Snorks said:
The Pivot point is the key to understanding BHE for me. I can't wait to get home to try it out. Thanks for taking the first 5 minutes to explain it.
Interesting you say that Snorks. I was explaining BHE as an alignment method for playing with english to a couple of IPT players in Vegas and one of them kept insisting that the variables were too large. A couple of times he mentioned the variation in squirt with the amount of side.
A little later I realized that where he was getting confused was with the concept of pivot point. And that by knowing your pivot point for the speed of shot allows you to hit quite accurately the same contact point over moderate distances, regardless of whether you're pivoting for 1/8th tip or as wide on the CB as possible.
The pivot point is a kind of magic trick, but it has been under utilized by players because of the significant variation produced by throw with various spins, angles and speeds.
But now with the knowledge of these variables and how they influence throw available, the power of familiarity with your cue's pivot point can become a powerful tool in aligning for most shots played with English.
I honestly think that a reasonably skilled and accurate player who focuses on learning these variables, could within a year or so, be playing most english shots with more confidence than most of the top pros.
The real beauty of the system I think, is that it allows you to align to shots as if you were potting all of them with natural follow. By doing this over and over again, your aim and alignment for natural follow shots will become highly accurate and almost instantly recognizable. Whereas, if you have to learn to feel the angles intuitively for each type of speed and spin, there is a tendency to get a little confused about what is actually aligned to what...and this makes consistant potting hard when a player cannot slide into the zone.
There are adjustments to learn, such as how much to shift the bridge hand to move the aim to the edge of a pocket, but with practice these adjustments become more and more accurate. It is based more on a systematic knowledge that feel, so it's not gonna dissappear all of a sudden.
The only thing that can go wrong is the feel for aligning for a medium speed natural rolling pot, but as this is the shot you are aligning for almost 100% of the time, it becomes deeply ingrained.
I'm pretty sure you'll find this method will work very well for you on a few shots straight away, and that the others you will become more familiar with as you continue to practice the method and understand the variables.
One by one you'll add new shots that your are confident of executing to your game.
Let me know your results.
Colin