A new way to think about position?

to get very good you need to know where you want to get on about the 4th ball for the 5th, or at least the 3rd for the 4th next ball.
or you will never have the right angle on your next ball to have reasonable shape down the line..

that does take time and thinking. soon it will come more naturally and fairly quickly.

Nice post! If you don't know where you are going you aren't likely to get there.

Ideally the entire inning should be planned to a run out or a strong safety. Then the entire inning should seem like one continuous motion. It is always possible to stop and regroup if something goes astray but it shouldn't be planned to shoot a ball or three then rethink things even when they are going well. You can't have flow without having a complete plan in place and flow is a very good thing.

Hu
 
exactly Hu.
and you want to be on the line but not if that line stops you after the next shot or those after . you have to find the right line or the right area to go for.
 
Lot of great advice here from Tinman and others. I'll add my own since I was/am in a similar position as the original poster.

I only got back into the game two and half years ago, as I mentioned in a few other posts. Had a table as a kid but went a long time without playing until my own children had grown up.

The first year or so I struggled with consistently locating the cue ball in the right spot or even the right zone. Now? I have gotten much better.

How? The usual. Practice, but not just regular practice. Informed practice.

I've been on an accelerated course the past few years to relearn the game the right way, for one thing. Watched hundreds of hours of pro matches and instructional videos, including Tinman's marathon session with Lil Chris (glutton for punishment, am I).

Here is what I have learned:

First, and most important to me, is master centerball. Or hitting the cue ball on the vertical axis, as another poster said.

The cue ball path is highly predictable with follow and pretty predictable with stun and draw, depending on the speed. Without knowing where the ball will go on centerball hits, you won't be able to easily figure out how spin will change the CB path.

After that, you need to know the right principles of position play. Various posters have mention them:

*Get on the right line of the shot. Hugely important.

*Aim for larger shape zones or windows where you want the cue ball to land.

*Try to come off rails whenever possible - so much easier to land where you want if you don't have to float into an area. When you try this, it is important to pick a spot on the rail that you want the CB to hit.

*Use the 30 degree rule, the sliding cue ball (tangent) line and, if drawing, the three times the angle rule to visual where the cue ball will go on every shot after contact. I try to pay attention the CB path after every shot now, something I never did before. Much thanks to both DrDave and Tor Lowry for emphasizing these points. Before each shot, I think about the follow and stun trajectories as a baseline.

*Look several balls ahead and so forth.

Nothing new, of course.

What have I found? It's actually fairly easy to put the cue ball in a tight window if you are using follow or the cue ball is near the object ball.

It gets harder to be as precise the more distance there is or if you have to use multiple rails. That's why coming into the line of the shot is so critical.

To get to this point, I had to do a lot of drills, but not just any drills. I use a lot of Tor Lowry drills. Started with centerball. Now I do three-ball patterns, four-ball patterns, five ball patterns. I repeat them over and over again until I can do them five times in a row.

I also do my own random pattern drills. For example, every day starting a few months ago I would throw three balls on the table. I'd have to pick the pocket where each ball would go and where I would want the CB to end up generally.

After I was able to do 10 threeball drills in a row successfully, I moved to four balls. Then five balls. Now I am up to six balls.

Fewer balls on the table allows you to focus more on getting the cue ball where you want it to go.

Recently I bought an program and app on which DrDave collaborated called Bullseye Billiard. The app forces you to play pinpoint position on 200 different shots.

Guess what? I am hitting very specific windows when I do these drills. And it's helped my game a lot already in just a few weeks. Not only that, but doing these shots over and over (at least 20 times successfully) teaches you a lot about the likely path of the cueball. Muscle and brain memory.

Now, you don't need to buy a program or anything. There is a lot of free stuff out there. (I do recommend anything from Tor Lowry, though)

You can do it. I am doing it. But it takes practice with a purpose.

Good luck with your game, as a certain poster here would say.👨‍⚕️
 
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if you think 3 balls ahead for position on your first ball you are shooting, you will lose to a player that is exactly equal to you in all aspects of the game except he looks 4 balls ahead.
 
if you think 3 balls ahead for position on your first ball you are shooting, you will lose to a player that is exactly equal to you in all aspects of the game except he looks 4 balls ahead.
True, but you have to start small and work your way up, like Jack and the Beanstalk!
 
if you think 3 balls ahead for position on your first ball you are shooting, you will lose to a player that is exactly equal to you in all aspects of the game except he looks 4 balls ahead.

We have a lot of great information for free. We have a lot of not so great information for free. Sorting one from the other is the trick. The guy that is looking four balls ahead is like the chess players. One is looking 3-5 moves ahead, the other seven. The guy playing five moves ahead is always reactive and defense rarely wins, chess or pool. It sometimes gets you in position to win but the guy playing seven moves or seven balls ahead knows what you are going to do before you do, he is leading while his opponent follows.


I was taught to think and prepare for 3 balls ahead.

That is something I hear a lot and genuinely don't understand. You form a plan three balls ahead. Now do you shoot one and add one? Shoot two and add two? I don't think that anyone above a beginner shoots three before looking at the way they want to shoot the next three balls but I suppose it is possible.

Any of these things seems like a lot of moving back and forth between "states" Generally you have your thinking state standing up and your shooting state down on the shot, ideally thought free.

If a person adds a ball after every shot as some describe, they have to bounce from one state to the next twice for every shot. When you plan the complete run, then you may only swap states once for the entire run.

The danger of swapping states is that it doesn't always happen cleanly. Thinking in words is a distraction when we are in the middle of an action. It doesn't always cause an error but it increases the chance of one when we re trying to avoid them.

Hu
 
for those getting lost here. basically for each ball ahead you need to shoot your position on each of the balls leading up to it changes.
of course as you go along you dont always get it right and have to adjust.
but some very few can look back from the last ball and plan your run from each ball behind it.

but for most thinking back from the most trouble ball will give good results. no sense running up to the trouble ball and being out of position on it.

if you can, get in the habit of looking at the whole table and seeing how you are going to play it.

when you walk in the woods you dont go from tree to tree. you pick a route and pursue that route until you find a detour.
 
for those getting lost here. basically for each ball ahead you need to shoot your position on each of the balls leading up to it changes.
of course as you go along you dont always get it right and have to adjust.
but some very few can look back from the last ball and plan your run from each ball behind it.

but for most thinking back from the most trouble ball will give good results. no sense running up to the trouble ball and being out of position on it.

if you can, get in the habit of looking at the whole table and seeing how you are going to play it.

when you walk in the woods you dont go from tree to tree. you pick a route and pursue that route until you find a detour.

Excellent post! This has been a pretty good thread. You have brought in something new that is certainly worth noting, "trouble balls". Balls you have to break out or that have only very narrow windows to be pocketed.

There should be a plan to deal with trouble balls before the first ball is hit. Another old rule, "take care of trouble balls first" isn't quite true. We don't need to take care of them first, we just need a plan to deal with them. Then we can play shape to make trouble disappear.

Hu
 
A trivial discussion starts with straight line shots and position.
Meaning shots you shoot straight and center from CB to OB.

Learning to follow from a short distance between CB and OB as well as long distance between CB and OB helps players identify power control. Then there is stun and draw.

The language of shots like firm or soft are good for introductory pool researchers. Today's computer sensors and processing power can do more analysis for positional constraints and optimizations.

If you want to hear more sign up for the advanced simulation academy.
 
9 and 10 ball out patterns are are by and large, fundamental stuff. You do have problem balls - usually just one in 9 ball but the shooting patterns are still as simple as the player can put together. Even dealing with the stymies - either continue the run or lay a safety and/or trap. You do need an overview to and from the issues but this is not new either. I'm still wondering what this new way of looking at ball control is?
 
Practice for perfection.......You may not need it at all times...but you should still strive for it....Why?

If you want to win at all games sometimes the difference is that "dime".....Example....If you are playing 1-pocket....The difference between freezing the guy to the rail and not can be a huge outcome change....The same goes for freezing the ball to the stack (or another ball) the outcome difference can be huge....If you are just playing for a zone of getting somewhere down here by the rail......It might be all you need against an average player....but you are most likely going to lose against a better 1-pocket player.....

Same goes for 8-ball and 9-ball....sure most of the time "zone" is all you need....but (especially on a bar box)....don't freeze the guy to the back of a ball and they end up just jumping it right in like a hanger.

Could Efren have pulled off this shot had the CB been a few inches right or left...I think not...I think he had to be pretty much exactly where he was to pull off this shot.

 
Classifying shots by how you can position the Q is something I worked on.

Making it is easy, placing the Q at will is not.
I have found "position " of whitey is key. There are times I will take the bank rather than the cut just b/c of position of the CBafter the shot. Comes in esp handy in 1-pocket &straight pool.

Great thread TS by the way. (y)
 
thinking ahead well enough to decide which side of the next ball to be on is a big skill. I can see leaving some easy shots , like a ball in the middle and trying to focus upon the ones that pose more difficulty in completing a runout. in 8 ball anyway..

hitting the object ball just a smidge off and missing my pocket seems to be the usual issue I face but that's probably just the obvious failure and end of any run, unless I hook myself. It seems it's always the same thing for me, I just didn't hit the damn ball right ;-)
It's sometimes hard to tell if it's my stroke being off or the way I'm seeing that magical contact spot... often I can see because I'm looking at my target and the ball is off, so its my stroke then.. I think a bit of both.. thinking more than a couple of balls ahead seems often futile, because often things just don't work out as I'd imagined them to.. Practice practice and practice, I guess, but the tips help here. in order to be on the correct side of the next ball I need to think a bit further in and decide upon that third shot so I know which is the right side of the ball.. overwhelming myself by trying to think too many balls ahead just seems to be hopeful and a bit distracting, I think part of it is being reasonable and maybe learning how to read the table better. maybe I just need to learn to think about that third shot a bit more and stop there .. I expect more may come in time. I think the other thing I need to work on is trying to register what went wrong the instant I complete a shot and reason why it failed and what action would have corrected it.

I find it so easy to stop thinking about the shot straight away after the balls stop and I'm trying to give it just a moment more thought so it registers better, because if I'm not perceiving my failure quite thoroughly enough, I dont think there is any input back into the tired old brain.. It needs to be a "closed loop system"

there are a couple of things I want to master better. one is to play a curve shot to avoid a hook.. the other is to put more spin on balls and account for the, whats it called, spin induced offset or squirt.. the fact that the aim changes due to not hitting centerball and doing the prediction and correction properly to get where I want to go..
ive been focussing upon the spin and using it mainly so the CB can hit a rail and go where I want. to hit my CB target.. of course in doing that , at first I miss more because Im also learning to spin the ball and make th epocket and aim is affected..

usually when thinking of my target , its an oblong shape inthe track of the CB's expected travel route. I' ll give a little leeway to allow for speed differences. the expected direction of travel is a thought pattern the stopping point is a refined skill relating to top bottom and how hard the shot is..

Ill often look for my target position with some thought to the path of travel. If I'm crossing the line I need to be within, for the next shot, then stopping on a line is a lot harder than stopping somewhere along a line.. that affects my decisions.. I can often choose an easier target route by re-thinking what that next ball is and picking one where my CB will be following a slow tangent rather than intersecting the next shot line at 90 degrees.

I think its easy to get thinking too much and then you can come to the table and just look and feel a bit lost in it all.. Baby steps I guess..

I think I'm best to practice the curve shots on an empty table, in game play that can be challenging. I think
I can set up some drills and that may help me master it..

Most often Ill think well that's hard so I'll pick a bank shot to get out of the hook. being able to do successful curve shots with any degree of accuracy is a bit of a special skill..
 
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you are still at stage one in the game. you just need to play more and get better at the allowed rate your body and mind lets you.

get your stroke straight so the cueball and object ball goes where you wanted it to.

get your speed control in line.

crossing the shot line for your next ball is meaning less if you can put your cueball where you want it. and the line is only good if its the right line for the next balls not the next ball.
 
personally I have no interest in ratings, I'm too old to want to be a recognized champ, My only ambition is to get a little better than I am now. As I grow and get better, it is coming and I get satisfaction from that..
a lot of this discussion is also centered around people play pool, 8 or 9 ball on smaller tables, in snooker the strategy is different and the table is obviously a lot larger and pockets are small, so the accuracy is all relative. I play the smaller tables on occasion but prefer snooker.. most of the stuff in the thread applies to both at least to some degree.. running out on a snooker table is a thing to master for sure..
 
Here is Sharivari's presentation in favor of tight, careful position. I don't think there's anything new here, but it might be convincing to those who still feel accuracy is not important to position play.

 
Back then, I always picked a specific point on the table for my cue ball to end, and I was really good with speed control and precise cue ball control. The more I've learned about position play, the more careless I got. Principles like coming into the angle, staying a bit further away from the object ball, and playing for the biggest target zones just don't force you to be that accurate anymore. At one point, I didn't even choose a specific point anymore. Instead, I just concentrated on the line the cue ball has to take, while choosing a speed that won't leave me frozen to the rail.

But I've noticed that my speed control and precision cue ball control were suffering a lot from that. So, I decided to once again pick a specific point, while at the same time using all these principles. And it really did wonders for my position play. Nowadays, I am better than ever before in controlling the cue ball.

So, in my experience, combining both is the way to go. And of course, often I still sacrifice picking a specific point, when it will increase my shotmaking percentage.


Btw. Thanks for sharing the video Bob!
 
Back then, I always picked a specific point on the table for my cue ball to end, and I was really good with speed control and precise cue ball control. The more I've learned about position play, the more careless I got. Principles like coming into the angle, staying a bit further away from the object ball, and playing for the biggest target zones just don't force you to be that accurate anymore. At one point, I didn't even choose a specific point anymore. Instead, I just concentrated on the line the cue ball has to take, while choosing a speed that won't leave me frozen to the rail.

But I've noticed that my speed control and precision cue ball control were suffering a lot from that. So, I decided to once again pick a specific point, while at the same time using all these principles. And it really did wonders for my position play. Nowadays, I am better than ever before in controlling the cue ball.

So, in my experience, combining both is the way to go. And of course, often I still sacrifice picking a specific point, when it will increase my shotmaking percentage.


Btw. Thanks for sharing the video Bob!

Thanks for passing by and giving your experience!

I often feel like the Lone Ranger recommending spot shape. The spot is almost always inside the zone we are shooting for anyway so shooting for a spot tightens up the zone. Hitting the spot is much easier when the cue ball is in place from the last shot. I notice you mention getting too close as an issue. A mistake of mine for months. A shot that is pretty easy from twelve inches or further can be hard to see jammed up on a ball. For me sixteen to twenty-four inches is probably ideal. Not a must if on the line but still my favored distance area.

Great to see you here. I see you make the occasional pass, it would be nice to see more of you in these technical discussions.

Hu
 
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