Thank you so much for posting. For some reason, I'd played for years and never considered fractional aiming. Ridiculous really. Someone showed me half, quarter, and 3\4 a while ago, and I was blown away. I tried to memorize various half ball hits around the table. This will help with that, and obviously expand it beyond half ball. Thanks again.
Diagram for fractional aiming.
- Thread starter JoeyA
- Start date
Fractional ball aiming can be very effective, but it's only as accurate as you are at determining where, in that ball 5 or 7 feet away, is the 1/4, or 3/8, etc,,, part of the object ball, and then hitting it. If by chance you can do that, you can use the side of your shaft to aim for the odd fractions like 1/8, 3/8, 5/8 and 7/8.
One way to work on fractional aiming is to cut out angles from paper that correspond to the fractional hits.For example you could make a 30-60-90 triangle from an 11x17 piece of paper and then place it on the table to see if a particular shot was half ball. Here is an example in the middle of the table where no landmarks are convenient:
![CropperCapture[4].png](https://forums.azbilliards.com/data/attachments/337/337251-035ba39f0854481b6e2f609d5b45ccbc.jpg?hash=A1ujnwhUSB "CropperCapture[4].png")
The point of the triangle is at the center of the ghost ball. There is the small problem of accounting for throw, but that can be taken care of by lining the triangle up for a different part of the pocket (or slightly outside the pocket for some cases).
The point of the triangle is at the center of the ghost ball. There is the small problem of accounting for throw, but that can be taken care of by lining the triangle up for a different part of the pocket (or slightly outside the pocket for some cases).
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The problem remains that even 1/16 is not a fine enough division for some common shots.
In the new book "Poolology", Brian Crisp has laid out what you would need to know to figure out the fractional ball aim for 99% of balls on the table. He has it figured out that the OB has a numerical value depending on location of it with respect to the diamonds and then the line through the CB and OB to the diamonds is the alignment value. From that information, it's a simple fraction. Spend the $10 for the ebook and see it for yourself.
Oh I agree Bob. I don't even use fractional aiming because I can't, like most people I expect, see, aim, and hit a fractional part of a sphere at varying distances with acceptable consistency. It's too iffy, and I don't trust it. My point was, IF that fellow can do all of that, he can use Center ball, and half ball in conjunction with the center or side of his shaft to arrive at approximate smaller fractions, which aren't totally accurate either. I work in mechanical engineering with CAD systems all the time and have laid out varying shots all over the pool table and you are correct, in order to aim with fractions for all shots you need smaller increments than 1/8 ball hits.
For longer shots, even 1/16ths is not fine enough. Here are the exact angles for all the 1/16th hits on the nine ball. None of them gets the ball into the upper left corner.
![CropperCapture[5].png](https://forums.azbilliards.com/data/attachments/337/337269-cf6199d38378e5e37f86b81fd30f5ae4.jpg?hash=z2GZ04N45e "CropperCapture[5].png")
Very similar to my findings as well, and you can do it all over the table.
Your diagram also shows a shot to the left rail that is over 90deg. Is that a -1/16th ball shot?
We're good to go......................thanks.
Just so that most of you may know; I wanted to provide some additional fractional aiming information to one of my students besides what I already know. He was using ghost ball as his primary method of aiming and having very mixed results.
I've continued to believe that each of us has a preferred way of aiming/seeing things and fractional aiming seems to have had a positive impact on my student. I have shown him multiple aiming systems and this one seems to have lit a fire under him and given him some additional perspectives AND FOCUS that he didn't have with ghost ball.
Thanks to everyone for the contributions in this thread. It is far more than I hoped for!
JoeyA
Just so that most of you may know; I wanted to provide some additional fractional aiming information to one of my students besides what I already know. He was using ghost ball as his primary method of aiming and having very mixed results.
I've continued to believe that each of us has a preferred way of aiming/seeing things and fractional aiming seems to have had a positive impact on my student. I have shown him multiple aiming systems and this one seems to have lit a fire under him and given him some additional perspectives AND FOCUS that he didn't have with ghost ball.
Thanks to everyone for the contributions in this thread. It is far more than I hoped for!
JoeyA
The angles are drawn assuming the cue ball is going straight up the table, so it's only 0/16. You can make that shot but you have to hit it about 1/32 and use a lot of outside spin. The diagram assumes no throw.