Regardless, I ordered the book & dvd,anyway. Too many times, I’m down to the last few balls thinking I’ve got it made, and then blow it and get bad on the break ball. When the balls are well scattered early in the rack, a good shot maker can usually find multiple viable options, but (it seems to me) the fewer balls...the fewer options (?).
A little sidenote 1st. When it arrives, just for the hell of it, go to the video 1st and before each sequence pause it and ask yourself how you would play it. I think you'll find that the majority of time your solution will be the same as theirs. If that's the case then what are you learning?
My main point, however, references the highlighted above. This is my intended point in my previous post. How you play the described rack will make you or break you. You might think you have a bunch of easy shots and tons of options but this is where the mistakes are made. Every ball is extremely valuable and you need to squeeze every ounce of value from every shot and every position play.
Many may think I'm assigning too much importance to any given shot. I'm not. People think 14.1 is easy because of the multitude of options. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, multiple options are many a players downfall because they don't attach enough importance when evaluating and choosing what to do.
Rotation players are particularly susceptible to this. I'd guess because they don't have to choose their shots and have difficultly with that aspect of it.
Anyway, just like you have to give every shot due care and attention so as not to miss it, your shot selection and position decisions must be greatly respected if you want to get that good breakshot.
Every little thing you do has to be geared towards accomplishing your goal as
efficiently as possible. Efficiently: in a way that achieves maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense. Because we're fallible, the game is difficult and things go wrong. Using each ball to the utmost increases our margin of error and at times allows us enough recovery options to keep the run alive whereas we'd be history if we wasted a ball 4 or 5 shots ago.
