Thank you Mike!
Question: Suppose you have the money ball in the rack area, you have to shoot it in an uptable corner pocket, and you have a slight cut. Do you prefer straight vertical with, say, a little draw like you described if you were straight in? Or do you like an equator line hit with a twist of gearing outside english? Or something else?
I too would like to hear Bob Jewett's and Dave A's take.
I'll explain what I don't like about the equator hit with a twist of outside.
The motivation, I think, is to get a more predictable and consistent result by trying to eliminate throw. That is, if that slight twist provides just enough outside spin to balance the cut-induced throw, the ball surfaces don't slide across one another at all and there is no throw. If successful, then it doesn't matter whether the balls are dirty/sticky or clean and waxed--- same aim, same result.
But there is a devil in the details, and sometimes it is better to embrace your familiar devil friend.
Let's say you are on a putt-putt course that has a straight slightly raised ridge down the center, and the goal is to predict as accurately as possible the final resting place of your ball.
If you putt right of center, the ball will curve a bit to the right, and if you putt left of center the ball will curve a bit to the left. The details of the curving depend on how hard you hit the ball, and that's annoying.
You reason that if you hit straight along the top of the ridge, your ball doesn't curve at all and you've removed the dependence on speed. That sounds great, but it comes at a cost. The cost is if you are NOT perfectly straight, the outcome by missing slightly to the left is way different from the outcome by missing slightly to the right. So while you have reduced the speed-dependence to zero with your plan, the cost is you have raised the SENSITIVITY of the final outcome to small errors. It is harder to get a decent prediction of the final resting place of the ball.
The equator hit of the cueball with the slight outside twist is putting along the ridge. While it's true the perfect twist is lovely, the outcome difference between slightly too much twist and slightly too little is big.
I'm a fan of purposefully putting to the right of the ridge. In this case that's hitting along the vertical center. This means you live with the cut-induced throw that makes the aim a little different for dirty and clean balls. When you add a touch of high or low, you are reducing the amount of cut-induced throw (because the broom swipe is largely up or down and less sideways) making the dirty ball and clean ball aim close to the same.