certainly be interested in hearing any other ideas people might have as to why this might work.
 
Siz said:
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But that it worked for CJ Willey is an empirical fact (or at least as close to an empirical fact as one can expect in the rather fuzzy world of billiards performance). So when I started thinking about it and I did not understand what the benefit was, I realised that there was a gap in my understanding that I wanted to fill if I could.
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A pro is not necessarily a good instructor, and more so not necessarily good at explaining how/why he does certain things. A good example is the subjective experience of how the aiming process works, people who aim by feel might have some subjective experience of doing certain actions before arriving at the end result, e.g. having a certain eye pattern or visualizing certain things, but at the end of the day those visualizations/eye patterns/etc. might not really be relevant for improving the aiming process, they are just the triggers that they have ingrained from thousands of repetitions which activate the subconscious aiming process.

From such pro's own perspective, they might advocate that, for example, their specific/quirky eye pattern or mental thought before locking their final aim helps in aiming when teaching new players, without realizing that the relevant part is that this pattern works as an ingrained trigger, not that the pattern itself helps in aiming.

Much in the same way, I can see CJ Wiley learning to play with TOI and getting good results, then advocating TOI for others and associating his success with it, when in reality he probably would've been just as good had he always played without TOI and getting used to aiming without it.
 
Siz said:
... But that it worked for CJ Willey is an empirical fact (or at least as close to an empirical fact as one can expect in the rather fuzzy world of billiards performance). ...
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I have not studied CJ's play enough to know whether he actually used this technique. Sometimes players describe methods that they don't actually use themselves. Mosconi's 1965 book has an example of this -- it describes a method that Mosconi did not use.
 
Bob Jewett said:
I have not studied CJ's play enough to know whether he actually used this technique. Sometimes players describe methods that they don't actually use themselves. Mosconi's 1965 book has an example of this -- it describes a method that Mosconi did not use.
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what method is that?
 
Bob Jewett said:
I have not studied CJ's play enough to know whether he actually used this technique. Sometimes players describe methods that they don't actually use themselves. Mosconi's 1965 book has an example of this -- it describes a method that Mosconi did not use.
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I know. There are a couple of issues here. One is that in general experts in practical skills have implicit knowledge - not something that they are necessarily consciously aware of, still less able to articulate usefully. Another is that the expert feels that they are expected to know what they are doing; so there can be a tendency to offer something up even if in reality it is very low conviction.
 
bbb said:
I only have the red book
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I think every billiard library should have all three of Willie's books. If you can't find it elsewhere, I have a pretty good copy for $10 shipped.

All of Chapter 8 in Koehler's book "The Science of Pocket Billiards" discusses the relevant shot technique. And there are still well known instructors who get the shot wrong.
 
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