Dear Gerry,
I had a quick look at your video of 43 ball run, only the first link seems to work for me. Here are my observations:
1st Rack: when you split the balls, you had the wrong English on the white for the rail that you hit. you want to try to put the English that will tend to bring the white back to center table. You seem to have gone about removing the balls well, it just seems to me that it took you a little too long to develop a break ball, so by the time you get one, you are slightly out of position and have only got a few balls left on the table to get shape on the key ball. Obviously you have to concentrate on clearing up the problem clusters first, but basically try to develop your break ball as soon as you can so that you have time to get nicely in shape for the pattern to get to your key ball in such a way to leave yourself an easy positional shot to get to the break ball. Having said that, you do a good job of potting the last three balls and getting good shape. Of course, in long runs you always end up with a few racks that get sketchy towards the end. The key is pinpoint cue-ball position so you can avoid digging yourself into holes.
Rack 2: I'm assuming that you checked where the white would hit the stack and knew that it was going to pop back up the table. If so, I think you probably hit this break shot too hard. Sometimes it's counter productive to hit the break shot hard, if you watch what happens, there are plenty of balls which hit rails and then come back into center table. These balls could tie up the cue ball. it's always good to hit the break hard enough try to get a few balls to the rails and bring the white to center table, like that you are more likely to get a shot, and less likely to have a ball come and stick on the white. The first mistake I think you make in this rack is to clear balls which are up table. You have no reason to clear them, they are all available in multiple pockets, of course you have to start with the ball you took, it was the only one on, but I would have tried to get shape immediately to play the break out shot that you did a few shots later. Try to go straight to sorting out the clusters as quickly as you can, leaving as many balls on the table for you to create your end of rack pattern later. I think the pattern you played at the end was not optimal, in the end you had to play two tricky positional shots to get shape on the break ball. If you look at the pattern you have at 5:28, I would suggest the following: Look to see which is the best key ball. for me it would probably be the 6 for one rail shape, or the 12 for 2 rail shape. The problem with the six is that it blocks the easy path of the 8, unless you choose to remove the 8 by shooting it down to the long corner after shooting what I think is the 14 (hard to tell). so this would be a question of your confidence. In this case the percentage play is probably to use the 12(10 colour?) as the key ball. That given, you need to remove the 6 and 8 as soon as you can. I would probably play, 14, 6 out to center table as you did, but then remove the 8, The reason is, the 8 is blocking the pocket for the 4(2 colour?) as is the 12(10), but you don't want to move the 12 cause that's your key ball. It's also much easier to get shape on the 4 from the 11 or 1, whereas, were you to remove the 12(10) as you do, it's not so easy to get shape on the 4, although you do manage this. So following the 8 you can play shape in center table for 1,7,11 or 7,11,1 or some such combination to get you more or less straight in on the 4, you can then play shape for a straight draw, or, or 2 rail shape on the break ball from the 12, your choice. Always good to give yourself choices.
rack 3: one very small complaint about the break shot, you played with outside english which checked the white off the short rail leaving you close to the cushion, if you had played with inside english you would have come two rails and back out towards the center of the table. otherwise it was good, and you had a shot. the rest of this rack looks excellent, maybe we can take a look at your options at 10:17: at this point you choose the 11 as your key ball and you lead to that with the 9. the problem with this is that the break ball is somewhat in the way of this shot to be ideal. It did work out for you, but had you finished on the cushion and straight in on the 11, you would have been in trouble. You could have used the 4 as your key ball and a lead to that of: 10,9,11,7. The good thing about the 4 is that you can drop it in coming off 1 rail straight back along the line of position for the break shot, your pace control would not be important and position on the 7 from the 11 is automatic provided you are straight enough on the 11. Having said that, you worked this rack well.
rack 4: of course the mistake here was the break shot, again you let the white drift down too low and were unlucky to get frozen on a ball. the correct way to have played this break shot would have been with draw and inside english again to draw back out to centre table.
In summary: I would say you see to have relatively good control of the white, only in a few cases did you run out of ideal position, and you were able to recover. It seems that you need to learn more about exactly what will happen during the break shots. maybe take a bit more time to study the point of impact on the rack and decide what you think will happen to the while afterwards, will it stick in the rack, will it go forwards will it come backwards etc... then you can decide how much draw, follow and/or english you need to get the white back to center table. Of course this in the ideal world, in some cases you can have break shots where this becomes more difficult. Also look at the possibility of playing the follow break shot with inside English to come two rails and out, you will be surprised in how many cases this works well, there are a few cases where you need to watch out for the scratch when the white is taking a strong hit on the lower ball second. Just set them up over and over and play the break shot in all the possible locations wrt the rack and you will soon start to see how to get the white back to center table. Also, you will learn that in some cases a soft hit on the rack affords more likely position on the next ball. A soft hit will push balls towards the side rails and if you can get the white in line you usually have a shot at one of these, sometimes if you over hit the shot the balls will go out to the sides and then back to the stack and things will get more tied up. Again, trial and error... practice practice practice.
Good stuff... Let me know if that's of any help?
