Same boat, sorta
I am right eye dominant, but fairly weakly right eye dominant. If you can close either eye at will you can work on eye dominance anywhere, not just on a pool table. Shooting a pistol in competition I wanted my dominant eye stronger to see my sights better. Something as simple as holding a pencil straight up and down at arms length and close one eye then trying to keep the focus in one eye can strengthen the dominance of either eye or the effectiveness of processing what you see from that eye.
A few years after starting shooting pistol competition I started shooting benchrest rifle. Damn, now instead of wanting to be strongly one eye dominant, I wanted my weak eye that was watching windflags while my right eye was focused through the scope to deliver more information than it was using a pistol. Same exercise, other eye.
At one time I could look past that pencil to the wall behind it and make the pencil jump back and forth as I swapped eye dominance just by my desire to use one eye or the other.
Weak dominance is a risk for pool players. Years ago I got down on a dirt simple shot I have shot a thousand times or so. This was the money ball. Cue ball less than a half table from the corner, the object ball about halfway along this line just a bit off straight in. We normally go down and tap these shots in without a thought. I couldn't see the line! I came up and got down three times, couldn't see the line. I finally decided this was stupid, aimed center ball and then moved over a bit figuring that with the margin for error the ball had to fall. It didn't!
The odd thing is I was watching a major tournament a few months later. In separate matches both Efren and Bustamonte missed exactly this same seeming "tap in" shot on the money ball. I would bet either one to be better than 99 out of 100 on this shot, strange that they both missed.
Two theories about why this happened. One, the eyes swap dominance on this slightly off angle shot without us realizing it. The other is something our brains compensate for and we don't realize. We have a blind spot in each eye where the optic nerve attaches. There is a simple thing I am sure you can find on the internet, look at a certain location with one eye closed and a spot on the page disappears. Move your eye a little and the spot is seen again. If our contact point is in this area we see it with monocular vision while we see most shots with binocular vision. I don't know which is the true cause of difficulties with this shot sometimes, perhaps either, perhaps neither.
Eye dominance can be tricky and I believe it is better to be either eye strongly dominant than to have weak dominance even if it matches the hand you shoot with. My experience indicates that you can definitely alter eye dominance, maybe to the point of swapping eye dominance. Is this altered perception 100% consistent? I don't know. I'm pretty sure some of us swap eye dominance depending on if we are cutting a ball left or right.
Just some food for thought. I think the "truth" depends a lot on the individual so one person's truth may not be another person's truth.
Hu
I am right eye dominant, but fairly weakly right eye dominant. If you can close either eye at will you can work on eye dominance anywhere, not just on a pool table. Shooting a pistol in competition I wanted my dominant eye stronger to see my sights better. Something as simple as holding a pencil straight up and down at arms length and close one eye then trying to keep the focus in one eye can strengthen the dominance of either eye or the effectiveness of processing what you see from that eye.
A few years after starting shooting pistol competition I started shooting benchrest rifle. Damn, now instead of wanting to be strongly one eye dominant, I wanted my weak eye that was watching windflags while my right eye was focused through the scope to deliver more information than it was using a pistol. Same exercise, other eye.
At one time I could look past that pencil to the wall behind it and make the pencil jump back and forth as I swapped eye dominance just by my desire to use one eye or the other.
Weak dominance is a risk for pool players. Years ago I got down on a dirt simple shot I have shot a thousand times or so. This was the money ball. Cue ball less than a half table from the corner, the object ball about halfway along this line just a bit off straight in. We normally go down and tap these shots in without a thought. I couldn't see the line! I came up and got down three times, couldn't see the line. I finally decided this was stupid, aimed center ball and then moved over a bit figuring that with the margin for error the ball had to fall. It didn't!
The odd thing is I was watching a major tournament a few months later. In separate matches both Efren and Bustamonte missed exactly this same seeming "tap in" shot on the money ball. I would bet either one to be better than 99 out of 100 on this shot, strange that they both missed.
Two theories about why this happened. One, the eyes swap dominance on this slightly off angle shot without us realizing it. The other is something our brains compensate for and we don't realize. We have a blind spot in each eye where the optic nerve attaches. There is a simple thing I am sure you can find on the internet, look at a certain location with one eye closed and a spot on the page disappears. Move your eye a little and the spot is seen again. If our contact point is in this area we see it with monocular vision while we see most shots with binocular vision. I don't know which is the true cause of difficulties with this shot sometimes, perhaps either, perhaps neither.
Eye dominance can be tricky and I believe it is better to be either eye strongly dominant than to have weak dominance even if it matches the hand you shoot with. My experience indicates that you can definitely alter eye dominance, maybe to the point of swapping eye dominance. Is this altered perception 100% consistent? I don't know. I'm pretty sure some of us swap eye dominance depending on if we are cutting a ball left or right.
Just some food for thought. I think the "truth" depends a lot on the individual so one person's truth may not be another person's truth.
Hu