It amazes me how a tight back hand grip screws things up

Hard for me to believe that a "TOTALLY RELAXED" back hand could be a good thing. Seems like there would be no control of the cue. Perhaps a better way to phrase this would be to say with a "RELAXED" back hand.

r/DCP

I don't think there's any one way or another here. When biased properly, a tight grip can be deadly. Same can be said of any manner of loose grip. Depends on the degree of refinement by the player.

judochoke said:

I was practicing some long stop shots today, when I missed three in a row badly. When this does happen, I stop everything and go back to the shot I missed and think. When did I do wrong, bad lineup, bad stance, etc.

Figured it was a tight grip, as I have problems before with a death grip. Got back down. Set up the long stop shot, did my pre-shot routine, and right before I shot the shot, I relaxed my back hand until the cue was just barely held by my loose fingers.

Shot the cue ball, made the object ball, and the cue ball didn’t even move a hair. It was a Shane stop shot.

I new that a tight grip was not good, but I could not believe it could cause that much movement, or bad movement.

So I added to my pre shot routine, to right before I stroke the cue ball, to totally relax my back hand.

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It literally depends on how are you used to shooting shots, very simply put.

Philipino's tend to have the edge of their finger tips holding the cue, i.e. very very very light grip, some of them even only hold it with the first two fingers and the rest of their hand is just literally open.

However, is this how pool should be always played? or even, is this the only right way or the wrong way? Not even close.

It is always has been about how you are USED or even taught to play the game.

Some of the best players in the world have a tight grip hand and it never bothered them, as matter of fact, the best of the best are either tight grips or firm grips.

The light grip are the minority, but that doesn't mean that light grip is wrong, it is just that the people who uses it came from the west not too long ago and they use it because they are tought that it is the correct way, but it is just simply not.

It is very basic, whatever you are used to holding the cue, keep doing it over and over, then the muscles are familiar with each shot and will perform it nicely, making it, and do position too.

Lightly grips are the likes of Efren reyes, Busty, Lious Vandaam, Dennis Orcollu

Firm grips the likes of, Johnny archer, SVB, Lee van corteza, Buddy hall, Many many more....

Tight grips the likes of Earl strickland (In the 90s), CJ Wiley in the 90s, Nick Varner, The mouth Mike Sigel.


you see? it works with every grip, all you need is play the same exact shot with it a million times

asbani said:

Some of the best players in the world have a tight grip hand and it never bothered them

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What if those players had to practice thousands and thousands of extra hours to overcome a fundamental problem with their stroke?

In theory, isn't it possible that a person with a fundamentally sound stroke could move on to pattern and position play sooner than a person with a fundamentally unsound stroke, and therefore advance further faster?

I like a light grip myself
ironically(?), I feel more connected with the cue that way

here's some info. on the subject:
https://billiards.colostate.edu/faq/grip/light-vs-tight/

In every sport that I've ever spent more than a few years trying to master, such as golf (20 years), precision shooting (rifle/handgun-30/13 years), and pool (35 years), I was always taught the same fundamentals concerning grip : in golf it's "hold the club as if it were an egg or hold it as if it were a small bird." In shooting it's "hold the gun only firmly enough to not drop it. Slightly less than a firm handshake." And in pool it was "hold the cue only tight enough so that it doesn't slip in your hand at impact, so that you have full and smooth range of motion of your wrist."

The reasons have always been the same. Gripping too tightly will introduce tremor, reduce smoothness, take away fine motor control, and reduce sensitivity.

Peace.

Experimented with grip

I experimented with pretty much anything I could think of back in the day when there was no internet and unless you knew someone well you never knew if the nuggets given to you were gold or came from the rear end of an animal.

The light grip works until it gets to the point you can't control the stick. Slightly firmer to a medium firm grip, much like a businessman's handshake, works fine as long as it is consistent.

I was swinging wrenches or climbing several hundred feet of iron to hang industrial insulation and sheet metal so my grip was pretty strong. Using a death grip, the strongest possible, I shot very badly when I first tried it, no flex in wrist or tiny movements of fingers with this grip. For better or worse, no changes midstroke! After a few weeks I was getting nice results with the death grip though. I found performance very consistent with it.

The catches with the death grip related to the effort involved. I was exhausted after a few hours of play and my back arm throbbed, cramped, just plain hurt after this style of play for a few hours. I wasn't making a living playing pool and facing ten or twelve hours of hard work when my arm felt like it had been put through the wringer of an old washing machine before I started my day was brutal. I can remember looking up at over three hundred feet of scaffold and ladders after a few hours sleep and it took special effort to put my had on the first rung of the ladder. Had to come down and leave the unit to eat lunch or snack at break time and it was a major temptation to skip meals.

My biggest questions related to letting the cue rest on fingers and thumb or holding it a little higher in my hand where the web between thumb and forefinger was in full contact with the cue. Both work, but for me they gave radically different results. I had to decide on one or the other, inconsistency between the two resulted in rotten performances on my part. It seemed that if the web barely touched it made a radical difference in the way I shot.

I can't say what is best. I can say that jumping around making changes all of the time usually works poorly. Find something you like that you know works for other players and stick with it. If you give it a fair trial, maybe three to six months and it just isn't for you, try something else.

Hu

7stud said:

What if those players had to practice thousands and thousands of extra hours to overcome a fundamental problem with their stroke?

In theory, isn't it possible that a person with a fundamentally sound stroke could move on to pattern and position play sooner than a person with a fundamentally unsound stroke, and therefore advance further faster?

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I kind of agree with you but in the opposite way of how you're thinking, the players who use loose grip are those players you're talking about. It is true that players had to practice thousands and thousands of extra hours to overcome a fundamental problem, being having a very light loose grip, they just grew using it and did not know it was a problem.

My evidence is when you look at snooker players where balls need to be pocketed extremely well, all of them use either firm or tight grips, this evidence is good enough for me to tell me that you must either use firm or tight grip for the cue to stroke it well.

Grasshopper......Do not squeeze the sparrow so hard that it cannot fly away.
Confucius says same is true for a pool grip. It’s better to be gentle, not angry.

Maybe the terms should be open grip and closed grip; amount of squeeze a different parameter?

all degrees work its just which work best for you. most try to change things each day or time they miss and just end up never getting a good stroke.

if you cant make your back arm go forward straight you never are going to play well.

maha said:

all degrees work its just which work best for you. most try to change things each day or time they miss and just end up never getting a good stroke.

if you cant make your back arm go forward straight you never are going to play well.

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I agree.

People tend to overthink things.

It isn't hard to figure out what does or does not work for YOU.

Quit worrying about what works for other people.

The ultimate ‘loose grip’, is when the cue actually becomes a projectile. When I want absolute (center CB hit) precision on those very long shots, I totally turn it loose!

Barry Stark on the grip

The Grip Part 1 https://youtu.be/ZKOy9gWj0nk
The Grip Partt2
https://youtu.be/5EN9UgH7d5U
The Grip Part 3 - The Important Element
https://youtu.be/HuaNdCU64R4

Barry Stark is currently working with Kyren Wilson. I also have seen that he has worked with Allison Fisher and Karen Corr.

I started my quest to master this technique after seeing part 1. I and previously thought of my index finger as my trigger finger for starting the stroke. After seieing Part 1 my thought was my ring finger is the trigger finger. I started getting much better results. Old habits are hard to break and even after weeks I need to work on the 3 keys he presents. The ok sign with the thumb and index finger. Feeling the cue in the web. Starting the stroke with the ring finger-trigger. Now I watch Part 3 and Barry calls the ring finger the trigger! So I was getting it and it has worked wonders for me. I look forward to the day it becomes automatic.:thumbup:

The most important thing

If you see the value in Barry’s instructional on what he considers the most important, you will find the rest of his videos to be of great Value. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzRtfQKGNxv4RN4i0LZ0IvcEpJxo6am3e

One thing that should be noted about the "active" snooker grip is the taper of the stick is conical and compensatory.

I don’t Consciously think about grip

However, I loosen up on long shots on the Snooker table. Almost throwing the cue forward.. This is just instinctive from decades of playing. In contrast, if sinking a ball at 6 feet on an American table, I don’t need precision. I’m more likely gripping the cue harder and using my wrist in some subtle way to get better cue ball position.

I use a lighter grip for precision. This is just me. Players with much tighter grips defeat me and I defeat them so ‘Whatever works’.

Geosnooker said:

I don’t Consciously think about grip

However, I loosen up on long shots on the Snooker table. Almost throwing the cue forward.. This is just instinctive from decades of playing. In contrast, if sinking a ball at 6 feet on an American table, I don’t need precision. I’m more likely gripping the cue harder and using my wrist in some subtle way to get better cue ball position.

I use a lighter grip for precision. This is just me. Players with much tighter grips defeat me and I defeat them so ‘Whatever works’.

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I've practiced on several (four IIRC) 12 footers and most noticeable to me is on long shots, you can lay out closer to horizontal and possibly more relaxed than on a 9 footer where nearly all the shots are jacked up to some degree.