We don't have to accept it, but you're right, it would be hard to prove or disprove. There's more to aiming than body position.
What more is there? There is a target and there an object that needs to point at that target. In pool you have 2.25" of cue ball to hit to send it towards a target 2.25" wide. The real target of course is a tiny fraction of that 2.25".
If the goal is to pocket the ball then the actual cue positions that allow the ball to be made are extremely limited. And since the body holds the cue and propels it the actual body position to properly strike the ball consistently in a forward motion are also extremely limited. And by extremely I mean probably less than an inch off the optimal line.
Don't beleive me? Set up a simple straight in shot and get in the proper postion to shoot it. Now stand up and move over 1" to the right or left and bend back down to shoot the shot placing the cue stick on the proper shot line. You will find that you are in a postion so uncomfortable that you almost cannot bear to take the shot. You can repeat this for any shot on the table and it will be very clear to you that there really is only one cue and body positon that works for the shot you are facing.
That is when a straight stroke is used. You CAN be off the proper shot line and stll make a lot of shots by swerving/deflecting the cue ball into the shot line. And this is in my opinion the root of all so-called body english. If a player consistently lines up wrong due to perceptual errors they learn to compensate by throwing the cueball into the right line. They learn to cinch the shot using a little outside spin and conversely they learn that the opposite of cinching is major uncertaintity with inside spin. But even at that there is only so far they can go off the real shot line and still have any chance of making the ball. Thus if you expand the range of body positions to include the use of spin to throw the cueball into the shot line it's still only a few inches at most.
Can't say I disagree, but in the end, its all we got. (By "ghostball," I mean some part of the ghostball, e.g., edge, center, contact point or whatever).
Sure, but CTE for example uses no part of the Ghost Ball, not the contact point, or any other imaginary object.
That's probably of considerable benefit. Unfortunately, there's not enough information in the salient features of the cueball or object ball in which to tell you where to aim your stick...except for straight-in shots or a small number of cut angles (accepting that a quarter ball division is a sufficiently clear landmark, especially with practice).
You aren't aiming the stick. With CTE you aim with your eyes, then the body gets into positon based on what the eyes tell you and from there you bring the stick into position along the shot line. And actually you can do this with GB as well. You can sight and bend down placing the bridge hand with no cue and check against the GB shot line easily by placing the cue after the shooter is down and in position.
Instances have been reported before, but are you sure that's the general rule? There certainly are shots where CTE or any of the pivot systems, without adjustments, will produce the correct aim line.
Of course it's not the general rule. Some people can use CTE and never have any sort of doubt happenign that they shot line is correct. They probably also have no perception problems with GB either.
Agreed. But where do you point the cue? I thought Stan and Co. did a great job on the DVD. Only I was somewhat shocked that, as I recall, nowhere did it say where the cue should be aimed prior to pivoting. Body position, visuals, tip offset, don't, by themselves, put much of a constraint on that (some, but there's still a lot of latitude, no?). If it's yours and Stan's contention that they do, I'd like to hear more about that.
In manual CTE you point the cue at the edge of the cue ball and pivot to center. This happens naturally because by using the CTE line the body is already in position. In ProOne the cue simply comes down to center cue ball in one smooth motion and you are not pointing the cue at anything until you are down on the ball.
Well, if you could specify where the cue is pointing before the pivot takes place, I (and others), could do the math that de-legitimizes it.
Sorry about that, but I see no other outcome. However, if it were to turn out that those of us on the contra-side have been suffering from severe concussions and somehow, someway, it could be shown to be mathematically sacrosanct, that deed would be done as well...and even enthusiastically, despite the ego ramifications.
The cue doeesn't point anywhere. It's not used as a pointing or measuring device. As I said the shooter can use CTE and get down on the cue ball with the bridge hand on the table and you can place the cue in the hands at that point and the outcome will be that the cue is pointed to the GB center. That's the part you have to figure out mathematically if it's important to you. There must be some math to it simply by virtue of starting with the known CTE line. What's the equation that takes the player from there to the verifiable shot line?
If it's just straight up subconscious guessing then I would say it's the most wonderful way to lead the sunconscious that exists. Imagine playing for hours for enough money to make your heart flutter and you are using this method to aim and time after time you end up on the right shot line and you win the cash. Why would you care about the math behind the actions you undertook to get there? What's the math behind throwing a baseball? If someone tells me to do x-y-z to be able to throw a baseball accurately and I simply follow their directions then I don't need to know the whether or not the math is sound.
And on some other level you can say that the successful result proves that there must be a successful equation behind it. Man made fire long before man understood what makes fire.
One of the arguments against it, which Patrick has raised in this thread again, is that it's way too consistent. In other words, if you follow its prescriptions exactly, you'd better hope you face only a limited number of cut angles during your pool playing career. That's a bit of a flippant response, but it's getting late. I certainly wouldn't argue with the notion that the more cues you have at your disposal, the better.
This is the best one. The reality is that for every shot to a pocket starting with the CTE line automatically puts you inside the allowable range of body positions to make the shot. You can make any shot on the table by laying the cue down on the half-ball line and throwing it in. So being that close to the line means that you are only a tiny tiny movement away from the "no throw" shot line where you can shoot straight at the object ball and make it.
At Large has addressed this and made some valid points. He said if you start with the CTE line and then use Mr. Shuffett's secondary lines you will only have I think 12 possible cue ball overlaps or angles. And this is where I cannot refute the logic and tell you why Mr. Shuffet's prescription works for all shots. I agree that if one were to pick a hard line between the object ball and the cue ball using Mr. Shuffet's ABC reference points then there would be a limited amount of ways to hit the cue ball. But the reality of it is that for any shot on the table some combination of Mr. Shuffett's points works for the shot you are facing. Now, does that mean that in reality the subconscuious is filling in the gap between the initial use of to the easy to find CTE line and the actual shot line with a little extra help from the conscious choice of a secondary reference line? Could be. But again this would be the absolute best way in the world to blend a fully conscious and repeatable approach to the shot with the brain's ability to make amazing calculations in thousandths of a second.
As I told Mr. Johnson the feel is reduced to the point where it's completely undetectable. And really that's a good thing. Save the feel for the execution part of the shot.
Now my theory would be something along the lines of there being math that expalins the use of the CTE line and math that explains the use of the secondary line and of course math that explains the ghost ball line. Which leaves the variable of how does the shooter go from the secondary line to the ghost ball shot line? Well in my opinion there is a range of bridge hand positioning that works to allow the shooter to shoot straight and make the ball. And as explained above this range is extremely limited.
SOOOOOO.............. if the allowable error were say +-.10 inch just to toss a number out there then I have to think that the CTE line gets the shooter first all into a position to hit the ball. Then the secondary line gets them closer to say anywhere from dead on perfect to say maybe .2" off and then the subconcious kicks in in on the way down to the ball and bam your're there. So the math would something like CTE+SL=Shot line +-.005" - And that's just me thinking like a dork in response to your stimulus. In any event the results are there so it's up to whomever is interested enough to figure out the math.
For the rest of us, it's enough to simply follow the directions and pocket balls.
