How good is your Stroke?

cigardave

cigardave

Still working on my game.
Silver Member
How good is your stroke, your understanding of your Vision Center and your alignment?

Here's a drill that Dr. Dave included in his 'Aim Better with Proper Vision Center Alignment'... available on YouTube (link below). I devised a simple scoring methodology to measure your Vision Center Alignment and accuracy.

Shoot a stop shot. Object is to have the object ball, after hitting the foot rail, rebound back into the cue ball, causing the cue ball to come back to you. Perfect alignment and stroke results in the cue ball coming back to your cue tip.

Shoot 10 shots... starts with your first scored point(s). Scoring is as follows (refer to diagram),

No cue ball contact... 0 pts.​
Cue ball moves in a direction to hit below the side pocket... 1 pt.​
Cue ball pockets in side pocket or hits above side pocket... 3 pts.​
Cue ball moves in a direction to hit headrail within two diamonds as shown on diagram... 5 pts.​
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Perfect score = 50 pts.

Measure yourself and feel free to post your results. Practice and see if your score tends to improve. Compete with your buddies.

Here's a link to Dr. Dave's video I mentioned above...
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cigardave said:
How good is your stroke, your understanding of your Vision Center and your alignment?

Here's a drill that Dr. Dave included in his 'Aim Better with Proper Vision Center Alignment'... available on YouTube (link below). I devised a simple scoring methodology to measure your Vision Center Alignment and accuracy.

Shoot a stop shot. Object is to have the object ball, after hitting the foot rail, rebound back into the cue ball, causing the cue ball to come back to you. Perfect alignment and stroke results in the cue ball coming back to your cue tip.

Shoot 10 shots... starts with your first scored point(s). Scoring is as follows (refer to diagram),

No cue ball contact... 0 pts.​
Cue ball moves in a direction to hit below the side pocket... 1 pt.​
Cue ball pockets in side pocket or hits above side pocket... 3 pts.​
Cue ball moves in a direction to hit headrail within two diamonds as shown on diagram... 5 pts.​
​
Perfect score = 50 pts.

Measure yourself and feel free to post your results. Practice and see if your score tends to improve. Compete with your buddies.

Here's a link to Dr. Dave's video I mentioned above...
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​
​
​
​
Click to expand...
A truly humbling drill, I've only had a perfect results 2 times in thousands of attempts, the drill is difficult because if your tip strikes the cueball even a hair to the right or left you will fail and if your stroke is not straight you will fail
 
SSP said:
A truly humbling drill, I've only had a perfect results 2 times in thousands of attempts, the drill is difficult because if your tip strikes the cueball even a hair to the right or left you will fail and if your stroke is not straight you will fail
Click to expand...
Using a striped ball as your cue ball, with the stripe vertical and centered, can give you more detail about where you hit the cue ball, both by how the stripe wobbles with off center hits and by where the chalk mark is in relation to the stripe’s center.

pj
chgo
 
Patrick Johnson said:
Using a striped ball as your cue ball, with the stripe vertical and centered, can give you more detail about where you hit the cue ball, both by how the stripe wobbles with off center hits and by where the chalk mark is in relation to the stripe’s center.

pj
chgo
Click to expand...
Agreed, only problem is it gives you an indication of center ball, you must master that with the cueball
 
Patrick Johnson said:
Using a striped ball as your cue ball, with the stripe vertical and centered, can give you more detail about where you hit the cue ball, both by how the stripe wobbles with off center hits and by where the chalk mark is in relation to the stripe’s center.

pj
chgo
Click to expand...
I use this to start every practice session. The only difference being I use the cueball to strike the striped ball and the idea is to have the stripe go down table and rebound back to your cueball with no wobble or deviation of the stripe. You want it to roll straight vertically. This will tell you a lot about your stroke.
 
Zerksies said:
I think Dr.Dave can promote his own stuff
Click to expand...
Not sure what your issue is.

I simply devised a quantitative method to measure ourselves individually and/or to measure ourselves against our friends... and wanted to share it.

If that offends you, live with it.
 
I recently worked on my stroke, studying snooker mechanics and tips from from top snooker coaches. I created a set of drills based on high level snooker mechanics from top snooker coaches. One of my drills was to have a striped ball on the foot spot, and to shoot the striped ball down the length of the table and back. I would stay down and keep my follow through still until the striped ball came back to the foot spot. If the striped ball impacted my cue tip in any way, I would consider that to be a success. If it did not impact my cue tip (on the way back), that did not count as a success. Towards the end of my 5 weeks of pure stroke training I would consistently do this 21/21 times, with an occasional miss. Towards the end of my 5 week training, I was confident that I would do it 21/21 times each time I stepped up to practice the drill.

In addition, I would practice the "long straight in" shot. I would place the cue ball on the near side of the first diamond, towards the rail that I was shooting from, not towards the middle of the table. The center of the cue ball would be on a sticker about a ball and a half short of the first diamond, lower than the first diamond, so on the end rail side where I was standing. I would then place an object ball on a sticker about halfway to the corner pocket on a diagonal, which was slightly past the center of the table, straight in. Then I would record how many times I made the shot out of 10 tries.

I only practice on 9 footers, and on a 9 foot Gold Crown with fairly large pockets, once I made it 10/10 times. I would routinely make 5-8 out of 10.
 
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cigardave said:
I simply devised a quantitative method to measure ourselves individually and/or to measure ourselves against our friends... and wanted to share it.
Click to expand...
I haven't seen what you are referencing but that sounds like The quarter fifty cent ring game that my friends and I employed and enjoyed. Well my progress was much faster than my peers which led to busting the quarter machine. 🤷‍♂️ My Friends refused to give me a dollar bill until I controlled every quarter available. $38 or something like that in quarters that bought bread and milk on the way home at 2 am.
We all got better scrimaging that way. 🤷‍♂️
 
gregcantrall said:
I haven't seen what you are referencing but that sounds like The quarter fifty cent ring game that my friends and I employed and enjoyed. Well my progress was much faster than my peers which led to busting the quarter machine. 🤷‍♂️ My Friends refused to give me a dollar bill until I controlled every quarter available. $38 or something like that in quarters that bought bread and milk on the way home at 2 am.
We all got better scrimaging that way. 🤷‍♂️
Click to expand...
It was the old school way, which for whatever reason seems to be frowned upon nowadays, and truthfully for quite some time now. I was never really a drill guy, my father showed me how to play straight pool and that’s how I spent my formative years on his Anniversary at the house, always working to increase my high run.

Once I could get into the pool hall, “practice” was abandoned for just being in action all the time. It was the way things were then. Nowadays it seems this way of growing in the game is looked at in the same light as if you’re committing a crime or something.
 
A good variation of this drill is to freeze object ball on headrail. Shoot hard with draw double kissing and getting the cue ball to return to you. Easier to set up.

With the above drill you can hit it good but if the object ball is a hair off the center line you won't get good results even if you hit it well.
 
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nine_ball6970 said:
A good variation of this drill is to freeze object ball on headrail. Shoot hard with draw double kissing and getting the cue ball to return to you. Easier to set up.

With the above drill you can hit it good but if the object ball is a hair off the center line you won't get good results even if you hit it well.
Click to expand...
This does sound good.
 
drills where you fail over and over do more harm than good as you inadvertently start changing things you are not aware of.
 
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