I actually find that's a legitimate con for CTE. The system is precise, when in reality people are not. If you get lazy with the visuals, you miss. If you get lazy with your pivot, you miss.
Trying to pivot by the exact same amount sideways isn't very intuitive, and sometimes for w.e reason your body will fight the inclination to turn sideways (ex: Shooting over a ball, I'll tend to land thicker, because my body just doesn't want to rotate).
Also I think ghostball aiming etc has an advantage in the sense that you're lining up to something in the distance instead of the cueball directly in front of you. Is it easier to drive in a straight line by looking down the road, or at the hood of your car?
Also if you're looking at the object ball and then landing straight on the shot line, if you're off you could probably still make the ball within reason.
With CTE, you're essentially rotating around the cueball to get an alignment to the object ball that also share a relationship based on rotation. Then you rotate into the shot line. I find if you're off at any of those rotations, the errors magnify because you're dealing with angles of rotation instead of just mm's left or right of a target.
So essentially you're picking up your visuals at an offset, aligning at an offset, landing with another offset, and if you want to put english on the ball, you're using back hand english, which means offsetting your cue. When it's all said and done, sometimes beginner me didn't even know which direction to stroke straight even was.
I think the biggest strength and weakness of CTE is actually how precise it is. Precision requires precision. It's not ever going to make a person who is lousy at aiming better at aiming. But it gives a person with the visual knowledge to be precise, a tool in which to be precise with.
Yes you've reduce all the shots on the table into 4 categories that you repeat the same way every time, but it's a pretty complicated process to repeat the same way every time.
Suddenly difficult cut shots become relatively easy, BUT, since you're following the same steps for any shot regardless of what it is, the same way, every time, the truth is now your easy shots are just as difficult as your hard ones. I feel like this catch is the main thing people never talk about.
That's why I don't think CTE is some magic pill. You're kind of just shifting your percentages around. Instead of being someone who can make easy shots a high percentage of the time, and harder ones, less so, you're pretty much even across the board and with that comes it's advantages and disadvantages.
I do believe that CTE is potent when you've completely mastered it, and all shots become easy across the board.
I think CTE can make a person an A player or better really quickly in a very attainable sense. It definitely speeds up the process from beginner to advanced if you apply yourself and are willing to grit down.
I honestly don't think CTE will ever make someone one of the greats. I think beautiful pool is too organic and natural to be restricted to something so rigid. I'm not sure if you can create true art with just CTE. (This parts a completely personal belief.)
Sorry for the rant, I use CTE exclusively and I love it. I just wanted to present a different perspective instead of the default one (Being super defensive and butthurt by people asking perfectly reasonable questions. I really don't know how that's supposed to make CTE more popular)
