I play on barboxes and am pretty descent at kicking balls. Watching Tom Rossman's DVD's and others, I've always learned that when kicking from a corner pocket 3 rails to the adjacent corner, you shoot at (through) the 3rd diamond (1st diamond past the side pocket) with running english and it goes to the corner. I can repeat this consistantly and I see the spin I am putting on it. My teammate swears he uses no english at this diamond, he uses running english shooting at the 2nd diamond to make it to the same pocket. We both seem to use the same moderate speed on the same table. Is this due to differences in stroke, cue deflection or something else? If I shoot through the 3rd diamond with no english, I come one diamond long on the 3 rail kick to the corner. What is the lesson here?
3-rail Kick On The Diamonds
- Thread starter ndakotan
- Start date
ndakotan said:
At those incidence angles (the so called "natural" angles), the exact amount of spin is not important unless the cloth is extremely new or the balls are extremely clean (i.e. low-friction conditions). One reason is because of some inherent self-correction effects due to hitting multiple cushions in the shot. That's why "running" english can be so ambiguous and still work. As your incidence angle becomes more perpendicular to either the 1st or 2nd rail, the effects of different amounts of spin changes the shot drastically. 3-cushion players try to play the forgiving "natural" shots as much as possible, and avoid the other more "perpendicular" patterns unless there are other factors to make them more forgiving.
Of course, the cushion doesn't know who's shooting, so if you were really both doing the same thing you'd both get the same result. It's very difficult to put exactly *no* english on a cue ball. Both of you are probably applying different amounts of "no" english in your comparison
He could be erring on the side of running english and you could be erring on the side of reverse. Also, some players swipe across the ball unknowingly as a last minute correction which could add a further complication. (One 3-cushion player I know swears he plays certain natural shots with reverse english, but I can see him swipe across to running on the final stroke. He insists that doesn't happen. I think it's a squirt compensation.)Btw, there is a local pool table nearby where I can shoot from the corner to anywhere between those 2nd and 3rd diamonds with the exact same speed and english and the ball will go three rails into the opposite corner. I'm an experienced 3-cushion player on many kinds of tables, and the margin for error of this was even surprising to me!
I think the lesson is that predicting the result of multi-rail contacts under all conditions is much more complex than any of the simple diamond systems would lead you to believe.
Robert
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I don't play on bar tables, so I'm not sure how the diamond system changes on the small surface. Shooting at 3 on billiard table will bring the CB to the opposite corner. However, on a 4-1/2 X 9' table, shooting at 3 brings the CB way short of the corner pocket. Generally the CB must be aimed at 2-1/4, or even 2 to get it to the corner.ndakotan said:
Doc
ndakotan said:
The lesson is, you can make the same 3 rail kick using different diamonds with different english. rule of thumb 1 tip of english should = 1 diamond on the 3rd rail.