Open Source Pool - The Hidden Dance of Stroke and Aim

[tim913]

I can’t explain it as eloquently as you did but I had the same problem decades ago. It wasn’t caught on video at the pool schools and never would have caught it if not for the trained eyes of a seasoned money player. He simply said, “you’re aiming with your right(grip) hand. I’m like WTF are you talking about?
He explained .. some players think they see one line, the shot line, but in fact they’re playing two. The line to the CB and the line from the CB to the OB. They set their alignment perfectly on the CB, PSR looks great as they’re focused on the CB. When ready to pull the trigger they switch their focus to the OB, Now their grip hand accelerates through the the CB steering their tip down the new line. It even looks good when finished because their tip is on the cloth right on the shot line. No problem here!
He had me tweak a couple of alignment problems focussing on the true single line but most importantly taught me the function of the grip hand/wrist. It simply goes to “finish” with proper speed. He said if you would have been using your grip hand properly in the first place you would have been missing a lot of balls and corrected your alignment instead of compensating with your back hand. It affects everything as some players need a half tip of side to bring the CB around the table while others are out on the miscue line to get the same result
Edit .. He told me before I left, “ don’t bring a baseball swing to a golf tournament “

 

[markjames]

excellent post, thank you for the detailed discussion of your journey

anyone who is fascinated with this game and the struggles and rewards it provides recognizes that the difficult work of improving takes daily effort over the span of weeks and months and years and when a well written and thoughtful and thorough treatise such as yours comes along, we spend as much time as it takes to read it carefully and repeatedly

 

[genomachino]

The Role of Visual Perception

In order to understand how to ‘reset’ our vision, we have to understand what actually happened when our aim adapted to our stroke.

In cuesports, we use both eyes to aim because depth perception is very useful to assess the geometry of the table and estimate angles. Our brain essentially receives information from two points of reference (binocular vision) - calculating and showing us a composite image.

What this means is that neither of our eyes is actually aligned with the shot line or the cue. Each of our eyes sees the line from the side, at an angle. And our brain will translate these two angled views into a single visual that from a specific position will appear to us as “straight”. What this means is that there is no objective “straight” line as long as we use both eyes to aim - there is only our personal perception of it. And this perception can be tweaked and changed.

The amazing thing here is that in the scenario of the player with the arced stroke, their brain will over time start to interpret the angled cue as correct (straight), and the side of the cue ball as center (which is the only scenario for that player to achieve a consistent center ball hit). This happens, it appears, by effectively registering less information from one of our eyes. It's called eye suppression. Our brain still receives the picture from both eyes, but chooses to ignore part of it.

It is an effect similar to how our nose is always in our vision but our brain filters it out and we don’t actively see it. We only “notice” our nose if we consciously focus on it. You can try it now.

I’ve arrived at this conclusion through personal experimentation and research. I would love it if a professional in the field would share their expertise here.

The result is that once your brain has configured your vision and therefore your aim to your arced stroke, a straight shot will now look wrong! Center of the cue ball will look as either left or right and a perfectly straight cue will look angled.

How to learn to see “straight” again?

In my trials to understand what was going on with my vision, I saw an eye doctor and started reading about various vision and eye conditions. A breakthrough came when I stumbled on something called a “Brock string” - a vision therapy tool, used to train eye teaming and focusing abilities.

I had an idea to tweak the the traditional Brock string into a pool specific tool more out of curiosity than anything. When using it for the very first time, I immediately noticed something odd - when I placed the tool at the exact spot under my chin where the cue would normally be - the vision picture of the tool from one of my eyes became much fainter. The vision from my other eye almost completely took over.

Somehow I was seeing the string (cue) almost exclusively with my right eye. My left eye was somehow partially “switched” off. As a result, the string looked “straight” to me only if I moved it about half an inch further towards my right eye, which was very close to the same amount that my cue was always offline by!

There was a simple exercise to address this. I closed my right eye, “forcing” my brain to show me the sight picture only from the (previously suppressed) left eye only. When I then opened both eyes, the previously faint image from the left eye now appeared much stronger. It literally felt like a switch was flicked and the sight from my left eye got turned “on” again.

It only took a few minutes of this exercise and all of a sudden I could see the cue correctly in my peripheral vision with both eyes when I was playing, and for the very first time it became trivial to line up perfectly straight.

It no longer looked “wrong”.

At first, the effect wouldn't last very long, and I had to keep “reminding” my brain to show me the vision from my left eye. But as I kept doing the exercise for about 10 minutes every morning and night, it has now, after about 4 months, become pretty much permanent.

Once I was finally able to line up and aim “straight”, the straight delivery version of my stroke I had previously built finally had the right circumstances to start to work properly. And once the shots started going in with straight aim and a straight stroke, the whole thing became easier - it became a self reinforcing system.

I no longer have “terrible” days where I miss routine shots for no reason. I still have good days and bad days, sure, but my A game is much much closer to my B and C game. It is an incredible boost to your confidence when you can shoot under pressure, without having that “good” gut feeling about a shot and you still make it perfectly, purely focusing on good mechanics. I no longer rely fully on subconscious corrections to make the shot work.

Conclusion

This struggle revealed that the relationship between stroke and aim is much more complex than traditionally thought. Whether choosing to refine existing patterns or rebuild from foundation, success requires targeting both the mechanical and the perceptual, at the same time.

Thanks for reading

Once again, whoever has read this mammoth of a post to the very end, thank you. It has taken me months of work to put together. I hope it will help someone and I would love to hear from players working on similar issues.

I can help you. Got this whole thing figured out. Perfect Aim/SHIFT fixes this all. The SHIFT was the last final piece to the puzzle. What you are trying to figure out here is almost impossible. I got lucky. 30 years, finally got it. Strange series of events that got me there. Give me a call and I will share this with you. 7155638712 anytime.

 

[MitchAlsup]

cliff notes version?

If the CB does not roll to the aim spot, there has been an aiming error
If the CB does roll to the aim spot but bounces off other than straight, there has been a stroke error.

 

[Oikawa]

I don't have anything insightful/new to say about the vision related stuff, but I'll give my thoughts on stroke straightness, which is directly linked to the improvement process OP talks about in the sense of how much you can learn to trust your vision/aim:

One important aspect of this whole topic is the mechanical part of what it means to shoot straight efficiently. The way I developed my straight stroke was by realizing that for a given stance, there is always some path that the shooting arm naturally wants to go to, if moved in it's simplest possible path forward, rest of the body staying still. The goal is to build the stance such that this path is always straight forward relative to what you are seeing.

There are numerous issues that can stop this from happening, most commonly your body being in the way of the stroke, or some part of your body causing the angle to be off or steer at some point. It's not just elbow/shoulder related, almost every part of your body can ruin things in unexpected ways. Especially once you also consider balance, stability, comfort and ease of repeatability, which are all important principles when building your stance.

Once you find something that works well for normal shots, then you probably need variations for various elevated shots, jump shots etc. it really isn't easy, and there are no shortcuts. Paying extreme attention to your stance, to form a perfectly repeatable, straight and effortless stroke direction, is in my opinion, one of the most powerful improvements that many players never make.

This process is tricky, and greatly benefits from outside perspective, ideally a coach or a better player than you giving you guidelines, alternatively online resources/books/video feedback if coaching isn't an option.

It is so easy and common to half-ass this aspect of the game during your development, form a stroke that goes somewhat straight and get a false sense of mechanical perfection from easier shots going in consistently. Then perhaps blaming aiming, lack of experience or lack of talent for the harder shots not going in most of the time, when the true culprit is most likely the consistency/straightness of the stroke not being pushed to the next level.

The less consistent your stroke, the less trust you can build in your vision/aim. The straightness of your stroke is directly linked to the ceiling of your skill level.

 

[BilliardsAbout]

Great tips, thank you! Speaking of combining aim and stance, there's a concept that can elevate your game: using both hands to aim.

Many players and some instructors suggest that we should simply position the bridge arm consistently for most shots and adopt a stiff stance, then let the stroke arm do all the work.

However, it's important to engage both hands in finding the target and use the bridge to channel energy through the cue ball into the object ball.

You can tell you've mastered this technique when, for instance, executing a delicate shot with the cue ball close to the object ball, you automatically create a much shorter bridge length.

 

[Nature Boy]

Does anyone know what that stroke trainer is?

 

[straightline]

Does anyone know what that stroke trainer is?

This thing?

Seems like you set it up an don't play until your brain gets it.

Wait. The butt end might be a piston and you just get down and stroke that while holding the cue stationary with the front hand.

 

[Oliver]

You're nuts. I love it

It seems to get worse with age...

keep playing oliver. i've seen you play on postup and you've got a mean 1p game!

Thanks. It's the traveling that's wearing on me.

Probably real good stuff if it would fit in my head.

Anything in particular I can help understand better?

interesting read and thorough description of your journey
check your PM

Thanks, will do

WTF?????? anybody read all that shit????? anybody got the cliff notes version?

Well, cliff notes would be that your eyes lie to you most of the time and after a certain point mechanical fixes no longer work

If you watch the top pros, many don't have a 100% straight stroke, there's lateral movement in the swing yet delivery/ contact is pure.

There's a lot of rabbit holes in the game and not all juices are worth the squeezes.

Thats right, many/most don't. However the closer you get to the very elite - Filler, Gorsty, Kaci - the less lateral movement there is. Even more obvious in snooker. This squeeze might really only "worth it" for pro level. Thus the 2 paths forward that I wrote about towards the end.

What I do think this bit of work does though, is help a lot of people, who feel stuck, to understand what is happening with their mechanics. In my own experience, not being able to understand wtf was wrong with my stroke sometimes, was by far the most frustrating bit. Fixing it is whole other story, not relevant for most.

Great post, Oliver. Glad to see you posting here as well. Have you considered starting a Substack? I would definitely subscribe.

It's really interesting to hear your topics on this because I have a similar issue. I align slightly right of center, steer to the left on follow through, and I'll naturally miss a straight shot to the right (CB too far left) if I don't compensate. I've also been working on it for the past 18 months, including getting help from Thorsten and Stephen Feeney (coach of Ronnie O'Sullivan and Mark Williams). It's funny that you mention Thorsten as having a naturally straight stroke because he frequently mentions that he feels like he has a similar issue.


This resonated a lot and led me to continuously tweak my mechanics, even though my game was "perfectly fine" by many people's standards (~630 Fargo).

For the two paths, Thorsten also offered me the same choice by different names: "compensating" or "fixing". He seemed to imply that neither one was the right choice and many top players have went with the "compensating" route.

The Brock string is interesting because it seems similar to the SightRight tool that Stephen Feeney uses in his lessons. These types of tools seem really helpful in learning more about how you "see" and what is optimal.

My latest change was to rotate my shoulder a few inches farther back to be completely in line with my head (which you already do). It's been about a month, but this seems to have completely solved my alignment and vision issues, but not the issue with steering the cue to the left on follow through. We'll see where this latest adjustment will take me!

Thanks.

I'm curious about your experience with Feeney. I've gone through the whole 'sightright' thing as well, the main point is solid I think, but some aspects are not covered (in my opinion). Was he able to offer any meaningful help?

Thorsten had the tiniest amount of left (?) swoop if i remember correctly, but it was so minimal. I have seen an older video where it appears to be much worse. Not sure what to think about that.

Got any vids of your latest form?

This is very interesting to me. I have vision issues that require a very strong prism in my glasses lenses to keep me from seeing double. Some of the things that Oliver described are exactly what I deal with. I can line up a perfectly straight-in shot, and when I get down over it, it does not look straight. It looks like I need to cut the OB slightly to the left (IOW, it looks like I need to aim the cueball slightly to the right.) I am left eye dominant, right handed. I have to consciously keep my head to the right so that the shaft is more under my left eye. I see cut shots much better this way, but still have the distortion. Likely caused by the prism in my lenses

I don't personally wear glasses, so I can only imagine how much more difficult it must be. Let me know if you need any specific advice or feedback.

I had a few beers last night and I seem to have offended by being flippant. Sorry if I offended you. No, I do not think is is AI.

What I do think is that your points could have been made more concisely. However since I really have nothing to contribute to your thread, I will take my leave.

Bon Chance

No worries at all, i try not to waste time on getting offended! And I am also guilty of beer-posting from time to time.

 

[straightline]

Anything in particular I can help understand better?

Been through my own trials. I get it. Just not in the mood. Lemme know when you don't miss anymore.

 

[Oliver]

excellent post, thank you for the detailed discussion of your journey

anyone who is fascinated with this game and the struggles and rewards it provides recognizes that the difficult work of improving takes daily effort over the span of weeks and months and years and when a well written and thoughtful and thorough treatise such as yours comes along, we spend as much time as it takes to read it carefully and repeatedly

Very kind words, thank you.

I can help you. Got this whole thing figured out. Perfect Aim/SHIFT fixes this all. The SHIFT was the last final piece to the puzzle. What you are trying to figure out here is almost impossible. I got lucky. 30 years, finally got it. Strange series of events that got me there. Give me a call and I will share this with you. 7155638712 anytime.

I'll give you a call. Why not post your findings for everyone, I'm sure it would be interesting to discuss.

If the CB does not roll to the aim spot, there has been an aiming error
If the CB does roll to the aim spot but bounces off other than straight, there has been a stroke error.

Sorry but you misunderstood.

I don't have anything insightful/new to say about the vision related stuff, but I'll give my thoughts on stroke straightness, which is directly linked to the improvement process OP talks about in the sense of how much you can learn to trust your vision/aim:

One important aspect of this whole topic is the mechanical part of what it means to shoot straight efficiently. The way I developed my straight stroke was by realizing that for a given stance, there is always some path that the shooting arm naturally wants to go to, if moved in it's simplest possible path forward, rest of the body staying still. The goal is to build the stance such that this path is always straight forward relative to what you are seeing.

There are numerous issues that can stop this from happening, most commonly your body being in the way of the stroke, or some part of your body causing the angle to be off or steer at some point. It's not just elbow/shoulder related, almost every part of your body can ruin things in unexpected ways. Especially once you also consider balance, stability, comfort and ease of repeatability, which are all important principles when building your stance.

Once you find something that works well for normal shots, then you probably need variations for various elevated shots, jump shots etc. it really isn't easy, and there are no shortcuts. Paying extreme attention to your stance, to form a perfectly repeatable, straight and effortless stroke direction, is in my opinion, one of the most powerful improvements that many players never make.

This process is tricky, and greatly benefits from outside perspective, ideally a coach or a better player than you giving you guidelines, alternatively online resources/books/video feedback if coaching isn't an option.

It is so easy and common to half-ass this aspect of the game during your development, form a stroke that goes somewhat straight and get a false sense of mechanical perfection from easier shots going in consistently. Then perhaps blaming aiming, lack of experience or lack of talent for the harder shots not going in most of the time, when the true culprit is most likely the consistency/straightness of the stroke not being pushed to the next level.

The less consistent your stroke, the less trust you can build in your vision/aim. The straightness of your stroke is directly linked to the ceiling of your skill level.

I agree with all your points.

Does anyone know what that stroke trainer is?

Well I know... I built it! It keeps the butt of the cue laterally stable, allowing slight natural vertical movement. It is essentially initially a muscle memory trainer and then becomes a calibration tool, showing you how your body needs to move in order to move the cue perfectly straight. I does a few other things, but this is the primary purpose.

This thing?


View attachment 835341

Seems like you set it up an don't play until your brain gets it.

Wait. The butt end might be a piston and you just get down and stroke that while holding the cue stationary with the front hand.

The black CF part at the butt end is just part of my cue, a kind of extension. Nothing to do with the stroke trainer.

You use the tool to calibrate your straight stroke for a minute or two at every day.

 

[straightline]

The black CF part at the butt end is just part of my cue, a kind of extension. Nothing to do with the stroke trainer.

You use the tool to calibrate your straight stroke for a minute or two at every day.

Seems immobile. Can you post a video?

 

[Tennesseejoe]

Is the 'Stroke Trainer' available? Looks like a great idea.

 

[couldnthinkof01]

It seems to get worse with age...

I know the feeling all too well

 

[BilliardsAbout]

If you can find any remaining Cue Track devices (created by Tony Mattina), they are superb. I've watched with Tony as pros and aspiring pros used them to great benefit.

 

[Badpenguin]

Thanks for sharing your experiences...

I'm curious, do you think your stroke/aim issue was mostly due to the vision center problem? Your brain was instructing to your body to correct halfway through your stoke because of the misaligned vision center?