20+ years of practice, one minute to fix

hang-the-9

hang-the-9

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Some shots have always seemed a bit "off". I'd line up, but something did not look quite right, I'd get up, re-aim, shoot, and miss. Most of the time by just a few mm, just enough to hit the point or rattle the shot. No clue why I did that, but it caused me a heck of a time playing up to my B+ rating consistently.

I was thinking a bit about dominant eyes and decided to play around with how my head lined up over the cue. I moved 1/2 inch to my right.

I can't miss now. Almost literally. I played around with a friend of mine who is better than me, he won the first set 9-3 or something like that. I made this tiny shift in my stance, and I beat him 9-5. I did not miss a single shot I was aiming at, everything went in center of the pocket even the tough ones, whereas before I'd be making them off the sides often. It's like I always new how to aim right to make the balls, but how I was lined up was causing me to aim at the wrong spot to make the ball where I was thinking it was the right one.

1/2 inch of motion seemed to fix what years of practice could not. The trick now is to trust myself when I line up and it feels a bit odd in the middle of an actual match that means something. This could be my key to go from B to A level, a HUGE breakthrough that came, oh, about 24 years after I started playing.
 
Congrats. Just keep making mental notes of all these lil things.

One of the biggest keys to being a great player is the ability to diagnose what's wrong when you don't feel "it" that day. A great player may figure it out before the first rack is done. Lesser players may say it's not their night and just hope they find "it" the next day.

There's always a reason why your level of play ebbs and flows. Figuring out why is the ultimate mystery.

And there is no substitute for table time.
 
hang-the-9 said:
Some shots have always seemed a bit "off". I'd line up, but something did not look quite right, I'd get up, re-aim, shoot, and miss. Most of the time by just a few mm, just enough to hit the point or rattle the shot. No clue why I did that, but it caused me a heck of a time playing up to my B+ rating consistently.

I was thinking a bit about dominant eyes and decided to play around with how my head lined up over the cue. I moved 1/2 inch to my right.

I can't miss now. Almost literally. I played around with a friend of mine who is better than me, he won the first set 9-3 or something like that. I made this tiny shift in my stance, and I beat him 9-5. I did not miss a single shot I was aiming at, everything went in center of the pocket even the tough ones, whereas before I'd be making them off the sides often. It's like I always new how to aim right to make the balls, but how I was lined up was causing me to aim at the wrong spot to make the ball where I was thinking it was the right one.

1/2 inch of motion seemed to fix what years of practice could not. The trick now is to trust myself when I line up and it feels a bit odd in the middle of an actual match that means something. This could be my key to go from B to A level, a HUGE breakthrough that came, oh, about 24 years after I started playing.
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I understand where your at..right there myself..I hate having the nipple
syndrome..lately I've been paying more attention to how I step
in the shot..I have a friend watch me once in a while, an this has
helped me..He's no pro , but he can run a few tables..plus he coachs well.
stroke well guy..
 
All good players go thur this kinda growth spurt and realizations within their game if they have that ''desire''. I once traveled to Atlanta yrs ago and played in a bar table event. Races to eleven. In one match that I shoulda won I missed a routine shot and that set in motion me losing ''that'' match that I had control of up till that point/Gulyassy. Next....losers side/playing and up 9-1 against Little Joe Villapando and I do the same thing, but I've got a huge lead and not concered toooooooo much. End up losing that match on the hill, and it wasn't Joes skill that beat me, was something else, but did NOT know what. On my drive back to Colorado I had time to think about the situations I had been put thru. My mind kept going back to this ''one'' certain shot that seemed to set my demise in motion. I got back home and still didn't Know the cause. Two weeks went by since the tournament. The truth to pool is ''whitey NEVER lies''. By vividly remembering what the cue ball had NOT done, it gave me the answer. If you foucus one hundred pecent on each shot, when a situation like this comes up, you can go back in you mind and go over it/again/again etc. Its only because I had a pretty good understanding of ball collisions/caroms/throws/dirt/humidity and much more, that I could figure this out. If I didn't, I would still be ''stuck''.

All it was:

My approach was off, walking up to the shot. To correct, I just walked up to the shot a little more left or right, Before I set my bridge hand on table. Two weeks July 1989....I won my only true pro event and I had been playing/working for over 25 yrs. Two yrs later, after being married for 13 yrs we divorced, after that, my daughters (2)mental health was more important than me or pool, still love the game, tho the enviornment is Not my style anymore, unless its classy with respect for the game and others. .
 
Dear Hang-the-9

First of all, that moniker makes me shiver!

I'm delighted for you. I hope the shift continues to work our for you. You're right that one can practise something wrong for many years. I did. Bob Byrne quips, "Practise doesn't make perfect. Practise makes permanent."

I'm tall and gangly and uncoordinated. I've kept a journal of every change I've made in my stance and grip and alignment. The result is, I know now what works for me and what doesn't.

I've often urged golfing friends who were having problems to take a lesson from a good teaching pro. Maybe I should have taken my own advice!
 
I was wondering you said that you had to move over a couple of inches to line up the shot. Do you shoot with the same hand as your dominant eye. The reason I ask is I am right handed but I shoot pool left handed because it feels more natural seeing as how I guess my left eye is the dominant eye. I was wondering if this was your case.

Thanks, Adam
 
Genomachino is gonna love you!

I gotta try it out. I feel a bit awkward with my head going anywhere except where it's always naturally 'landed'. But I'm game to give it a try. Gotta call that guy.
 
Great post and more valuable information than one may realize initially. This kind of small adjustment, ( regardless of what it is) can make huge differences in our games.

I also contend that there are numerous optical illusions when we get down on our shots. One more obvious being the centerline of the pocket from different angles.
 
It looks like this shooter is right eye dominant and that eye is above his cue.:smile:

MC2008_M10_015_-_Shane_van_Boening.jpg
 
Adam Brown said:
I was wondering you said that you had to move over a couple of inches to line up the shot. Do you shoot with the same hand as your dominant eye. The reason I ask is I am right handed but I shoot pool left handed because it feels more natural seeing as how I guess my left eye is the dominant eye. I was wondering if this was your case.

Thanks, Adam
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I never did the dominant eye test, maybe that was one of my problems that kept me from going past a B+ level. I just shot the "natural" way, I spent a few years when I started playing at about 16 just learning on my own from Byrne's books and watching AccuStats tapes.

Where I started playing, there were no real strong players to learn from, and the few that did play over a C level did not have good mechanics and would be killed by any decent B or A player, so I spent years and years improving but not ever realizing that I was aiming/standing/thinking the wrong way to get better. I stalled at a B- player for a long time, and it took a few years in a real room (Brighton Billiards near Boston) to start re-learning how to play the right way. Then I got stuck at a B+ level because I kept missing shots by a tiny bit. Moving my head to the right just 1/2 inch looks to have started to fix that issue, I played a few racks and I could see the ball going in right at the center of the hole, no more dinging in off the point or hitting the side of the pocket and banking in, center hole, crisp drop. It looks like I was not exactly seeing the right point of the ball which was the "TRUE" line of aim to make it, I was aiming at a sort-of-kind-of right point, which was just enough off to cause some misses.

This actually explains why I was so good at "ALMOST" making just about any shot, always drove me mad as to why I can shoot shots good enough to come close but not enough to make it. I mean, I'd rather just miss by an inch rather than by 1/20th of an inch and bobble the ball.

Maybe now I'll need to change my name from hang the 9 to "slam the 9 in center pocket at any angle". Time will tell, have a tournament tonight and league tomorrow, will see how things work out :thumbup: I don't think I was this exited about playing pool in who knows how long, it feels like I just won the lottery, I finally have a chance to play like I always though I could but was held back by some odd quirk in my execution.
 
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This thread gives me hope.

I think for anyone serious about the game, improvements come in tiny increments at the higher levels. And then the game is about recognizing those adjustments and incorporating them into your repertoire.

Recently I've been in a slump. There are days when I'm shooting at a solid A level, never getting out of line and everything felt right and effortless. Speed control was automatic, shot making was automatic. Some days, however, I get over the ball, and something feels wrong. My timing is off, my stance feels wrong, I tighten up and my speed control is off, my stroke feels hesitant and my shotmaking is off just enough to miss "routine" shots every other rack.

The reasons are mysterious, I cannot for the life of me figure out and isolate the differences between my top game and my normal game. My last real breakthrough was recognizing a built-in head movement caused by my head angle being too low, hence while moving my eyes from the CB to the OB my head was doing the infamous (albeit tiny) bob up and down. Once I corrected that problem by angling my face upwards to keep both CB and OB in line, my consistency jumped by a ball.

I'm going to give this eye/stance adjustment a try. To me, working on your mechanics/form is infinitely more important than trying to master some aiming system.

-roger
 
I had been playing for 50 years when I had a stroke and a heart attack. At that time I was an "A" player on the BB and a "B" player on the 9' table. When I came back to play after over 3 years it was like starting over again because of the memory loss from the stroke. The first few days I had problems running 3 balls. A few months later when I got a stroke back and a good PSR (thanks to my AZ friends) I got back to a "C" on the 7' tables, and then hit a wall. I Always shot very fast. I just about ran around the table. I even had the nick of "The Rabbit" for years. Anyhow for health reasons and trying to see the OB better I slowed down to the pace of the average player. Within a week I was beating the 9 ball ghost on the BB and became a "B" player again on the 9'. Just slowing down made a huge difference in my game. Johnnyt
 
CreeDo said:
Genomachino is gonna love you!

I gotta try it out. I feel a bit awkward with my head going anywhere except where it's always naturally 'landed'. But I'm game to give it a try. Gotta call that guy.
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It feels a bit odd to me also, granted this is only after an hour of doing this during one practice session with a friend. It does fell "right" though when I'm aiming, but my brain is telling me "whao there buddy, you might miss this". If I ignore my brain and just shoot when I'm set in the "new" stance, ball goes in. It's almost magic to me how clean I can pocket balls. I hit a shot with the object ball on the long rail on the 2nd diamond, the cueball was on the other long rail on the opposite second diamond maybe .5 inches from the rail. I hit that so clean it was like the pocket was 6 inches wide instead of a half pocket from that angle. Ball drew EXACTLY straight back for position, instead of at some random angle. Another similar position shot I had, ball in the pocket opening, I had to hit it with draw straight back, normally I have a tough time hitting it center it often hits a bit on the side causing the draw to move the cueball sideways a bit, messing up my position for next shot. This time, ball hit exactly center of the object ball, went straight back.

I am seriously thinking now that the only reason I could even make a shot till now was because the balls were a lot smaller than the pockets so when I aimed the fake way my alingnment to the shot was showing me, I had that little bit of error I can hit and still make the ball. But there is no error you can do if you need to draw exactly straight, and I always had issues doing so. Now I know why.

I'm glad this may have helped others also with trying things, I mostly posted because this was such an eye opening moment for me that fixed literally in minutes something that has been messing with me for over 20 years.
 
Johnnyt said:
I had been playing for 50 years when I had a stroke and a heart attack. At that time I was an "A" player on the BB and a "B" player on the 9' table. When I came back to play after over 3 years it was like starting over again because of the memory loss from the stroke. The first few days I had problems running 3 balls. A few months later when I got a stroke back and a good PSR (thanks to my AZ friends) I got back to a "C" on the 7' tables, and then hit a wall. I Always shot very fast. I just about ran around the table. I even had the nick of "The Rabbit" for years. Anyhow for health reasons and trying to see the OB better I slowed down to the pace of the average player. Within a week I was beating the 9 ball ghost on the BB and became a "B" player again on the 9'. Just slowing down made a huge difference in my game. Johnnyt
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Ones time spent before walking up to the shot, is Just as important if not more, than pulling the trigger and making the shot. I've even been toying with slight hand bridge rotation a little left or right once I'm down and done, which means your ready' to shoot the shot. It's soooooooo important for you to committ 100% even on the easy shots (there are NO easy shots in pool they just look easy) that way your errors will be consitent and it will be much easier to improve. Good luck.
 
It seems that better ball pocketing does not help if you run yourself out of position or misjudge safety angles LOL :rolleyes::eek:

Tournament results with new way of lining up were OK, but average for me in that tournament, came in 4th, messed up an easy ball in hand run out with 5 balls on the table on the winners side due to a position error which caused me to run into a ball 2 shots later due to getting further away from my shots. I find that I am more hesitant to play multi rail spin shots with the new stance, probably because I'm more focused on how I shoot and aim than the track the cue ball takes. I'm sure that will go away as I get used to aiming from the new stance.

The match that knocked me out though was eh... I planned a safety that moved the 2 ball for a 2-9 combo and missed hooking the guy by 2 inches, he made the combo I set up for me, in a race to 2 LOL. Oh well.

The 1/2 inch shift in my head over the cue has improved my shot making for sure, the results I got the first time I tried it look to be consistent. Takes 10-15 minutes of playing to get in gear using that stance, but I can see the goal line so to speak.
 
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