Help on a shot please

poolplaya1 said:

say you have a ball on the foot spot, where the 1 ball gets racked. Your cue ball is 3 inches up table and 6 inches towards the left rail. You take 3 shots. One with 1 tip of draw. One with one tip of draw and one tip of right. One with one tip of draw and one tip of left. Will the balls hit the rail at the same spot?

Sorry I don't have a table to test this and I wont be at one for awhile. My guess is that the right spin shot will hit the closest to the racking area. The center will hit a few inches up from that, and the left spin will take the ball farthest up the table. Am I right?

The shot speed is medium, just to get the cue ball to the rail plus a foot or two of roll.

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draw on paper......take pic...upload or explain better, hard to understand what your asking bud

contact point

Bottom slight left

You still have me a little lost

theres always a little cheat to the pocket......

the can all be sent up table with those tip placements

honestly even with those three tip placements one can get that ball up table.....


look at the tangent line like you have it set up. its to the 3rd diamond about just below the right side pocket.......

so STUN brings you there....cut across to the left side and that same spot on opposite side is about as low as your going to ge the cb to draw too with the low left.....and can get it anywhere above that with the same tip offset, or with the center or low right.....now how far away from that left long rail that you can get away with is another thing.

the draw is much more important for the tip placement than most think and with a light touch you would be surprised when coupled with a accurately placed tip how much you can put on that CB.

experiemnt with 1/2/3 tips id say stick with 2&3.....one tip draw doesn't do much........though one tip of follow has more rotation than that one tip draw.....because of ball weights distrubution in relation to the tip placement.

3 tips draw is of course more than two tips......its the opposite with follow.

like i said though i can and any decent player can draw that ball all the way back to the short rail with any of the tip placements you have shown depending on the speed, none of them need be struck hard, and you will be surprised how "soft" you can hit it and accomplish it via good accuracy.

hope this helps answer your qeustion.

best wishes,
Greyghost

poolplaya1 said:

I will try to be a bit more clear.

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no.....decently close maybe give or take but only because your not far away from the rail.

Low inside will go further down table, followed by straight center ball draw, then low outside.

The reason isnt the spin so much, as it is the angle of the cb into the rail after contact. The angle changes based on the required point of aim being different for all 3 shots.

Hope this helps. :thumbup:

If you are hitting all three shots the same distance on the cb from the bed of the table, but only differing in left and right of vertical center, and, you compensate correctly for squirt and hit the ob in the exact same place all three shots, the cb will hit the rail in the exact same place on all three shots. Left or right won't have a difference until you contact a rail.

I believe the answer is yes, spin changes where the CB hits the rail. However, the difference is very minor, and can probably be ignored. I believe dr Dave covers this on his site somewhere.

There was a thread with a similar topic before. It was when the OB was in front of the side pocket, and the CB was on a scratch angle in that same pocket, if the OB were shot in the corner. The question was, would one type of English be more likely to avoid the scratch.

left /right does not have an effect until it hits the rail
the distance off the tangent line has to do with the amount of draw not spin
(assuming same contact point/tangent line for all shots)

poolplaya1 said:

Spin only changes the balls direction when a ball hits a rail, as most of you know. My though is that spin also changes the direction of the cueball when it hits the object ball(very slightly). That was the crux of the question here.

thanks for bearing with my poor wording and diagramming skills so far. Thanks for the responses so far. I would love to see a few more answers or thoughts from other people.

:thumbup:

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It's not as simple as that. You're talking about "throwing" the object ball. So if you have a lot of right in this particular shot, it will throw the object ball to the left. That means you need to hit the object ball fuller to pocket it, and the cue ball will go further up table.

BUT it's highly dependent on the speed you hit and the condition of the balls. If you shoot softly with balls that haven't been freshly cleaned (or if you've just been shooting for a couple of hours), it's quite amazing just how far you can actually throw a ball. If you shoot hard or the balls are slick, the effect goes away to nothing. Done right from the head rail to the foot rail, you can throw a ball almost a full diamond, believe it or not.

Anyhow, it's hard to get enough throw on a ball to really change the path of the cue ball for the kind of angle you're talking about. Where you can use it effectively is if you're almost straight in and you really need to hold up the cue ball because you got just on the wrong side. Then you can shoot soft with a ton of english and hit the object ball a little fuller than normal, effectively getting the cue ball to hold of a bit. That's more how you're typically use it.

poolplaya1 said:

Although the difference is minor, I am not sure why you should ignore something that actually happens on the pool table? How many variables in pool are minute? I would like to know all of them. Definitely not throw any of them out. Thanks for your response though!

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This would make sense if there was no impact in splitting your attention or there was no cost in resources to think about things that made next to no impact. But it does. If you're running out and you're thinking about some theoretical conversation on AZbilliards it isn't going to help you execute. And when we say insignificant, it's debatable than an impact is even felt. So it's not something that needs to be 'understood and internalized'.

Robert Byrne's Standard Book says "sidespin does not change the direction of the cueball off the object ball until it hits a rail". This is good enough for me. I'll bet that if you asked the top 20 pros they would essentially agree with this. So from a practical, improve your game approach, it is a consensus that sidespin doesn't change the direction of the cueball enough to matter or give attention to.

Now, if you want to talk theory, that's fine. I can understand there is a joy in understanding how things work even if it doesn't translate to improvement on the table. But for those of us that want to see results on the table, it is best to ignore things that are so insignificant that there is debate whether they exist. Each is fine, I'm not looking down at people with scientific curiosity, just don't look down at people trying to play the game their best.

(Another example of this is 'bending a bank'. I don't have time for this, it isn't practical. I can't think of a time in my life where I would try to curve a bank, so I will bypass that thread and practice what works instead.)

poolplaya1 said:

I am not talking about throwing the ball at all, thanks for the response though

I am talking about the cue ball after contact with the object ball (same point on the obj ball for each shot)

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You can't hit the same spot with significant english and still make the ball, at least not if you're shooting softly enough for throw to be significant. Maybe I'm not understanding? Other than spin acting on the cloth, which will have the same effect whether or not an object ball is there, the forces are basically symmetrical on the object ball and the cue ball. If the cue ball takes a different path at impact due to spin, then the object ball does too, and we usually call that throw. Just think about it. Momentum is conserved. If the object ball picks up some momentum to the left, for example, then something else has to pick up some momentum to the right.

Regardless, if you hit low right, you're putting a little of a masse type spin on the cue ball, so it's going to want to go further down table just strictly due to the spin on the cue ball, even if the balls are freshly polished and you can neglect the friction between them.

Tin Man said:

This would make sense if there was no impact in splitting your attention or there was no cost in resources to think about things that made next to no impact. But it does. If you're running out and you're thinking about some theoretical conversation on AZbilliards it isn't going to help you execute. And when we say insignificant, it's debatable than an impact is even felt. So it's not something that needs to be 'understood and internalized'.

Robert Byrne's Standard Book says "sidespin does not change the direction of the cueball off the object ball until it hits a rail". This is good enough for me. I'll bet that if you asked the top 20 pros they would essentially agree with this. So from a practical, improve your game approach, it is a consensus that sidespin doesn't change the direction of the cueball enough to matter or give attention to.

Now, if you want to talk theory, that's fine. I can understand there is a joy in understanding how things work even if it doesn't translate to improvement on the table. But for those of us that want to see results on the table, it is best to ignore things that are so insignificant that there is debate whether they exist. Each is fine, I'm not looking down at people with scientific curiosity, just don't look down at people trying to play the game their best.

(Another example of this is 'bending a bank'. I don't have time for this, it isn't practical. I can't think of a time in my life where I would try to curve a bank, so I will bypass that thread and practice what works instead.)

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john coloccia said:

You can't hit the same spot with significant english and still make the ball, at least not if you're shooting softly enough for throw to be significant. Maybe I'm not understanding? Other than spin acting on the cloth, which will have the same effect whether or not an object ball is there, the forces are basically symmetrical on the object ball and the cue ball. If the cue ball takes a different path at impact due to spin, then the object ball does too, and we usually call that throw. Just think about it. Momentum is conserved. If the object ball picks up some momentum to the left, for example, then something else has to pick up some momentum to the right.

Regardless, if you hit low right, you're putting a little of a masse type spin on the cue ball, so it's going to want to go further down table just strictly due to the spin on the cue ball, even if the balls are freshly polished and you can neglect the friction between them.

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once the cue ball gets to the object ball and they contact each other
a tangent line is made draw with or without side spin will follow that line until it hits the rail unless robert byrne is wrong
or you mean you are getting more draw because you are hitting it lower
icbw

bbb said:

once the cue ball gets to the object ball and they contact each other
a tangent line is made draw with or without side spin will follow that line until it hits the rail unless robert byrne is wrong
or you mean you are getting more draw because you are hitting it lower
icbw

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Byrne's not wrong anymore than Newton was wrong about gravity. It's a good approximation for most intents and purposes. Remember, Byrne also almost completely neglected squirt, at least in earlier editions of his book that I've read, so it's possible for even a true giant like Bob to gloss over things, or even occasionally say something that's not 100% accurate. But yes, if you throw the object ball to the left, then you must also throw the cue ball to the right because momentum has to be conserved. It's usually negligible and I don't think I ever actually do anything with it. If I have to play position that precisely, I'm already in big trouble and I ain't getting myself out! I'm sure at least some pros probably consider it. My experience is that the difference in where you have to hit the object ball to make it seems to completely dominate any other effect. Just my opinion and my experience, but if I'm cutting a ball to the right, and I need to hold up the cue ball to keep it from drifting left, I'm going to be using a lot of LEFT hand english. That will throw the object ball to the right, and I'll be able to hit it fuller, limiting how far the cue ball drifts left.

Anyhow, I don't think anyone should take anyone else's word for it...not mine, Dave's, Bob 1, Bob 2 or anyone else. Just try it out for real and see what happens.

edit:
Dave and/or Bob must have a page somewhere dedicated to the effects of spin and throw. Maybe someone who's familiar with their work can quickly dig it up.