Do you use an aiming system or go by feel?

Do you use an aiming system or go by feel?

  • I always go by feel

    Votes: 153 53.5%
  • Usually by feel, with aiming systems for hard shots

    Votes: 68 23.8%
  • Usually with aiming systems, by feel for easy shots

    Votes: 24 8.4%
  • I always use aiming systems

    Votes: 26 9.1%
  • I just hit balls very hard and hope they sink

    Votes: 15 5.2%

  • Total voters
    286
Oh God, not: "you didn't reeeallly try" again.

I'll clue you in, here's what's really going on: CTE mis-aligns you.

So what happens is that as you're pulling the trigger your brain is screaming "NO WAY, JOSE!!!" and you end up shooting with a big ol' swarp as your brain tries to make a mid-stroke correction and save your body (and bankroll) from a suicide mission.

You're welcome.

Lou Figueroa
reeeally tried

I really wonder about this.
This is something related to what John and I have been bantering about.
From shooting thousands ( maybe HUNDREDS of thousands of balls ), we have that mental picture of the two balls colliding ( thick or thin or even the cueball path after collision ) .
So, no matter what aiming system you use ( be it tip aiming or ball aiming ), you will still have that mental picture of the cue ball's path to the ob and the two balls colliding ( my contention ) .
EVEN the pros jump up after KNOWING the hit is wrong.

But, if CTE does not involve any visualization of the two balls colliding, i stand corrected.
 
John,

That video 'evidence' would very most probably never be allowed entered in a court of law.

AND what you did with it was sort of like what statisticians can do with 'statistics'. Which is basically make them seem to say what ever they want them to seem to say.

Yet you want to refer to it as 'evidence'.

Could you definitively tell from that 'evidence' if Stan hit the cue ball 2 to 3 millimeters off center in either direction.

A truthful answer is... No, one can not tell that hardly at all, much less definitively. Hence... no evidence.

Best Wishes.

If so then why did you, and Patrick and others jump on Dan White's nuts when he found that Stan had swooped on one shot that wasn't even a CTE aimed shot???

All of you hypocritically love to use video WHEN it suits your purpose but you dismiss it when it doesn't. You're right, video done with consumer cameras and in a fairly casual way can't really show the finer points. But what it can and does show are the results.

You keep harping on the multi-way shot demonstrations as if they are simply NOT possible without some kind of "adjustment". Your premise is that either the shooter is flat out lying about what they claim to be doing or they are completely unaware of what they are doing.

BUT you conveniently ignore the results.

If we go from a presumption of truth, that the shooter is being 100% truthful about the method they are using, then it follows that the results matter because they can be repeated with a high degree of consistency. So EVEN IF the shooter's brain was somehow "adjusting" to the right shot line without the shooter being aware of it that is by itself an absolutely incredible phenomena that a person can follow a set of instructions and those actions then somehow allow the subconscious to pick out the right shot line for one, two, three and four rail banks consistently.

So I can allow that MAYBE this is true. Why not? Since I don't know YET the exact mechanical reason why CTE works, i.e. the 3-d spatial relationship between the eyes-body-and-cueball that brings the shooter in so tight and to the actual shot line time after time - I can entertain the possibility that CTE allows the right brain to analyze the shot and put the shooter into a body space where the left brain says, ok I got it let's do this...

If so then it's incredibly wonderful that a fixed method can lead the shooter to this point OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER consistently no matter how "tough" the shot looks.

And if not, if there is a mechanical reason why this method consistently brings the shooter to the shot then even better. Because then we know that it's not grey matter that is the arbiter of the final step of putting the bridge hand down and addressing the cue ball. Then we know it's cogs and wheels and that is a foundation that can be built on with a solid understanding of the mechanics.

My OPINION as an experienced user is that it's mechanical. Using CTE does not feel like feel at all to me.
 
I really wonder about this.
This is something related to what John and I have been bantering about.
From shooting thousands ( maybe HUNDREDS of thousands of balls ), we have that mental picture of the two balls colliding ( thick or thin or even the cueball path after collision ) .
So, no matter what aiming system you use ( be it tip aiming or ball aiming ), you will still have that mental picture of the cue ball's path to the ob and the two balls colliding ( my contention ) .
EVEN the pros jump up after KNOWING the hit is wrong.
But, if CTE does not involve any visualization of the two balls colliding, i stand corrected.
From my limited experience, I still get the visualization of the two balls colliding.
Except when using CTE as an aiming tool, the collision that is visualized will be dead on the shot line and not in a spot requiring guesswork.
Poor stroking, poor alignment, or poor shot perception, or some other stance, bridge related issue are the reasons for missing while using CTE.
Otherwise, everyone would make a zillion shots in a row, never miss, and clean out everyone. And we know that's not gonna' happen.
Just my opinion. :smile:
 
I really wonder about this.
This is something related to what John and I have been bantering about.
From shooting thousands ( maybe HUNDREDS of thousands of balls ), we have that mental picture of the two balls colliding ( thick or thin or even the cueball path after collision ) .
So, no matter what aiming system you use ( be it tip aiming or ball aiming ), you will still have that mental picture of the cue ball's path to the ob and the two balls colliding ( my contention ) .
EVEN the pros jump up after KNOWING the hit is wrong.

But, if CTE does not involve any visualization of the two balls colliding, i stand corrected.

My experience is that once I am down on the shot after having used CTE to get there then I can more easily see the tangent line and thus decide what speed and spin to use to play shape. So on some level yes I "see" a collision but ONLY after getting down on the shot line CTE directed me to.
 
I really don't care and I'm not complaining.

I read them for a while, then I started to find most of them uninteresting. When I made this thread, I didn't know aiming systems were so controversial. I already made my mind about this matter, mostly after reading a good bunch of replies here. The debate itself doesn't interest me.

Quick to jump to conclusions are you?

Hi Sam,

Not really conclusions for John here, but decisions based on conjecture.

I'd be interested in just what your decision is, but perhaps you should PM me with that if you're willing to let me know.

I only watched a bit of your video. From that, I would advise that you try to control the cue ball better. I don't mean ability wise as you draw the ball well with a good stroke. I mean with more finesse. I think that will come with time. You look like you're off to a relatively good start.

Enjoy YOUR Journey,
Rick

PS If you ever have any questions feel free to PM me & I'll answer as best I can or tell you that I don't & perhaps you should ask so & so.
 
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As for me, it is working out very very well.
All my life (and that's a long time too) I've had a beautiful smooth stroke, good stance, good follow through, and no problems with "dogging it" in the clutch. Yet, I consistently missed balls that should've gone down. My percentage of kills was wayyy low.
Even the greats Wimpy Lassiter, Danny Jones, and Joe Cosgrove could not figure it out.
And then about a year or so ago...I stumbled into this Stan Shuffet CTE method of finding and getting dead on that shot line. Now, I'm playing pretty good.
Someone said "Pool is an outcome based game...the ball either goes in the hole or it doesn't". Who cares WHY or HOW.....as long as there is a tool available that will allow the consistency to jump up in a relatively short period of study (which is at about the 5th grade level)....I'm all in for that deal.
If you hate it, think it is insane, think people who use it and get results are liars, cheats, snake oil salesmen, dumbasses, chumps, fools, whatever........why don't you just FORGET ABOUT IT AND LEAVE IT ALONE? Nobody is forcing you to fool around with it. If you bought the DVD's and it didn't work for you, just send the damn things back and stop the whining and moaning.
Contrary to what you may think, you're not any 'crusaders for justice' on a mission to expose those who would ruin a pool shooter's life. You're just pool shooters like everyone else and nothing else.
By the way, I never met Stan Shuffett or the John Barton fellow, but if they ever have one of those pure shot making contests with Shuffett against whoever steps up....I am in for about $500 on the CTE side of the action. (and that's a lot of money for an old retired, worn out, broke ass bum, like me). Sounds like fun.
But I'll gamble on it. Deal the cards....:wink:
Flash

More great testimony from flash - i don't remember you responding to my post to you in a different thread, so maybe you missed it, but you said CTE turned you from a good short stop to a much better player - do you have 'before and after' video of you playing? That sort of thing is great evidence and would go a long way to shutting the haters up.

Yours in anticipation etc.
 
Neither do the other two. They do, however, know how to sell their merchandise to unsuspecting players like Cookie Monster.
And, after all, isn't that what it's all about? :smile:

You think it's all about sales?

No DVD about CTE would even EXIST if it were not for the knockers berating Stan Shuffett mercilessly when he was simply part of the CTE discussion on AZB.

After being told he is delusional among other vicious things Stan decided to put it all on video as best he could. Yes he sells the DVD but he isn't getting rich off this compared to amount of time in with CTE, the amount it cost him to produce it, and the amount of time he has put in with all the support videos and demonstration videos on YouTube. For anyone with half a brain who is GENUINELY interested Stan pretty much gives away everything one needs to know about CTE/ProOne for FREE in his YouTube videos.

There is something like 2 or 3 hours of information on each DVD. $40 is a tiny sum for that information. Almost everyone here thinks nothing of spending $50 in table time and food at the pool room in ONE NIGHT. So you spend what you would in one night and get a method that can change your pool game for the better dramatically for life and that's seen as a problem?

Y'all are way to cynical. The knockers CREATED the DVDs. So if you want to now complain about the fact that there is a CTE Dvd for sale complain to them.

Or maybe you think Stan should have done all that work for free?

Dave "Cookie Man" is a damn good player. I am SURE he is better than a good 90% of the members of AZB and probably better than most of the knockers. So it's awfully silly of you to think that he is some rube being fleeced by a slick carny with some sleight of hand.

The fact that CTE knockers don't treat those who use CTE with success as intelligent people who are fully capable of assessing and benchmarking their own skill level is really ignorant on your part. Conversations go much better when both sides assume that the other side is an intelligent human being. Operating from a presumption that a person who claims a benefit from CTE must be an idiot, dumb, not self aware, and gullible only leads to arrogant and ignorant statements that are not true from the knocker.
 
JB Cases:
...video done with consumer cameras and in a fairly casual way can't really show the finer points. But what it can and does show are the results.
But not how the results are obtained (as you've been told for years) - all we have for that is your verbal description of your impression of how you're aiming. But it's that impression that's being questioned - "it sure seems to me like it's totally objective" isn't evidence.

If you don't get this in the next 10 years or so I'm giving you detention.

pj
chgo
 
You think it's all about sales?

No DVD about CTE would even EXIST if it were not for the knockers berating Stan Shuffett mercilessly when he was simply part of the CTE discussion on AZB.

After being told he is delusional among other vicious things Stan decided to put it all on video as best he could. Yes he sells the DVD but he isn't getting rich off this compared to amount of time in with CTE, the amount it cost him to produce it, and the amount of time he has put in with all the support videos and demonstration videos on YouTube. For anyone with half a brain who is GENUINELY interested Stan pretty much gives away everything one needs to know about CTE/ProOne for FREE in his YouTube videos.

There is something like 2 or 3 hours of information on each DVD. $40 is a tiny sum for that information. Almost everyone here thinks nothing of spending $50 in table time and food at the pool room in ONE NIGHT. So you spend what you would in one night and get a method that can change your pool game for the better dramatically for life and that's seen as a problem?

Y'all are way to cynical. The knockers CREATED the DVDs. So if you want to now complain about the fact that there is a CTE Dvd for sale complain to them.

Or maybe you think Stan should have done all that work for free?

Dave "Cookie Man" is a damn good player. I am SURE he is better than a good 90% of the members of AZB and probably better than most of the knockers. So it's awfully silly of you to think that he is some rube being fleeced by a slick carny with some sleight of hand.

The fact that CTE knockers don't treat those who use CTE with success as intelligent people who are fully capable of assessing and benchmarking their own skill level is really ignorant on your part. Conversations go much better when both sides assume that the other side is an intelligent human being. Operating from a presumption that a person who claims a benefit from CTE must be an idiot, dumb, not self aware, and gullible only leads to arrogant and ignorant statements that are not true from the knocker.

If the cookie man is a good player, let him show us. If he's a good player now, he was a good player before CTE. I've yet to see a smoking gun with aiming systems, not even the merest puff.

When someone actually shows me the money, I'm all over it. Until then...
 
But not how the results are obtained (as you've been told for years) - all we have for that is your verbal description of your impression of how you're aiming. But it's that impression that's being questioned - "it sure seems to me like it's totally objective" isn't evidence.

If you don't get this in the next 10 years or so I'm giving you detention.

pj
chgo

I have said a million times that CTE does not feel subjective. It is an OBJECTIVE way to align to the cueball and get into shooting position.

You're right there is no way to know what is really going on inside a person's head.

Ever heard of the memory palace?

It is a mnemonic technique used to remember incredible amounts of facts. Such as the order of a randomly shuffled deck of cards, or two or three or more. How to remember a long string of numbers, lists of words, etc...

How it works is that a person will construct a palace, house, room with objects inside it that will be associated with the items needing to be memorized. This all happens inside the brain so no one can say that this is what is ACTUALLY happening. But the fact is that every person who finishes high at the top of memory contests uses this technique.

I use it to remember passwords, pin numbers and dates and phone numbers.

The results are undeniable. In your world you would say well it must be some sort of subconscious thing but those who use it do it very consciously and report that they literally see themselves walking through their memory palace and recalling facts that they associated with objects in that palace of the mind.

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/23/134003962/Moonwalking-With-Einstein

So respectfully, who are you to tell me what is happening in my mind? Just like these guys get the job done of memorizing and recalling data in minutes those of who use CTE are fully aware of what we are doing when we use it.
 
If the cookie man is a good player, let him show us. If he's a good player now, he was a good player before CTE. I've yet to see a smoking gun with aiming systems, not even the merest puff.

When someone actually shows me the money, I'm all over it. Until then...

Lot's of us were good players before learning to aim using systems. We are better players now after learning them. The amount of improvement will vary from person to person but the point is that aiming by itself isn't going to improve a person's form, it won't improve their pattern play, it won't improve their judgement of speed and spin, it won't improve their stroke (except perhaps to remove body english caused by aiming wrong),

Where they can see improvement in those areas by virtue of using an aiming system is that once they are confident in the aim that it is true each time they go down on the shot then they can spend more focus on the execution side. PLUS more table time spent on aiming also helps them to refine the other aspects of the game.

As I mentioned earlier, knowing the true shot line allows me to "see" the tangent line correctly and that allows me to play better shape and stay in line more. That is a byproduct of aiming accurately.

And let's be damn honest here, if ANYONE showed you a video of them playing at a certain level and then claimed they used CTE and four months later showed you a video of themselves playing a much higher level you still wouldn't believe that CTE had anything to do with it. Treating everyone as if they are lying though is simply ludicrous.
 
If so then why did you, and Patrick and others jump on Dan White's nuts when he found that Stan had swooped on one shot that wasn't even a CTE aimed shot???

All of you hypocritically love to use video WHEN it suits your purpose but you dismiss it when it doesn't. You're right, video done with consumer cameras and in a fairly casual way can't really show the finer points. But what it can and does show are the results.

You keep harping on the multi-way shot demonstrations as if they are simply NOT possible without some kind of "adjustment". Your premise is that either the shooter is flat out lying about what they claim to be doing or they are completely unaware of what they are doing.

BUT you conveniently ignore the results.

If we go from a presumption of truth, that the shooter is being 100% truthful about the method they are using, then it follows that the results matter because they can be repeated with a high degree of consistency. So EVEN IF the shooter's brain was somehow "adjusting" to the right shot line without the shooter being aware of it that is by itself an absolutely incredible phenomena that a person can follow a set of instructions and those actions then somehow allow the subconscious to pick out the right shot line for one, two, three and four rail banks consistently.

So I can allow that MAYBE this is true. Why not? Since I don't know YET the exact mechanical reason why CTE works, i.e. the 3-d spatial relationship between the eyes-body-and-cueball that brings the shooter in so tight and to the actual shot line time after time - I can entertain the possibility that CTE allows the right brain to analyze the shot and put the shooter into a body space where the left brain says, ok I got it let's do this...

If so then it's incredibly wonderful that a fixed method can lead the shooter to this point OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER consistently no matter how "tough" the shot looks.

And if not, if there is a mechanical reason why this method consistently brings the shooter to the shot then even better. Because then we know that it's not grey matter that is the arbiter of the final step of putting the bridge hand down and addressing the cue ball. Then we know it's cogs and wheels and that is a foundation that can be built on with a solid understanding of the mechanics.

My OPINION as an experienced user is that it's mechanical. Using CTE does not feel like feel at all to me.

Firstly, I have been telling others that that type of video can neither prove nor disprove certain types of things for quite some time now. SO... I am not being hypocritical.

Perhaps you have been at this TOO long as you seem to have a penchant for pigeon holing everyone into the same group of pigeons just because they are not the same birds of your feather.

That said, Dan did show in that video that Stan's stroke was not straight. It is what it is & nothing more & may be able to be expanded on or not or if so refuted.

The rest of your post here makes sense even if it is a bit biased to one side. Also it does not sound like you, John.

Best Wishes.
 
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As for me, it is working out very very well.
All my life (and that's a long time too) I've had a beautiful smooth stroke, good stance, good follow through, and no problems with "dogging it" in the clutch. Yet, I consistently missed balls that should've gone down. My percentage of kills was wayyy low.
Even the greats Wimpy Lassiter, Danny Jones, and Joe Cosgrove could not figure it out.
And then about a year or so ago...I stumbled into this Stan Shuffet CTE method of finding and getting dead on that shot line. Now, I'm playing pretty good.
Someone said "Pool is an outcome based game...the ball either goes in the hole or it doesn't". Who cares WHY or HOW.....as long as there is a tool available that will allow the consistency to jump up in a relatively short period of study (which is at about the 5th grade level)....I'm all in for that deal.
If you hate it, think it is insane, think people who use it and get results are liars, cheats, snake oil salesmen, dumbasses, chumps, fools, whatever........why don't you just FORGET ABOUT IT AND LEAVE IT ALONE? Nobody is forcing you to fool around with it. If you bought the DVD's and it didn't work for you, just send the damn things back and stop the whining and moaning.
Contrary to what you may think, you're not any 'crusaders for justice' on a mission to expose those who would ruin a pool shooter's life. You're just pool shooters like everyone else and nothing else.
By the way, I never met Stan Shuffett or the John Barton fellow, but if they ever have one of those pure shot making contests with Shuffett against whoever steps up....I am in for about $500 on the CTE side of the action. (and that's a lot of money for an old retired, worn out, broke ass bum, like me). Sounds like fun.
But I'll gamble on it. Deal the cards....:wink:
Flash

Thank you. That's exactly the same way I feel about it.

I really don't care and I'm not complaining.

I read them for a while, then I started to find most of them uninteresting. When I made this thread, I didn't know aiming systems were so controversial. I already made my mind about this matter, mostly after reading a good bunch of replies here. The debate itself doesn't interest me.

Quick to jump to conclusions are you?

Nonsense, you JUST said a few posts above this one that you were taking a jab at the eternal debate when you made the poll. Don't pretend innocence now and act like you didn't know it's not a controversial topic.

But even so why do you care? So what if the conversation/debate/argument goes on forever...turn the channel off and don't open the thread if you got your fill of information.

I offered you my personal experience as have others. If your quest to become pro speed is sincere you will take that information and use it wisely. If not you will disregard it and someday you will find out that it could have saved you a lot of time during your journey.
 
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