Half-ball Break Shot Reference Lines

CueAndMe

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Although I believe the cuetable is a touch short (about a ball and a half width-wise if I remember correctly) of being perfectly scaled down from a 50" by 100" full size table, the following might be useful to those of us who often miss pocketing our break shots. It may not be a cure, but it may help.

I've drawn 30 degree shot lines for a few high and low reference side-of-the-rack break shots, so we can estimate where we may want our cueballs to be in order to have an easy half-ball hit. Or, knowing the reference lines for these shots, we can estimate how far off of a perfect half-ball shot we are.

CueTable Help



Here are a couple of beneath the rack reference shots:

CueTable Help

 
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You know, Bluepepper, to be honest the best thing I've found for making your break balls consistently is to focus on making the ball and not focus on breaking the rack. What I mean by that is I used to get up to shoot break shots and when I was shooting the ball my attention was on the break. After many headaches I went back to the basics of pool which are

1. Decide what you want to accomplish
2. Decide on what english, top spin, back spin, no spin, whatever it's going to take to accomplish this feat
3. Get down and set up the way you decide you would and then turn all your attention to making the ball. If you shoot it the way you decided then the break will happen, you just have to trust yourself.

Once I went back to the 1,2,3's of pool my percentage of making the break balls rose dramatically.
MULLY
 
I totally agree with you Mully. Thanks for the advice. I wish I could say that pocketing the typical break shot, even without the rack there, is a sure thing for me. So this is just an attempt at recognizing the shot itself for what it is. If I know it's a half ball hit, then I can do all that you suggest and then just aim with confidence straight at the edge of the ball.
 
BP is on to something here IMO. I have been working on just what you have posted here. It started when I played a friend of mine and we started talking about systems and aiming after I missed the same shot 3 times in one set. He asked where my aim point is?....I said I don't use points, just feel the shot, which got a laugh......then I laughed when I asked him if he used aiming systems:D

Then we started working on a few things we both use, one of which is segmenting the OB.....and the "tips" aiming he uses....which is just like segmenting the OB but using tip widths.

I'm still new with using this, but it does work for me when I can't see the pocket on the shot (or backcut)<<< my life long nemesis!

The ball segmenting thing over at cuetable is a great tool for this.

G.
 
Along the same lines of what Gerry was talking about, I posted the way I found most helpful to me in terms of aiming spots on the OB. Its a lot less typing if I refer to the link. The entire link is very interesting, I believe my post is #3. If you take a minute to read what has helped me, and give it a try, I think you may be pleasantly surprised on the improvement you will realize on shotmaking. It definitely increased my confidence.

I hope it can help others, here it is ....

http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=72553
 
I always try to play my break shots on thre correct side of the table which is the left side for right handers. this makes it easy to get to a lot more break sh
I also like to have the cue ball close to the OBbecause it improves accuracyinally, I like 60-75 degree cut. When you shoot these shots most of the energy usedgoes intoi the rack
 
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