this idea of predicting where the cue ball will go based on what ball you're hitting has me... well, not confused, maybe more not believing it has much merit.
i see many people, especially the Europeans, studying the rack like this intently for a fair amount of time, and then their results are indistinguishable from chance; Nick van den Berg at the DCC is a recent prime example. they study, study, study... and then the cue ball ends up on the top rail anyway.
John Schmidt has said in at least one video that so much depends on the exact contact with the object ball and on the speed and spin you have on the cue ball that it's meaningless, because you can't really predict exactly where you're hitting on the pack. and Thorsten, with rare exception, seems to just pound the living snot out of the ball with tons of draw no matter where it is and take what comes. Mika gets good results mostly using just a very soft break and draw.
i resisted Steve Matthieu's assertion that many, many more break shots can be hit with top or top + outside for a long time, but now that i'm making break shots of all angles more reliably, i'm finding he was right. i still don't know as it's the best way to get the cue ball free in all cases, but i haven't scratched on a break shot in quite a while now using that approach almost exclusively, even when i have the cue ball closer to center table than the object ball.
Danny Harriman says in one of his videos that inside english is a powerful tool for effective breaks, and it all makes sense when he does it, but when i try to do it, i have little cue ball control at best, or more often, just scratch. i'd really like this one to work, because i'm one of the few players i know that actually Likes using inside.
i'm sure there are correct answers here, because before the smash-and-grab approach came to the fore, the oldtimers got reliable results. maybe because they always played for very steep angles?
this whole thing is not very clear. we really need something like Capelle's end-pattern videos, but instead showing just a hundred breaks of different sorts.
i see many people, especially the Europeans, studying the rack like this intently for a fair amount of time, and then their results are indistinguishable from chance; Nick van den Berg at the DCC is a recent prime example. they study, study, study... and then the cue ball ends up on the top rail anyway.
John Schmidt has said in at least one video that so much depends on the exact contact with the object ball and on the speed and spin you have on the cue ball that it's meaningless, because you can't really predict exactly where you're hitting on the pack. and Thorsten, with rare exception, seems to just pound the living snot out of the ball with tons of draw no matter where it is and take what comes. Mika gets good results mostly using just a very soft break and draw.
i resisted Steve Matthieu's assertion that many, many more break shots can be hit with top or top + outside for a long time, but now that i'm making break shots of all angles more reliably, i'm finding he was right. i still don't know as it's the best way to get the cue ball free in all cases, but i haven't scratched on a break shot in quite a while now using that approach almost exclusively, even when i have the cue ball closer to center table than the object ball.
Danny Harriman says in one of his videos that inside english is a powerful tool for effective breaks, and it all makes sense when he does it, but when i try to do it, i have little cue ball control at best, or more often, just scratch. i'd really like this one to work, because i'm one of the few players i know that actually Likes using inside.
i'm sure there are correct answers here, because before the smash-and-grab approach came to the fore, the oldtimers got reliable results. maybe because they always played for very steep angles?
this whole thing is not very clear. we really need something like Capelle's end-pattern videos, but instead showing just a hundred breaks of different sorts.
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