I share your focus on accuracy, but to be fair, he hedged his statement pretty well: "it won't typically result in a drastic difference".
1 or 2 mm is 10% to 20% of 10 mm...? What does 10 mm represent?
pj
chgo
Cue Ball Frozen to the Short Rail
- Thread starter Tennesseejoe
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pj
chgo
OP, the shot at hand, will determine my vision choice.
Same as golf. You can't look at the ball and target at the same time. Pick a point about 12 inches beyond the cue ball that's on the line you want. There's always something there - a piece of lint, some kind of mark in the cloth, really anything. Now you have something realistic to aim at.
Forgot. It's patently always cue ball as I shoot... give or take human frailty...
In your drill the side balls on the foot spot are moved out a quarter tip (about 1/8 inch) for a total of 1/4 inch. Now shoot the head spot cue ball to the middle diamond and back through the 2 foot spot balls and to the cue tip. That's tough but you said it was.
I agree 100% with all of this, except the part of 10 to 20% error.
I certainly didn't mean to insinuate that's it's okay to be off 1 or 2 millimeters when striking the cb. I was just saying that it typically won't be as disastrous on most shots unless your cue is jacked-up/elevated, or unless there's quite a bit of distance between cb and ob.
A good goal is to always be able to strike the cb within 1mm of where you intend to strike it. That's accurate enough for just about any shot to turn out as expected. But being off by 2mm or more can definitely cause bad results, depending on the shot.
As far as percentage goes, not sure where the 10 to 20% comes from. I mean, if we call a perfect center-ball hit 100% accurate, going left or right decreases the percentage, making a 0% hit occur when your tip is more than half the ball's diameter away from center ball, causing the tip to miss the ball entirely. So, being off by 1mm in any direction from center would only be 3.5% off (1mm/28.575mm), which is 96.5% accurate. Being off by 2mm would be a 7% error, 93% accurate.
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Well Yogi says, "half the game is 85% mental.
I didn't crunch numbers, I figured ball parking would get the message across. Accuracy and error are just the other side of the same thing. Bottom line, if you can't hit the cue ball accurately you are going to lose a long session, even tournament match long, to somebody who can.
While sloppy hits will often pocket balls, they cause errors in shape. The more you have to do to get shape, the greater the error.
While I wasn't too old myself, I dominated one of the hot shooting youngsters that went on to become one of the greats. We were playing eightball on a bar table and aside from three golden breaks to start the match he never made a ball in about 12-15 games. The first three games were over when he broke. I won from the fourth game while letting him shoot once or twice most games. Note I said letting him shoot, I controlled every shot he took. He scared hell out of me with the three golden breaks in a row, especially since he called the pocket! His fifth shot was even scarier even though it hung in the pocket, eight rail zee kick! Had it not ran out of gas in the jaws it would have fallen. He had held his stick over the table for a couple minutes lining up the shot so it was no accident.
There is shape, then there is shape. Hit the cue ball where you intend to every time and notice shape get substantially tighter, especially on those critical multi-rail shots. On most shots shape is harder than pocketing the ball, especially playing spot shape. Spot shape, even tight area shape, isn't possible on many shots if you don't hit the cue ball where intended. Where the cue ball stops rather than pocketing the ball is usually the other end of the chain of events I talked about earlier. Pocketing the ball is just something that has to happen along the way if you played the rest of the shot right. Unless the shot was poorly planned it is impossible to miss a ball and get spot or very tight area shape.
Hu
Well Yogi says, "half the game is 85% mental.
Yogi was right! While I could have specified a tip size and ran the percentage out to ten or twelve decimal places my point would have remained the same.
Hu
...and I respect you opinion as well. ....However,
The notion of most (<700) striking the CB within 1mm of target point consistently is unlikely. Doing so with any level of pace on their stroke drops that to nearly possible. This is why even some of the strongest cueists on the planet advocate avoiding center CB play and opt to aim with some minor level of english.
It's not that I must strike centerball It's that I know where it is. My calculations tell me how I want the cueball rotating at impact. Through practice I hone the skill required to execute the shot as per the blue print.
The inner computer guy has me looking for the simple solution first. The closer I stay to center the fewer variables enter the calculations. I look for Natural first.
When I played over sixty hours a week I often used a little outside, most of the time in fact. However, my reason was dirty balls. If I absolutely couldn't have unexpected throw I used a lot of outside if at all possible.
PJ's sacred physics aren't in favor of those that want to hit to one side in case they don't hit accurately. Centerball has the greatest margin of error. Just because we have to use some numbers to post, lets say the "touch of" inside or outside is one mm. We will also specify that the shooter is quite good and hits within one millimeter of where they plan to. One millimeter off from centerball affects the cue ball's path less than one millimeter off when you are starting off one millimeter down the side. That is simply the nature of two arcs contacting each other.
A serious question while I have your attention: I have been curious for some time, when applying side, what happens to the "touch of"? Do you add or subtract it from the side desired? Ignore applying a touch of anything even though it is much harder to hit the point you are aiming at when applying side since we have to visualize our tip shape and real contact point? Just wondering, seems that we have to abandon a touch of anything when we need it most if it is to correct for contact errors.
Thanks for any assistance. I haven't had a chance to ask someone playing at a decent level and I have to admit the "touch of" question nags me a bit. I suspect that when somebody applies a "touch of" on most shots they apply it unintentionally on others but of course I have no proof of that.
Damn it Greg! That capitalized Natural got me. For some reason that old song by Mac Davis maybe, The Natural jumped in my head! Never was crazy about it, now it will be coming back to me unexpectedly the rest of the day! "By day I am Mr Natural just as straight as I can be. By night I am a junk food junkie, good Lord have mercy on me!"
Hu
PJ's sacred physics aren't in favor of those that want to hit to one side in case they don't hit accurately. Centerball has the greatest margin of error. Just because we have to use some numbers to post, lets say the "touch of" inside or outside is one mm. We will also specify that the shooter is quite good and hits within one millimeter of where they plan to. One millimeter off from centerball affects the cue ball's path less than one millimeter off when you are starting off one millimeter down the side. That is simply the nature of two arcs contacting each other.
A serious question while I have your attention: I have been curious for some time, when applying side, what happens to the "touch of"? Do you add or subtract it from the side desired? Ignore applying a touch of anything even though it is much harder to hit the point you are aiming at when applying side since we have to visualize our tip shape and real contact point? Just wondering, seems that we have to abandon a touch of anything when we need it most if it is to correct for contact errors.
Thanks for any assistance. I haven't had a chance to ask someone playing at a decent level and I have to admit the "touch of" question nags me a bit. I suspect that when somebody applies a "touch of" on most shots they apply it unintentionally on others but of course I have no proof of that.
Damn it Greg! That capitalized Natural got me. For some reason that old song by Mac Davis maybe, The Natural jumped in my head! Never was crazy about it, now it will be coming back to me unexpectedly the rest of the day! "By day I am Mr Natural just as straight as I can be. By night I am a junk food junkie, good Lord have mercy on me!"
Hu
I prefer the "flavor of". As in the metric system there are 10 flavors to a touch.
Vanilla is a flavor that allows staying under the radar.
One of my favorite under the radar handshakes had my opponent saying, "I didn't know you played that good." ☺
I prefer the "flavor of". As in the metric system there are 10 flavors to a touch.
Vanilla is a flavor that allows staying under the radar.
I have to admit, I like the simple easy shots. I had quite a few female companions of my opponent come up to me after a match, tears in their eyes. "That wasn't fair! You got all the easy shots."
"Yes ma'am, that is the way it goes sometimes."
There was a trick shooter for Remington Arms many years ago. He did most of his work with a .22 rifle at very close range, two feet or a bit more. When people asked why he didn't shoot further, "What, stretch the barrel on a good rifle?" Kinda how I feel about my pool cue.
I was always glad to see duck season open, still am!
Hu
Is this the song?
Can't really provide any insight into the whole "touch of" topic. I don't adhere to the method. I was simply playing the devil's advocate against playing center ball.
I personally don't fret over tip placement deviations on the CB as it relates to stroke mechanics. It's not that I believe I have flawless mechanics. I just know that it's the one aspect of my game I can count on to be reliable. I also tend to play with more english than you're average joe, so following the 'touch of' logic for sake of compensating center ball misfires is moot in nearly all cases. If and when I play center ball is generally to maintain the initial carom angle to the left or right, so they're struck with a level of force to avoid friction induced CB rotation. Any horizontal deviation of a center ball CB strike doesn't generally effect these shots negatively.
All that said, I think the 'touch of' argument is a sound one.
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I believe most good players probably don't pay much attention to exactly where their tip is going to strike the cb, meaning the actual contact point between tip and ball. Instead, they simply aim 1 tip or half a tip or a tip and a half from ccb, whatever distance looks right for the given shot.
It's easier to visualize aiming half a tip to the right of center (left side of tip will look lined up to ccb) than it is to estimate where the two curved surfaces will actual meet. The exact point of contact isn't all that useful anyway, except when you're getting close to the miscue limit.
So a "touch" of spin for me is aiming the center of my tip a couple of millimeters right or left. I don't know exactly where the tip hits the ball, because it doesn't matter. What matters is how it feels and looks and how the shot turns out. I relate that to what it looks like from the centerline of the shaft/stroke, not to the exact point of contact. But now I wonder, is this how most other players do it??
My method and theory is diametrically opposed. My Kicks Like A Mule Challenge demonstrates the effect of the slightest variation in the strike to the cueball. This can yield a Huge variation in the grouping down range.
My guess is that resistance to the knowledge often falls in the "Sour Grapes" realms. You know, if I can't do it it must be at least abnormal. Most likely impossible.