drawing the head ball
OK, 80% of the time I draw the head ball in and play the back ball two rails. We all know the reasons why.
The only reason I pass on this shot is equipment related. The table has to have the right ratio of fast cloth and lively rails to make it work. For example, on slow cloth with that requires a monster stroke to get the cueball draw to hold and slow cloth, I believe this shot to be too risky. Shooting with that much force with three moving balls and a power draw seems a poor choice, and at that speed even a slight mishit can be disastrous.
On the other had, on new fast simonis, you can shoot smoothly below center and play a nice finesse shot that is very high percentage with a good margin of error.
In other words, the equipment determines how hard the shot must be struck, thus determining whether it is percentage or not.