Years ago in my prime I would shoot at anything I could see in hopes I would make it and put a little fear in my opponent.
Sorry, Patrick, but how does that answer my question of why not a stun shot? Doesn't a stun shot accomplish that?
That doesn't always work out so well, because as I'm sure you know, the 1 ball can easily wind up on the top rail, which is why it's important to be able to read how the table is breaking from various angles before deciding on a particular break style.
I believe he means that since the CB rebounds toward the breaker it takes a little forward rotation to counteract ("brake") that momentum.
LOL. No. Not buying it. You can certainly stop the cue ball with a stun hit or even a tip below center in a very respectable area. I do it all the time. You don't need a tip of top spin to break the momentum. It might work, but it's not needed. And at that speed, a stroke error on the top spin end will lose the cb forward.
I don't have an opinion about it - just trying to interpret for you what Dave probably meant.
Oh ya definitely... I remember playing one of the young guns in league a couple years ago, and of course I'm living off my legend from back when my eyes were decent. I totally screwed up a shot and fluked a crazy a safety, but sold it like it was planned. The kid was crushed and I cruised to a win.
For a solid rack and a stun shot, the cue ball will bounce back off the rack farther than the center of the table. Usually you can see that on perfect break shots the cue ball has follow that spins it to a stop as it bounces off the rack.
Well, not for me it doesn't. I guess force is a factor as well.
Not if you're breaking hard. First there's the high probability of jumping the cb off the table. Second you can lose precious speed and force as the cb bounces it's way to the pack. I recommend that if you do angle down your cue, you experiment and do it very slightly. One time when I was teaching a group and explaining the dangers of shooting an angled down break shot, I got the brilliant idea to show them how the cb jumps without the balls, just hitting it hard from the head string directly into the bottom rail. I hit it way too hard and the cb bouced into the air off the bottom rail, flew back over the table and hit me square in the chin and knocked me down. I was fine, except for the bump and bruise, not to mention the bruise to my ego, but they got the idea why it's a bad idea after they all stopped laughing.
Does the cue ball stop dead for you when you hit the head ball full?
I am not an instructor, and I will not pretend to have the experience Fran does. However as someone who's broken a gajillion racks over the decades I may offer some insight as well.
If you mean a full hit as breaking from the spot, I don't recall ever setting the cue ball on the spot to break that way in competition. Starting position of 6-8 inches off the spot and farther out --- sure. Many times. Gene Nagy was a master at it. He could get that cb to stop on a dime from various locations along the head string.
The bounce-back effect I was thinking of is most noticeable when breaking from near the spot and at 10-ball or 8-ball. Here are some good examples showing that the cue ball has immediate backward speed after contact with the head ball.
To generate the vertical hop when breaking.
This morning I purposely broke several 9 ball racks from near the middle (-12" to +12"). All of them were with a full stun shot on the CB (center ball). All of them resulted in the same bounce-back effect that you would expect. The return distance was relative to the amount of power in the break. I purposely hit the shot lighter than I normally would to ensure a correct CB strike.