Stroking Straight

[lfigueroa]

Does anyone here think they stroke straight? Do any pros stroke PERFECTLY straight? Or, do pros just play their slightly crooked stroke perfectly?

Is it possible to stroke perfectly straight repeatably?

I'm curious to hear everyone's feedback.

I'm of the opinion that no one strokes straight and trying to do so is futile... but I might be wrong. Looking forward to sweating this thread-

Dave

IMO, there are straight strokes, and then... there are straight strokes. For the vast majority of players, anything vaguely resembling a straight stroke is good enough to play a few times a week, or in a league. After all, people can make an amazing number of balls with crooked strokes, opposite-handed, with mechanical bridges, one-handed, and of course, even no-handed.

Some of us that spend many hours playing (and hoping to play at the higher levels), exhaust a considerable amount of time on the practice table, in front of mirrors, with odd gadgets and Coke bottles, chasing down the elusive straight stroke. Until, perhaps, we discover that a straight stroke, in and of itself, isn't good enough. IOW, just because you stroke perfectly straight playing air pool, or going in and out of a bottle, or even with actual pool balls, isn't the secret.

I think the reason for that is that any player can make the cue travel on a perfectly straight track, using many different methods or techniques. Put another way, you can produce a perfectly straight stroke using a wide variety of stroke mechanics -- different stances, bridges, grips, head heights, crooked or bent bridge arms, grip arm alignments, pinkies on or off, etc. But it has to be a straight (or even crooked stroke for that matter) that produces the desired/expected results for your hypothesis, each time you shoot at a pool ball. The object balls need to be going in the pockets and the cue ball has to be going where you want and expect it to go. I think that's the secret. I'm not so sure it's important if the stroke that accomplishes that is straight, crooked, a swoop, or a dip.

Lou Figueroa

 

[Kickin' Chicken]

Laser straight advise

It's pretty easy to check how straight your stroke is.
I use a lazer level I got at Home Depot for about 5 bucks. I use little stickers or paper renforcements and place them along a lazer line on the table so I know they are straight. Set up a vide camera facing your shot and video tape your stroke. The stickers give you a visual reference as to where the cue starts and finishes, and the video camera will show how the cue moves throughout the entire stroke. Slow motion is great!

Steve

I have one of those carpenter straight-line lasers, as well, and I took your advise using the laser to lay out, in my case, flourescent peel and stick mini-dots on my table and this offered a perfect evaluation for straight stroke.

Thanks for the spot-on (yes, pun intended) suggestion, Steve.

KC

 

[Fastolfe]

I'm not so sure it's important if the stroke that accomplishes that is straight, crooked, a swoop, or a dip.

You are correct. Consistent and repeatable shots are more important than how you make the shots. However, IMO a straight stroke is the best way to get consistency. Once your shooting mechanics are reliable, you can work on the rest.

For truly great players, I have a feeling that they are so good, so advanced in their techniques that they've pushed all these considerations to the wayside and play on raw intuition. Crooked or not, their arm works, period. But for the rest of us, a good honest-to-goodness straight stroke is the best way forward though.

 

[Simple]

For the must of us, who cannot stroke straight and are not satisfied with it, we should change our fundamentals first. The best way I know is to make the "one arm shot" drill as explained on the PAT1 dvd. Afaik Barry Kinister has a similar dvd produced. It looks stupid, if you practice in a public pool hall, but it works really.

 

[JB Cases]

The key is consistent delivery to the point on the ball you want to hit. You can have the straightest textbook perfect stroke in the world and still not be hitting the ball where you think you are hitting it.

I have shown this to my students dozens of times using a training ball where you can see where the ball was stuck.

This is one that I just invented for this purpose -

It has little open circles on one side and lines on the other so you can see precisely where you hit the ball. So when you are thinking 2tips left or right you can see if you are really hitting the ball where you think that is.

I have seen people with loopy goofy warm up strokes and they deliver the cue tip exactly where they intend to hit the cue ball.

Bustamante really got the Germans confused when he showed up in Germany with his long loopy stroke. None of the Germans with their perfect strokes could believe it was possible to play so good without having a quiet perfectly straight stroke.

The thing that they didn't realize is that Bustamante's stroke and theirs was exactly the same - ON THE FINAL STROKE where it counted.

And that's the key right there. As long as you are not doing anything goofy on the final stroke, dropping your hand, jumping up, dipping your shoulder, jerking your head, twisting your ass, or anythine else that pulls the cue tip away from where you intend to hit the cue ball then you're golden.

Assuming you aimed right that it.

John Barton - stroked into a lot of coke and beer bottles in my life............

P.S. Here is a drill for you though. Stroke over the line where the cloth meets the rail. See if you can extend the cue all the way from the corner to the side pocket and keep the cue tip over the line. Taught to me by Chris McDaniel and I find it to be helpful.

 

[Neil]

.................

 

[JB Cases]

1. not even close

2 not that I've seen so far

3. i would probably agree there

4. doubt it

In closing I just want to say simply that I don't believe the human body is designed to be able to stroke a cue perfectly straight consistently. I think the better players just found a way to co-ordinate everything in a way that allows them relatively consistent results.

I disagree. There are many humans who can do repetitive motion with near perfect accuracy. I'd argue that Bustamante's stroking and Ralf Souquet's stroking are very consistent from stroke to stroke even through their techniques appear to be completely opposite.

If you put a little diode on their tip to track their stroke would it be highly erratic from shot to shot (as mine is) or would it exhibit nearly the same motion shot to shot?

Which brings up the question of what is perfect? Is there a window in which a stroke can vary and still be considered perfect? I think we all get this idea in our mind that a perfect stroke consists of the cue going forward and backwards as if it's a piston inside a tight shaft locked onto the target on the cueball. I don't think that this is a perfect stroke, I think a perfect stroke is one that is consistent and delivers the tip to the target. But I do think that there are people out there who have as near to a perfectly straight stroke as humanly possible.

Here's a little test that people can do to see how consistently they can hit a target.

Get some carbon paper or carbonless copy receipt paper, you know the kind with a white sheet on top and a yellow sheet on the bottom.

Tape this to something solid like a wall and make a dot using a sharpie.

Now hit the dot ten times with your tip. Check the yellow copy to see how you did.

 

[JB Cases]

Nice idea on the cueball John. (although I believe there are similar ones already out there). But, you shouldn't have outsourced it. I mean, look at that thing! You have left where high should be, low where left should be, ect. Should have had it made in an english speaking country.:smile:

LOL - I think that the American photographer should have paid more attention to the orientation of the ball when taking the image.

There are similar ones but none the same. This one is different on a lot of levels, namely the dots are spaced exactly half a tip's shift apart. The ines on the other side are one tip's width apart. The white circle is the NO MISCUE zone. IF you hit inside the white circle you WILL NOT miscue, hit outside of it and you will definitely miscue. This was done to train people to get a good feeling for how far out they can really go.

This ball is all about getting in touch with exactly where you are hitting the cue ball. I though about it for a year and made several variations before coming up with this one. I spent a lot of time studying the tip and cue ball relationship.

The closest ball to this one in my opinion is the Jim Rempe training ball and I often found that it was too cluttered to be of much use to me.

Anyway......enough of the ad......if anyone wants to beat me out of $5 at the SBE stop by and prove me wrong on the NO MISCUE zone on this ball. If you can miscue while hitting the cueball INSIDE the white circle then I will give you $5 OR if you can hit OUTSIDE the white circle and NOT miscue then I will give you $5.

 

[pooltchr]

LOL - I think that the American photographer should have paid more attention to the orientation of the ball when taking the image.

There are similar ones but none the same. This one is different on a lot of levels, namely the dots are spaced exactly half a tip's shift apart. The ines on the other side are one tip's width apart. The white circle is the NO MISCUE zone. IF you hit inside the white circle you WILL NOT miscue, hit outside of it and you will definitely miscue. This was done to train people to get a good feeling for how far out they can really go.

This ball is all about getting in touch with exactly where you are hitting the cue ball. I though about it for a year and made several variations before coming up with this one. I spent a lot of time studying the tip and cue ball relationship.

The closest ball to this one in my opinion is the Jim Rempe training ball and I often found that it was too cluttered to be of much use to me.

Anyway......enough of the ad......if anyone wants to beat me out of $5 at the SBE stop by and prove me wrong on the NO MISCUE zone on this ball. If you can miscue while hitting the cueball INSIDE the white circle then I will give you $5 OR if you can hit OUTSIDE the white circle and NOT miscue then I will give you $5.

John, I have the Cuesight, Rempe, and Elephant balls. I like the design of the Cuesight ball the best, but one improvement I would suggest would be to tone down the finish on it just a bit. The Elephant ball doesn't have quite the glossy finish, but holds the chalk marks much better, which is the primary point of using a training ball in the first place.

Just a suggestion from an instructor who has used them all.

Steve

 

[TSW]

The biggest mistake is thinking that you are in the right position when you really aren't. Then you'll think all I've said is BS. Don't give up and try harder: the right position is hard to find, really, but once you have it, it makes everything so easy it's not even funny.

Excellent post, Fastolfe. The ending is spot-on. I've felt that magic position a handful of times and keep trying to find it again. No matter how close you feel, if you're not 100% sure that you're in the "right position," then you're not.

 

[Bob Jewett]

The highest-paid cuemen in the world nearly all use the same technique to ensure a straight, repeatable stroke. Few participants here use that simple, free technique. Maybe they should.

No pro pool player I've ever watched closely has a perfectly straight stroke.

One motivation to have a straight stroke is a simple calculation of the accuracy required to make typical pool shots. Example: the cue ball is on the head spot and the object ball is half way to a far corner pocket. The allowed error of your front hand or back hand for this shot is +- 1mm. That's the thickness of a dime.

Is a straight stroke necessary? No. Absolutely not. In practice, I've made the shot above 70 times in a row with a stroke that has about an inch of sideways movement. "All" I have to do is have the same swerve on every shot.

If I could go back in time, I'd revisit 1963, kidnap myself, and train myself to come more or less straight through. I would much rather not have a crooked stroke.

 

[lfigueroa]

You are correct. Consistent and repeatable shots are more important than how you make the shots. However, IMO a straight stroke is the best way to get consistency. Once your shooting mechanics are reliable, you can work on the rest.

For truly great players, I have a feeling that they are so good, so advanced in their techniques that they've pushed all these considerations to the wayside and play on raw intuition. Crooked or not, their arm works, period. But for the rest of us, a good honest-to-goodness straight stroke is the best way forward though.

I agree that, all things being equal, a straight stroke is good and wonderful. But if, as you say, the truly great players may be executing with some amount of crookedness -- maybe there is some kernel of value there for those who are not devoting their entire lives to the game? Maybe the elusive repeatable straight stroke is a bit too much to ask for...

And so, just consistency, of one kind or another, is enough to ask for.

Lou Figueroa

 

[lfigueroa]

The highest-paid cuemen in the world nearly all use the same technique to ensure a straight, repeatable stroke. Few participants here use that simple, free technique. Maybe they should.

No pro pool player I've ever watched closely has a perfectly straight stroke.

One motivation to have a straight stroke is a simple calculation of the accuracy required to make typical pool shots. Example: the cue ball is on the head spot and the object ball is half way to a far corner pocket. The allowed error of your front hand or back hand for this shot is +- 1mm. That's the thickness of a dime.

Is a straight stroke necessary? No. Absolutely not. In practice, I've made the shot above 70 times in a row with a stroke that has about an inch of sideways movement. "All" I have to do is have the same swerve on every shot.

If I could go back in time, I'd revisit 1963, kidnap myself, and train myself to come more or less straight through. I would much rather not have a crooked stroke.

But, but, Bob... the highest paid cuesmen in the world are not shooting pool, if I take your meaning

Lou Figueroa
would like to be transported back to
1981 when I was *a monster*
for one entire 9ball tournament

 

[cuetechasaurus]

I steer slightly to the left, any suggestions on a fix?

Yes. Most likely your bridge hand is not lined up with your stroking path. Think of it this way- Your elbow is a fixed hinge. If you don't involve your shoulder in the stroke, you should be able to stroke perfectly straight, unless your bridge hand is not aligned with your strokes natural straight path.

If you have a left hooking action in your stroke, the cause is most likely your bridge hand being too far to the left. Keep making small adjustments until you feel your stroke going straighter.

 

[John Biddle]

First off, I agree with those who have said here that any repeatable stroke, crooked or not, can be built into a fine pool game. However, I think it's easier to do that with excellent fundamentals. The more one has trained the muscle memory using something else, the harder it will be to correct, and may not be worth the effort.

I think there are two qualities of the stroke that, if done correctly, maximize one's ability to hit the ball where you want it to go, alignment and straightness. Either alone is good but insufficient.

What I call alignment is having upper arm perpendicular to the floor and the cue pointing through the cue ball to the desired contact point on the object ball. A plane passing through the cue and perfectly vertical should pass through the entire upper arm. This is on a center ball hit, for simplicity.

Straightness is the ability to drive the stick straight down that line, from one end of the stroke to the other.

There are two inexpensive devices/gadgets that can help with this, one for each of these requirements. I've got reviews on my website of both of them, and recommend them, though I think they're best used at home, avoiding ridicule, interruptions and a reputation as a weirdo.

The Ultimate Billiard Coach helps you find vertical for your upper arm using gravity. It lets you hang the back end of your cue like a plumb bob. Simple, effective.

The second device, mentioned here in a positive way by others, is the Laser Stroke. It does a great job helping you groove the straightness of your stroke.

For these devices to help you, they need to be used enough so that you change (or create if you're a new player) your muscle memory for your stroke. Especially with the Laser Stroke, you'll need to do it enough so that when you go to the table, your stroke is the straight one you've been practicing, not the one you've used for years. Far from easy, but possible.

Hope you find this useful.

 

[CreeDo]

Pretty neat topic.

I think the reason for the lack of perfect strokes is that most people's stick is aligned slightly diagonally across their body.

How could it not be? We like to think we have pretty good visual judgment... but how can you tell for sure (once you're on the line of the shot) that your bridge hand is exactly centered horizontally with the back hand? You can't even see that hand unless you're constantly looking over your shoulder at it. The average player doesn't do that, nor do they get cameras and mirrors and lasers to double check it.

There are a lot of guys who probably hit a million balls thinking their 2-inches-off bridge hand was perfectly aligned with the back hand. Then they realize they have a swoop and it's murder to correct it.

 

[KMRUNOUT]

I seem to remember watching Thorsten Hohmann and I have to say his stroke seems pretty darn straight. Also the up and coming Mike Dechaine seems to have a very straight stroke.

KMRUNOUT

 

[enzo]

i consider myself an expert on this topic, i studied it for a year.....

nobody has a straight stroke, you may think you do, or think a certain player does, but they do not. what almost every god player DOES do however, is they get "back" to straight before impact, and follow through straight as well. in other words, all players have lateral (side to side) movement on their backstrokes, yet i have noticed many good ones (eg efren) get back to the point where their practice strokes were and follow straight through.

you will see efren many times before a match hit a cueball hard into the rail. what he is trying to do is make it come straight back, thus assuring himself his stroke is dead on. in his particular case, he has a tendency to hit the left side of the cueball (if he's off at all).

as far as im concerned, this IS pool. people who hit the cueball the most accurately will be the winners. how you get to that point really doesn't matter, what does matter is consistency and repeatability. i could go on and on about this topic, but i hate long posts

 

[RD3P]

i noticed the add for the stroke trainer in the corner...

ive always just used a empty Jeagermeister bottle(its rectangle) so you can place it on its side on the kitchen table at home, without it rolling away...either side for low bridge or a little higher....and stroked my cue....set up to where the mouth of the bottle is positioned like the cueball,, and follow throu to the inside of the bottle without hitting or rubbing glass....

you can glu some billiard cloth onto the inside of the opening and around the lip with super glue if your woried about your shaft getting dinged ...works great

spend 5 minutes or so with it...its good for small muscle controll...muscle memory.

my follow throu is not always strait after cueball contact(i dont know if this is how i compensate for deflection somewhat,???, depends on the shot, some shots wouldnt feel right being dead strait with followthrou .....i dont worry about it too much in games....

my backstroke is pretty good i think. but i dont see how workiing on your stroke could hurt, its not a bad thing to be concious about while practicing...but during a match i think worrying about it would undermine your game.....

 

[Simple]

I think, bottle drill is a waste of time. If you stroke, you have to focus on the object ball, not the cue ball.