A rule to follow in any situation is that you want to have the most effective break shot that will spread the balls. The problem with many players is that they think "spread the balls" means splatter them all over the place. Spread the balls means that you want to contact the stack, and afterwards not have anything touching or - no clusters.
Preferably, you do not want anything going down into the kitchen. It is wise to try and keep the balls up table, that way you have more break ball and key ball options. If you smash the hell out of everything, I believe that you limit those options.
You basically want to keep everything up-table - as Jack Colavita does in this video when shooting a dead ball out of the pack -
Colavita Vs Martin - 1989 US Open 4/7
But when you are behind behind the stack, be it a break shot or separating clusters, you have to use extra care and precision as Ray does here with this cluster of balls
Colavita Vs Martin 1989 US Open 2/7
Ray separated the balls, but he kept the where they needed to be, or where they would be most useful for him.
The same is also evident with the way Caras goes into the balls at about 1:15 in this clip -
Caras Vs Mosconi
Nobody goes for behind the stack break shots like Efren, and you can see that in any of his matches - here is one example -
Efren Reyes Vs Ralf Souquet 2000 US Open at about 26:00
Efren usually taps a few out off the initial break, then gets above the balls and uses a secondary break ball to split everything up and keep it around the rack area.
Also, from the same match, fast forward to 32:00 and watch Ralf deal with a behind the stack break ball using a rail - watch Ralf's accuracy and speed control - absolutely flawless. None of the balls go past the side pockets.
Watch Niels Feijen at 40:15 in this video -
Niels Feijen 130 Ball Run DCC - flawless control - and only 1 ball goes past the side pockets.
In contrast, I tend to hit my break shots with a bit more blast - and just because the balls are spread open wide, you can still run into problems - as is evident in this run at 3:10 -
51 Ball run - I get into trouble during that particular rack by having to navigate my cue ball from one end of the table to the other. You will see that on the next break shot, I try to keep everything in that one half of the table. I think if you keep the balls in one end of the table, you won't have to have your cue ball travel very much, and when you do that, you avoid positional errors and longer shots.
Thanks for the topic, it sheds some light one of the areas of my game that needs
a lot of improvement.
