Rush and Concentration In Games ...

[Island Drive]

Keep in mind Cezar, most every table plays a little different.
Being AWARE of this is Very important.
And like Tomato S. Said, and I like that perspective. ''Saves you that long walk to the chair''.

 

[Catalin]

My top reasons for missing a shot in competition are

1. Not always standing up when I feel something is off with the shot
2. Overthinking the shot
3. Sometimes my mind goes blank and I forget how I'm supposed to shoot that shot

 

[Island Drive]

#1 causes me to pivot....not good.

 

[tomatoshooter]

My top reasons for missing a shot in competition are

1. Not always standing up when I feel something is off with the shot
2. Overthinking the shot
3. Sometimes my mind goes blank and I forget how I'm supposed to shoot that shot

4. mind doesn't go blank and some stupid thought pops in my head right as I start to stroke through the ball. It's not necessarily doubt. It can be "I'm shooting well tonight" or "I need to eat a good steak."

One thing that helps me is I try to take a final three strokes and shoot in a consistent sequence... 3, 2, 1, POW!. If I'm in motion, my mind is occupied and engaged and I am continuing an activity as opposed to getting on the shot, taking practice strokes and thinking of the shot itself as a distinct action.

 

[boogieman]

4. mind doesn't go blank and some stupid thought pops in my head right as I start to stroke through the ball. It's not necessarily doubt. It can be "I'm shooting well tonight" or "I need to eat a good steak."

The absolute worst is after having to make 3 or 4 amazing shots and you think to yourself "I shot those good, the rest of the rack is pretty much solved." Then the miss comes. If I feel myself congratulating myself or thinking I'm almost out, I'll walk around the table a few times looking at all angles for all balls. Just enough to clear my mind. Sometimes I'll walk around the money ball and check it from several angles. It's nothing to do with aiming, it's just getting my damn head to shut up!

 

[tomatoshooter]

after having to make 3 or 4 amazing shots and you think to yourself "I shot those good, the rest of the rack is pretty much solved."

I've seen plenty of pros dog an easy shot after making a highlight reel. It's tough bring the same concentration to a simple shot. Add in the emotional release and adrenaline rush, too. If 100% concentration sank that two-rail kick I should be able to nail this shot in my sleep. It feels weird having to pause and gather yourself for a 3 foot straight in shot after banging in a circus shot but understanding your pace to achieve and maintain concentration and control your emotions is they key to getting the most out of your skills. I wonder how good I would be if I could maintain my peak mental state.

 

[ShootingArts]

4. mind doesn't go blank and some stupid thought pops in my head right as I start to stroke through the ball. It's not necessarily doubt. It can be "I'm shooting well tonight" or "I need to eat a good steak."

One thing that helps me is I try to take a final three strokes and shoot in a consistent sequence... 3, 2, 1, POW!. If I'm in motion, my mind is occupied and engaged and I am continuing an activity as opposed to getting on the shot, taking practice strokes and thinking of the shot itself as a distinct action.

"continuing an activity" is the key. Gonna start a thread about that when I get around to it but that conscious mind butting in wrecks many a run. If you start an action with it silent it will probably remain silent during the action.

The trick is to make the entire inning at the table one continuous action. You have planned it out before you got down on the first shot, why should you now plan three balls, shoot a ball, plan another ball, shoot a ball, plan another ball ... on and on! All of this chatter in between shots kills flow. Flow is nice. The zone is better but often flow is a precursor to the zone.

One of the things to do is to build the think standing, act bending over, routine. Best to start engraining this when practicing alone but when you are down on a shot treat verbal thought like any other interruption, stand up! If it means stand up three times before little more than a tap in do it. You are creating a conditioned reflex and it takes a little time and consistency to do that. After awhile you will be standing up before you even realize why. That's OK, much better than verbalizing thought and forgetting to stand up.

When practicing set up three ball roadmaps for starters. You just want to make these balls without a thought between shots. When you can do this six or eight times in a row then add a ball or a little more difficulty.

This is a new thing and will be tiring. Take a five minute break every fifteen minutes. These breaks are as important as everything else, don't skip them. Sit down with good posture, drink a few swallows of something, rest. At first you will have a hard time taking these breaks too. Change is awkward at first, any change. After awhile you learn to change gears and rest sitting in the chair.

What you are doing is training the mind. That burns a lot of energy and can look silly to an onlooker that knows you can play far better than these runouts you are practicing. You will be moving up rapidly until you hit a plateau and slow down a bit. Plateaus in learning aren't really real, they are just periods of slower learning after which you are often rewarded with a period of rapid improvement.

One continuous action for an entire inning is one of the Holy Grails of pool. Well worth chasing.

Hu

 

[Island Drive]

Was watching the Slovenia tournament.
I appreciate/enjoy/like and support the idea of your opponent racking for you, and seeing the breaker also helping, by rolling balls to the racker. This is quality time spent for both players.
It allows each, to go over what transpired the previous game.
It speeds up play and duplicates what happens in real life in match play 9 ball.

 

[WobblyStroke]

I used to rush early on under pressure and wind up hitting the shot I wanted to only to realize later I shouldn't have wanted to play that shot/shape. I ditched that annoying tendency by putting myself on a backwards shot clock in practice, meaning that I wasn't allowed to shoot till 15s had passed (originally 20s but that was excessive). Even the 15s felt like an eternity so I found ways to pass the time like walking around the table and double checking angles and intended position ala Appleton mentioned above. Went through a phase where that was just part of my shot routine before playing to my natural quick rhythm by taking 1-2min solving a rack before rifling through it at Earl Strickland pace....as long as I managed to stay in line with the original plan. It also didn't hurt that during the time I was Appletoning it I adapted to the stakes I was playing and didn't feel the same level of pressure.

I think this adaptation to pressure and learning to play ur game at your pace under tough conditions is a stage every player goes through kind of like key ball syndrome. In both cases, pretty much the only options you have are to get over it or quit. The difference between this and key ball syndrome though is that you only deal with key ball syndrome once, but the nerves that can cause you to rush can return every time you level up in competition/stakes so it is good to have a process to fall back on in case they creep back in.

 

[JusticeNJ]

Worlds best carnival barker. RIP Rush.

Here I was thinking of Neil Peart.

 

[tomatoshooter]

"continuing an activity" is the key. Gonna start a thread about that when I get around to it but that conscious mind butting in wrecks many a run. If you start an action with it silent it will probably remain silent during the action.

The trick is to make the entire inning at the table one continuous action. You have planned it out before you got down on the first shot, why should you now plan three balls, shoot a ball, plan another ball, shoot a ball, plan another ball ... on and on! All of this chatter in between shots kills flow. Flow is nice. The zone is better but often flow is a precursor to the zone.

One of the things to do is to build the think standing, act bending over, routine. Best to start engraining this when practicing alone but when you are down on a shot treat verbal thought like any other interruption, stand up! If it means stand up three times before little more than a tap in do it. You are creating a conditioned reflex and it takes a little time and consistency to do that. After awhile you will be standing up before you even realize why. That's OK, much better than verbalizing thought and forgetting to stand up.

When practicing set up three ball roadmaps for starters. You just want to make these balls without a thought between shots. When you can do this six or eight times in a row then add a ball or a little more difficulty.

This is a new thing and will be tiring. Take a five minute break every fifteen minutes. These breaks are as important as everything else, don't skip them. Sit down with good posture, drink a few swallows of something, rest. At first you will have a hard time taking these breaks too. Change is awkward at first, any change. After awhile you learn to change gears and rest sitting in the chair.

What you are doing is training the mind. That burns a lot of energy and can look silly to an onlooker that knows you can play far better than these runouts you are practicing. You will be moving up rapidly until you hit a plateau and slow down a bit. Plateaus in learning aren't really real, they are just periods of slower learning after which you are often rewarded with a period of rapid improvement.

One continuous action for an entire inning is one of the Holy Grails of pool. Well worth chasing.

Hu

Were you watching me play tonight?

I think my current priority is my patterns. I can see several balls ahead but at least one shot turns out to have trickier position than I can reliably execute. There's an exercise Demetrius Jelatus recommends where you set out the balls and shoot each shot 3 times, and then shoot the next shot from the worst of the three leaves. That will teach me what routes I can hit consistently.

Not that my actual cue skills are what I would like them to be but they are sufficient to get the job done if I make the right decisions.

 

[Guy Manges]

Was watching the Slovenia tournament.
I appreciate/enjoy/like and support the idea of your opponent racking for you, and seeing the breaker also helping, by rolling balls to the racker. This is quality time spent for both players.
It allows each, to go over what transpired the previous game.
It speeds up play and duplicates what happens in real life in match play 9 ball.

Yes there is times that i agree with you there, funny how it depends on who I am a fan of... Guy

 

[Guy Manges]

Were you watching me play tonight?

I think my current priority is my patterns. I can see several balls ahead but at least one shot turns out to have trickier position than I can reliably execute. There's an exercise Demetrius Jelatus recommends where you set out the balls and shoot each shot 3 times, and then shoot the next shot from the worst of the three leaves. That will teach me what routes I can hit consistently.

Not that my actual cue skills are what I would like them to be but they are sufficient to get the job done if I make the right decisions.

As I see the pool games especially rotations the patterns are the most important part of the pool games...Guy, And what makes this game so great is they are indefinite...

 

[ShootingArts]

Were you watching me play tonight?

I think my current priority is my patterns. I can see several balls ahead but at least one shot turns out to have trickier position than I can reliably execute. There's an exercise Demetrius Jelatus recommends where you set out the balls and shoot each shot 3 times, and then shoot the next shot from the worst of the three leaves. That will teach me what routes I can hit consistently.

Not that my actual cue skills are what I would like them to be but they are sufficient to get the job done if I make the right decisions.

I am a lot stronger on theory than practice myself these days! My local pool hall has became unhealthy, got to find another one. Meanwhile my skills have never recovered fully from a few decades away from pool anyway. Age and aches are major factors also. Mileage is pretty high too! All of that moaning just to tell you that like many others giving suggestions on here, while I try to be sure my advice is good, I ain't that good at following it myself!

Early plans usually go sideways a shot at a time, each one a little further off until one is too far off to have real hope of success. If that is what is happening being aware of it and shooting a careful recovery shot earlier to get your pattern back might help. Sometimes a person can be aware of tiny issues in the back of their mind without acting on it. Sometimes changing patterns is the key too, changing them before you have to.

Something I see a good bit of at the highest levels watching video matches is players shooting lower percentage shots when several routes to the same place are offered to them. Something that might increase your options if you don't consider them as often as draw to shape are follow and force follow shots. I would suggest any player practice follow and force follow until they are equal options to draw in their mind. This might add 20-30% more options to pattern planning and helps a bunch when considering getting to the next point. Adds to recovery options too.

Minimize cue ball travel. Seems basic but also seems like many players don't consider this today. Not talking about cue ball travel on wide open tables so much as cue ball travel in traffic. Those videos I watch show top players ending runs because they run afoul of traffic. Falls under the heading of "stuff" happens when there is no option but often it seems all options aren't considered before the player selects the one that causes them to run afoul of traffic. This is an eight, nine, and ten ball issue, particularly nine and ten ball.

Just more rambling. I have learned that more people than I realized read these things so I am almost always posting to more than just one person. Hope this helps you in particular though. If not pertinent to you, hopefully to somebody else.

Hu

 

[tomatoshooter]

Something that might increase your options if you don't consider them as often as draw to shape are follow and force follow shots. I would suggest any player practice follow and force follow until they are equal options to draw in their mind.

I think I'm most accurate potting with drag and stop shots, force follow with inside English can be pretty iffy for me.

Early plans usually go sideways a shot at a time, each one a little further off until one is too far off to have real hope of success.

A lot of times I'll be perfect for three or four shots and then either dog my position or be playing for a smaller window that's more difficult to hit than I realize. Often I've got too few balls left to do anything other than try to finish what I started.

 

[Johnny Rosato]

Concentration is the word your looking for Guy.

And yes rushing things doesn’t work out for most players. There’s a few exceptions. Lou Butaria (spelled wrong of course, sorry Lou)

Butera, distant kin.
As well as DD, although neither would claim an Alabama Itailian as kin! lol

 

[Island Drive]

I think I'm most accurate potting with drag and stop shots, force follow with inside English can be pretty iffy for me.


A lot of times I'll be perfect for three or four shots and then either dog my position or be playing for a smaller window that's more difficult to hit than I realize. Often I've got too few balls left to do anything other than try to finish what I started.

The speed of your swing needed to get to where you want to go.... will determine the angle of your ''walk up'' to where you're going to PLACE your hand ''on table''.

When your ''down your done''.

Your results will determine next time whether you walk up a little more left or right.
This thinking keeps it simple, and it is simple, but to develop the feel for the shot, requires practice.

Your walk up/approach, changes with ''the same shot'' when more or less speed is needed.

 

[ShootingArts]

I think I'm most accurate potting with drag and stop shots, force follow with inside English can be pretty iffy for me.


A lot of times I'll be perfect for three or four shots and then either dog my position or be playing for a smaller window that's more difficult to hit than I realize. Often I've got too few balls left to do anything other than try to finish what I started.

Not gonna write anudder book but inside english is just another bugaboo. Most don't use it enough to be effective with it but it often saves going around the table by killing a cue ball off of a rail. As soon as I decided using inside was no harder than outside it got much easier! Most of my struggle with inside english was in my head, the rest was from trying to avoid it.

Hu

 

[Island Drive]

Plus, it adds inside spin to obj. ball when hitting the pocket facing making it rotate inward. Also, allows obj. ball to enter the pocket a higher speed and not spit out.

 

[tomatoshooter]

it often saves going around the table by killing a cue ball off of a rail.

The shots I'm struggling with are when I'm near straight in to a corner pocket and want to follow in and out 2 rails. Sometimes when I'm shooting parallel to the long rail, cutting a ball in the far left corner pocket and wan to hit the right rail and go three rails back uptable. I don't do too bad killing the cue ball, like sooting into the side pocket and wanting to hold for a shot in the other side.