Fun Pool Practice????

[RussPrince]

Some advice I can give to anyone about drills is this. You should drill at least a little every time you practice. Figure out what kind of "attention span" you have for drills and try to do some. The point is to set up a shot (any type of shot) you want to work on and set it up exactly the same every time. Each time you attempt it give it 100% of your effort, concentration, and pre-shot routine. Never slop or bang them in, pretend each one is the final ball in a major tournament for 50 grand. If you want to make it fun role play a little and try to think of yourself in that exact situation and you may even begin to sweat a little. You can learn a lot even from the most basic shots this way.

The main point about drills is this. A miss when you drill this way is feedback and a chance to genuinely improve. If you miss a drill shot you get the general idea why you missed and you can try it again with adjustments until it feels better and you get improved results. A miss when your banging balls around is a lost opportunity to learn something new.

A game you can play to mix drills in with banging around is this. Bang balls around giving it your full effort on every shot. If you miss something that you genuinely gave your honest best at and still missed, re-set up the shot as best you can and keep practicing it until you can make it 3 or 4 times in a row. Then proceed to play until you miss again. This goes for cueball control as well. Cueball didn't go where you wanted? Try again until you get it right...

When you practice this way you can actually see yourself improving nearly overnight. And yes that is a lot of fun... The only part that sucks is when your league rating starts going up too high because you're improving too much.

 

[iusedtoberich]

I like doing drills. But, I always keep score. To my personality, keeping score is key. It keeps my attention and keeps the pressure on.

 

[alstl]

Equal offense.

 

[RussPrince]

10 minutes of quality practice is better than 3 hours or sloppy play for fun.

This is not only true, but playing sloppy for 3 hours can (and probably will) make your game worse.

 

[prad]

Ok....I know that is probably an oxymoron as doing drills over and over is never fun, though I am sure some folks love drills. I am wondering if anyone has any really fun ways to practice without the repetitive drills. I have tried 14.1 but I am struggling with the little nuances of that but it is fun and as my skill level grows that will be my practice game of choice I am sure. I don't like the ghost because I tend to spend more time breaking than playing....that dang ghost kicks my butt and I typically get fed up. I even made up a game, at least it is my opinion I made it up, where you try to sink all the balls in the least amount of strokes.....like golf but on the table.

Do any of you have some fun games to play for practice that are good for all levels of play?

I am sorry in advance if this has been posted previously.

you can play either with 9 balls or 15 balls, the objective is to "scratch" all the 15 balls by using any one of them as the "cue ball" and using the "cue ball" as an object ball. You can break the rack by using cue ball but after that you shoot any of the 15 balls as "cue ball". If you happen to pot the cue ball, just put it in the spot and continue.