There's a lot I can say and I risk extremes by complicating or over-simplifying but I'll try to keep it simple and sweet:
1. "Contact point aim" works well for balls cut between about 1/4 and 3/4 of a ball. Beyond that, you can still line up (with your choice of contact point or ghost ball) and stroke straight on, yet while pre-visualizing the edge of the cue ball hitting the edge of the object ball at its contact point (eclipse or edge-to-edge aim).
2. You don't need to line up using the contact point than readjust to the ghost ball as you mentioned, because most shots fall in that 1/4 to 3/4 range...
3. Before a geometer (or 10 of them) come out to say why I'm wrong, as if I've never bothered to line up circles on paper or spheres in a virtual environment and am ignorant that contact point aim is too thick--there are several factors here, including cue ball speed, whether fractional outside english is applied to counteract throw, etc. What's important is a contact point is a real thing to aim at in 3D space and a ghost ball is a mere ghost, which is why the pros usually say when asked:
4. "I aim at the contact point!" Pros when asked to give further advice will often say, "Hit the object ball more thick [than the geometric/ghost ball aiming point]."
5. Contact point and ghost ball both require adjustment. (No, really!) The adjustment should be made between what is sighted while standing erect and what is seen in the full stance as described in Answers to a Pool Player's Prayers.
6. Where are you standing to begin aim, and then from where do you assume your stance? Most players begin standing on the "full" line, that is, along an extension past the table of the shortest possible line between the cue ball and the object ball.
7. Don't knock it until you try it--go to your hall and if you miss many cut shots these days, start your aim process by standing along the full line then hitting them a) more thick and b) more softly than before. Okay, even if you don't miss many cut shots these days, try it!
That is, shoot softly enough that you can really appreciate impact and initial throw/line of travel. You will sink more balls than before, especially if you don't use outside english already to cinch balls.
I'm speaking from practical clinical experience. I've always had students sink more balls using this method than ghost ball or "instinct". And the A players and semi-pro players shoot a couple of these and then turn and look at me like I belong at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and not About.com.
Hope that it helps, if not, I'll try to clarify further. Thanks.
Matt:
Wow! Talk about pointing an in-operation hair dryer under the bed, and watching the dust bunnies roll out! This is a dust bunny from the recent past.
Anyway, getting to the heart of the matter, here are some bulletized thoughts of my own (in no particular order, and certainly not in the order that you bulleted your points):
1. You're an obviously intelligent person, with great writing skills, and a "style" about your writing. However, please be careful with your innuendos about "geometers" or "armchair pool players" (that latter one added by me, as a direct conclusion of your innuendo). There are REAL pool players here, some of us even know which end of the cue is which. And, no offense, being a writer for a general/topical site like "About.com" isn't exactly a de-facto authoritative reference, nor is it a guarantee that the writers there are subject matter experts. While you (and your articles) personally may be an exception
(believe me, I know who you are, and I respect you), many of the "articles" posted there are either too topical/generic (i.e. tailored to the average Joe/Jane Q. Public), or
very suspect in their accuracy.
2. I find it an odd paradox that you mention Richard Kranicki's great work, "Answer to a Pool Player's Prayers," yet you advocate an approach which seems to EMBRACE parallax error, not fix it as Kranicki instructs. You mention that many pros "think" they're aiming "here" but their cue is actually pointing over "there." I find that odd, because most pros that I know, know exactly where their cue is pointing, and can demonstrate it convincingly. (I'm talking about the Tony Robles types, who also offer instruction, by the way.) Kranicki's work is dedicated to finding out *why* your cue isn't pointing where you think it is, and devotes much of the content of the book to fixing it, not "building in" compensation for it.
3. You mention about CP-to-CP and ghostball both need adjustments. Of course this is true -- CIT is a very real thing, and needs to be incorporated in the aim. However, one should NEVER be making adjustments once down on the shot. Or very rarely. You aim while standing, you execute on that aim when down on the shot.
4. In the spirit of what "Answer to a Pool Player's Prayers" was about, one should identify the root cause of missed shots, not "build in compensation" for them. If one is overcutting balls continually, one should find out *why* it's happening -- not compensate for it by aiming directly at the contact point (which tells me, at least, that there's either a parallax problem there [head/eye alignment issue] or a cue delivery problem).
Many pool players (and specifically pool players, as opposed to snooker players) have problems with fundamentals. The "standing at a 45-degree angle to the cue" pool player stance presents its own issues with lack of repeatable precision, specifically with precise placement of body parts and joints in line with the shot line, and with head/eye alignment. That latter one, by the way, is a biggie. Enough so, that it spawned an entire branch of pool instruction (SPF), and information/products designed to deal with the many holes in pool's approach to fundamentals (e.g. Kranicki's work, Gene Albrecht's follow-on product called "perfect aim," etc.).
In summary, I realize that you're targeting that article at the average Joe/Jane Q. Public recreational pool player, but the intent of the discussion here, on these very subject-focused forums, is to discuss why, long-term, it's not the correct approach to take.
Respectfully,
-Sean
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