Can someone explain why Earl used to just take one look and fire the ball in?

http://www.sfbilliards.com/PnB_aiming.pdf

3rd page.

you dont need to aim after playing for as long and as much as the pro's have. its all happening on a subconscious level. you only play in deadstroke when everything is being done by your subconscious. stop thinking so much and just SHOOT IT IN THE HOLE! lol

5th page, when aiming, Efren Reyes divides the object ball into 4 quarters and sights the edge of the cue ball to the point of aim, it sounds like he has been using CTE :p
 
He decides what he wants to do... Commits to it and does it.....No need for multiple warm ups, staring at the balls, or worrying about a piece of lint on the table.

Many amateurs could benefit from this type of routine.
 
No doubt that Earl is one of the greatest pool players in the world. But only God and Earl know how much work, sweat, and tears Earl put into his practice in the early years to develop that natural talent. He put the hours in and deserves the wins.
 
I'll anProbably a swer the question with a question. Both questions have the same answer.

Why does a dog lick his testicles?

LOL!, My first thought when I read the thread title- 'because he can!' We used to watch entire 'Earl' matches watching for the object ball to touch the rail on the way in. Buddy Hall was the same way. Object ball into the outside face, every time. Earl's accuracy is outstanding-that's why he wants to play on <4 inch pockets-but I couldn't say if it's all natural or years of hard work. I'm betting it's both.
 
There's a logical reaon for this........

I don't understand.

Earl has won 5 US Opens and 3 World 9-Ball championships.

He usually just takes one look at the shot, 2 practice strokes, and then pumps the ball straight into the middle of the pocket.

And he was one of the deadliest shooters in the history of pool for many years, and he hasn't fallen too much off his peak yet.

What type of aiming system is that supposed to be? He just looks, gets down, and fires. I don't understand.

Help me.[/QUOTe

In the preshot is where the aiming starts. This is where you see the shot for the first time. On the way down, depending if you have the eyes in the right position, we need to keep the eyes right all the way down to the shot.

Any drift to the right or left and the wrong eye might be trying to work like the dominant eye.

When you get down on the shot it is actually harder to keep the aiming lined up. The longer you stay down there the more chance there is you will adjust in the wrong way.

Earl seems to aim only with his right eye. But the same rule applies. The longer you stay down there on the shot the more chance you have that you might adjust in a way that screws up your aim.

Just the way it is.

Try it. Set up a 1/4 cut shot and just stay down real low for about a minute. You will see what I mean with your own eyes.

I always liked it when my opponent would stay down on a tough shot for a long time trying to aim it extra well. Soon they will miss one of these.
 
true that

watch a lot of the top snooker players & many 1 stroke and fire. Study long study wrong.

i spend most of my time aiming and getting a feel for the shot and position while i'm standing there, when i'm ready i get down, stroke twice and fire. if i stay down for any time longer, i usually get up and go through my PSR again.....either that or pass out:p
 
Then there is that guy that never has sense of humor

That's one of my strong points. I took it at face value since you didn't put any emoticons. :thumbup:

Just figured you were one of the many that don't like the guy.
 
That's one of my strong points. I took it at face value since you didn't put any emoticons. :thumbup:

Just figured you were one of the many that don't like the guy.


I find emoticons distracting. I try to use them only occasionally. I find them to give the effect that laughing hysterically at your own jokes does.
 
I don't understand.

Earl has won 5 US Opens and 3 World 9-Ball championships.

He usually just takes one look at the shot, 2 practice strokes, and then pumps the ball straight into the middle of the pocket.

And he was one of the deadliest shooters in the history of pool for many years, and he hasn't fallen too much off his peak yet.

What type of aiming system is that supposed to be? He just looks, gets down, and fires. I don't understand.

Help me.

i do the same thing just miss more
 
First of all, Earl has it all, talent, intensity and an incredible work attitude (it's a mystery to me how he does it, for example, I wish I were as physically fit, running four miles every day, but heck, for some reason my days all appear to have only 24 hours…).

Secondly, beware of concepts of "aiming". When I was a beginner, there was no one to learn from in my neck of the woods. I used side spin on most shots, and although I already used to get down after I'd decided what I'd do, I still needed to get a feel for a shot once I was bending over the table (performing "micro-adjustments", so to speak). I only took professional lessons after I'd won a first national title, and I can honestly say that my shot-making ability hasn't improved in the last quarter of a century. I still do best when I do something that admittedly has started to feel energy-consuming now that I'm getting older: get a feel for the shot, which means nothing less than stop after my practice strokes, focus back and forth between cue ball and object ball and ask myself the simple question if what I see feels right (although there's no need to put this in words, on the contrary). I do not remember missing a single shot in my whole life where/when I had the patience to truly do this (= make sure my subconscious was indeed fully satisfied, in a worst case scenario get up and start over again etc.). I'd go so far as to claim that I've made shots this way that not only I'm unable to do any other way (such as banks and kick shots in competitive situations with my back to the wall), but that I've never practiced and would not be able to repeat unless under sufficient pressure to do so.

Note I'm not talking about an aiming technique here: focussing my eyes back and forth between cue ball and object ball, and listening to my inner voice, I know if I'm e.g. under- or over-cutting, or dead-on. And I'm no different than anyone else in this respect. 25 years of teaching others has taught me that everyone can do this, that I'm not in any way, nor do anything special. Admittedly, it takes nerves to learn to trust in one's aim, because it's not a rational process. But ultimately we're always going to leave it to our subconscious (our "on-board computer" as I jokingly call it sometimes) to execute motion sequences. It's not the jockey who races: the mind will have to learn to leave that part to the body and thus our subconscious, no matter how one slices the matter. And it's useless to tinker with such a well-honed machine. Think about it: one that can walk a tightrope without further practice than the ability to walk itself - which like all the good stuff in life we didn't learn, but acquired. That's why the horse and jockey analogy should be taken with the appropriate grain of salt: the body is not a workhorse we beat into submission - the jockey, at best, is a passenger trying not to interfere.

Millions of years worth of evolution. If we handed control over to our minds, would we be able to get up from a chair or tie our shoes?

Now, one might assume (wrongly) that a pool player's stroke is "bodily execution" but that aiming is/should be in the realm of the mind. I've always doubted this, perhaps because I learnt it all "wrong". The mind is like the jockey, pointing out options, possibly precluding options. Preferably visualizing just one at a time, no more, no less - that feels right.

As a pool player, beware of the mind for all it does is crave for attention: it's constantly trying to claim praise for something it doesn't do. I do not remember mine shooting a single ball into a pocket for me ever.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti
 
Last edited:
First of all, Earl has it all, talent, intensity and an incredible work attitude (it's a mystery to me how he does it, for example, I wish I were as physically fit, running four miles every day, but heck, for some reason my days all appear to have only 24 hours…).

Secondly, beware of concepts of "aiming". When I was a beginner, there was no one to learn from in my neck of the woods. I used side spin on most shots, and although I already used to get down after I'd decided what I'd do, I still needed to get a feel for a shot once I was bending over the table (performing "micro-adjustments", so to speak). I only took professional lessons after I'd won a first national title, and I can honestly say that my shot-making ability hasn't improved in the last quarter of a century. I still do best when I do something that admittedly has started to feel energy-consuming now that I'm getting older: get a feel for the shot, which means nothing less than stop after my practice strokes, focus back and forth between cue ball and object ball and ask myself the simple question if what I see feels right (although there's no need to put this in words, on the contrary). I do not remember missing a single shot in my whole life where/when I had the patience to truly do this (= make sure my subconscious was indeed fully satisfied, in a worst case scenario get up and start over again etc.). I'd go so far as to claim that I've made shots this way that not only I'm unable to do any other way (such as banks and kick shots in competitive situations with my back to the wall), but that I've never practiced and would not be able to repeat unless under sufficient pressure to do so.

Note I'm not talking about an aiming technique here: focussing my eyes back and forth between cue ball and object ball, and listening to my inner voice, I know if I'm e.g. under- or over-cutting, or dead-on. And I'm no different than anyone else in this respect. 25 years of teaching others has taught me that everyone can do this, that I'm not in any way, nor do anything special. Admittedly, it takes nerves to learn to trust in one's aim, because it's not a rational process. But ultimately we're always going to leave it to our subconscious (our "on-board computer" as I jokingly call it sometimes) to execute motion sequences. It's not the jockey who races: the mind will have to learn to leave that part to the body and thus our subconscious, no matter how one slices the matter. And it's useless to tinker with such a well-honed machine. Think about it: one that can walk a tightrope without further practice than the ability to walk itself - which like all the good stuff in life we didn't learn, but acquired. That's why the horse and jockey analogy should be taken with the appropriate grain of salt: the body is not a workhorse we beat into submission - the jockey, at best, is a passenger trying not to interfere.

Millions of years worth of evolution. If we handed control over to our minds, would be be able to get up from a chair or tie our shoes?

Now, one might assume (wrongly) that a pool players stroke is "bodily execution" but that aiming is/should be in the realm of the mind. I've always doubted this, perhaps because I learnt it all "wrong". The mind is like the jockey, pointing out options, possibly precluding options. Preferably visualizing just one at a time, no more, no less - that feels right.

As a pool player, beware of the mind for all it does is crave for attention: it's constantly trying to claim praise for something it doesn't do. I do not remember mine shooting a single ball into a pocket for me ever.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti

shhh. don't give out too much valuable information for free...... we don't want the citizens to come back and start beating us...... what you've described is perfect and very valuable. .00001% of pool players will actually use what you said. The rest will forget it, or just fall back on their own methods of failure.
 
Should mention: of course I'll teach "aiming" if required. But I do believe there is something to try and do e.g. an exercise in trusting one's subconscious and let go. For example, it took me until 8:33 in the following video until I forgot myself and walked behind the shot line to look at the contact point on the object ball - something I usually do on every shot (I also simply believe it helps our on-board computer to have seen the lay of the balls from at least two perspectives - absorbing knowledge, not necessarily trying to achieve anything specific). Even though I'm walking more when I go and have a look, I'm quicker that way. To do what I described above takes time, i.e. may effectively slow down one's pace (as it admittedly does in the video). But it's good sometimes to exercise reminding oneself that our subconscious knows all there is to know: where the pocket is, where the cue and object balls are in relation to the pocket, where each and every part of our body is (along with the cue stick as its extension).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhSjBippNn8

Now, if one watches Earl, one will notice he only walks behind the shot line to look at the contact point on the object ball in certain situations, nothing to do with the difficulty, let alone a certain type of shot. He's that economic. Needless to say, economy is another sign of a great player. I have no doubt it's part of what won him his many titles.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti
 
Last edited:
C-man,
Are you kidding????

Earl spent UNBELIEVEABLE FREAKING HOURS to get where he is. He spent more than EVERYONE else (except maybe Efren..), so he's better than everyone else.

To explain him as "natural talent" is almost an insult to his incredible work ethic. JMO.

P.S. - when he explained how he learned to play, I was flabbergasted - he has the will to train.

I'm going to split the difference.

Without practice one can have awesome natural ability and be good but not great, combined with a work ethic they will become great. As an analogy I will use Ken Griffey Jr ... who used to take 1,000 swings in the cage every day before the rest of the team showed up for practice. Awesome genetics on both sides of the family ... but his work ethic took him to an entirely new level that his all star father never quite reached.

Another analogy is Darryl Strawberry. Had magnificent natural ability ... and ten cents worth of ethics.
 
When I play well, I play that way. Get into position and fire.
When I play bad, I play that way too! Then I have to slow down.
 
http://www.sfbilliards.com/PnB_aiming.pdf

3rd page.

you dont need to aim after playing for as long and as much as the pro's have. its all happening on a subconscious level. you only play in deadstroke when everything is being done by your subconscious. stop thinking so much and just SHOOT IT IN THE HOLE! lol

You understand. Thank you. Missing comes from a conflict of the conscious and subconscious minds

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2
 
Back
Top