The single idea that will most improve your game - Voting Poll

[macguy]

Great thread. I think the time horizon for improvement is the key here. Improvement of one's fundamentals cannot happen overnight. I think the right choices have been made in the poll if long-term immprovement is what is sought.

Contrastingly, if somebody asked me what is the best chance they have of improving their play in the very short-term, I think my advice would be closest to the choice:

Do the highest percentage thing that YOU KNOW HOW to do (not what Efren would do).

Doing a better job of personalizing and sticking to the percentages is an adjustment that can be made very quickly, and it pays instant and significant dividends. Just a thought.

Again, though, for long-term imporvement, I'm aligned with what others have suggested in the poll.

If I understand what you are saying, I think you are exactly right. Chris Evert had flaws in her game but she also had things she did very well. Her farther made her a champion by recognizing that and instead of worrying about what she couldn't do, take what she does best and raised it to a level of genius, along with improving her overall game.

You can spend forever working on your weaknesses they will always still be your weaknesses. Not saying don't work on them, but you have to work on your strengths. Take what you do best and raise it to perfection.

 

[BillPorter]

Great point, IMHO

It's not on the list, but for me it is being around good players, there is an osmoses effect of some kind getting around top players, you just pick it up and don't even realize it is happening. I remember being the best player where I played and then began going to a really good room a few town over. After a year hanging around there my game was through the roof. It would never have happened just practicing in a mediocre environment no matter what I did. there is no substitute for it.

macguy, that's a great point and probably should have been added to our list of suggestions. Spending time around better players contributes to your game in several ways. For one thing, it leads you to set higher standards for performance. Instead of thinking that running one rack is great, now you start thinking of stringing racks together. Also, you are bound to learn stuff you wouldn't learn if you were not watching better players. You see a way of playing position that's new to you or you see one-pocket moves you would have never thought of on your own. I guess this is also a reason for attending tournaments like DCC and others where you can, at least for a few days, watch and hang around top players.

 

[Craig Fales]

I voted for the preshot routine...I'd second that with studying the table before you got down on the shot...
________

 

[Cheez Dawg]

I voted pre shot routine, BUT I also think staying down is paramount as well.
I don't have a said pre shot routine, but just a shot routine which helps me to focus on the shot, as well as heep my head down during the shot. Basically I have a routine I go through from the start of the shot, until the cuball stops rolling after.

 

[whitewolf]

After a few days thinking about this I am sure that we left some very important things off the list.

RHYTHM!!!

A friend of mine asked Allison this during his lesson with her. She doesn't practice a rhythm, but she said some players have a definite rhythm. She mentioned Efren - 1-2-3 pause 1-2 pause shoot. But if watch Allison, she does have a rhythm LOL.

Leonard xxxx on CCB, a great straight pool player, says that rhythm is very very important.

Personally, I do 1-2-3-pause-shoot most evey shot, and especially during practice.

1-2 is just to get loose, but my mind and body are trained to know that when -3 comes around, it is time to get serious and really focus.

LONG DISTANCE FOCUSING

If you have no rhythm and your eyes are focusing too much on the shaft or object ball, you ARE NOT SEEING the object ball. The object ball will look smaller and blurrier (Cuetechasaurus, this is what your were experienciong I am guessing). This is akin to the quite eye theory.

During the -3, your eyes should be focusing entirely on the object ball with long distance focusing - the object ball will look larger than normal. Then just before you fire you make sure the cuetip is aiming exactly where you intend to hit the cueball (Scott Lee and Nick Varner are big on this), and you then lock on the object ball before your last sroke. RHYTHM will ensure this happens if you engrain it into your practice and play.

Good luck. Back to my C game.

 

[BillPorter]

I have to agree, but it may not be so easy to do....

Great thread. I think the time horizon for improvement is the key here. Improvement of one's fundamentals cannot happen overnight. I think the right choices have been made in the poll if long-term immprovement is what is sought.

Contrastingly, if somebody asked me what is the best chance they have of improving their play in the very short-term, I think my advice would be closest to the choice:

Do the highest percentage thing that YOU KNOW HOW to do (not what Efren would do).

Doing a better job of personalizing and sticking to the percentages is an adjustment that can be made very quickly, and it pays instant and significant dividends. Just a thought.

Again, though, for long-term imporvement, I'm aligned with what others have suggested in the poll.

I think you make an excellent point that I think of in terms of "playing within your abilities" and making good decisions at the table. For example, faced with a shot where table-length draw would be required for good position, a player who KNOWS they can't execute that draw shot may decide to simply stop their cue ball and then play a safety. I guess I'm saying that for me this falls under decision making. One of the suggestions in the voting poll was to make a commitment to shoot the shot the way you decided to shoot it while standing up at the table. A connected idea is that indecisiveness is a big negative. So putting all of this together in my own mind, I'm thinking it's like saying you need to be decisive and stick with your decisions, but that to help you, the decisions had better be GOOD decisions. So again, I really like the point you make about personalizing your decisions (what am I capable of doing in this situation) and playing the percentages as this makes for better decisions, but I'm just a little skeptical about most players being able to make these changes quickly. Hope my rambling makes some sense?

 

[Colin Colenso]

Bill,
This has been a worthwhile pursuit which has brought many good ideas into consideration.

This poll has its merits also, though I'm reminded of Steven Colbert's famous phrase of 'Wikiality', that is, truth or a perception of reality born out of consensus.

I think that we can all agree that a wide range of factors go into the making of a great player, or the attaining of maximum performance at any given time for a given player.

This discussion has prompted clearer insights into an effective analytical approach to achieving those goals.

Colin

 

[BillPorter]

Yep!

Bill,
This has been a worthwhile pursuit which has brought many good ideas into consideration.

This poll has its merits also, though I'm reminded of Steven Colbert's famous phrase of 'Wikiality', that is, truth or a perception of reality born out of consensus.

I think that we can all agree that a wide range of factors go into the making of a great player, or the attaining of maximum performance at any given time for a given player.

This discussion has prompted clearer insights into an effective analytical approach to achieving those goals.

Colin

Colin, as usual, you bring a worthwhile insight to the table. Your comment about "Wikiality" (a reference to Wikipdeia, the online encyclopedia) or truth by consensus reminds me of a project I was involved with years ago when a college was trying to create a "vision" statemet. We worked for a full year taking suggestions for elements of a vision statement from all components of the college community. Then we boiled all this down using many small group discussions and a voting poll. We finally ended up with a vision statement that looked great on paper but which wasn't really ANYONE'S vision of the college's future and ended up as nothing more than anyone filing cabinet full of paper. So, while I agree that just combining everyone's ideas into a final product is no sure path to truth, I'm still thinking that someone out there will find a nugget or two in this process that they can use to improve their game.

 

[BillPorter]

Two quick points

After a few days thinking about this I am sure that we left some very important things off the list.

RHYTHM!!!

A friend of mine asked Allison this during his lesson with her. She doesn't practice a rhythm, but she said some players have a definite rhythm. She mentioned Efren - 1-2-3 pause 1-2 pause shoot. But if watch Allison, she does have a rhythm LOL.

Leonard xxxx on CCB, a great straight pool player, says that rhythm is very very important.

Personally, I do 1-2-3-pause-shoot most evey shot, and especially during practice.

1-2 is just to get loose, but my mind and body are trained to know that when -3 comes around, it is time to get serious and really focus.

LONG DISTANCE FOCUSING

If you have no rhythm and your eyes are focusing too much on the shaft or object ball, you ARE NOT SEEING the object ball. The object ball will look smaller and blurrier (Cuetechasaurus, this is what your were experienciong I am guessing). This is akin to the quite eye theory.

During the -3, your eyes should be focusing entirely on the object ball with long distance focusing - the object ball will look larger than normal. Then just before you fire you make sure the cuetip is aiming exactly where you intend to hit the cueball (Scott Lee and Nick Varner are big on this), and you then lock on the object ball before your last sroke. RHYTHM will ensure this happens if you engrain it into your practice and play.

Good luck. Back to my C game.

Nice post! I just wanted to add another person who emphasized RHYTHM and that's Willie Mosconi. I can't recall the exact quotation, but he said that most pool players don't realize how important rhythm is when playing pool. One last thing, when focusing on the object ball, just before pulling the trigger, I have recently been trying to mentally MOVE MY LOCUS nearer the object ball, sort of anticipating the path the cue ball is going to take. I know I'm not saying this very well, but what I am doing is sort of like trying to have an "out of body experience" and moving yourself (your mental self) toward the object ball as you stroke forward on your final stroke and watch the cue ball move toward and strike the object ball. Please don't suggest psychotherapy, I promise I'm not developing schizophrenic delusions/hallucinations here!

 

[Colin Colenso]

Colin, as usual, you bring a worthwhile insight to the table. Your comment about "Wikiality" (a reference to Wikipdeia, the online encyclopedia) or truth by consensus reminds me of a project I was involved with years ago when a college was trying to create a "vision" statemet. We worked for a full year taking suggestions for elements of a vision statement from all components of the college community. Then we boiled all this down using many small group discussions and a voting poll. We finally ended up with a vision statement that looked great on paper but which wasn't really ANYONE'S vision of the college's future and ended up as nothing more than anyone filing cabinet full of paper. So, while I agree that just combining everyone's ideas into a final product is no sure path to truth, I'm still thinking that someone out there will find a nugget or two in this process that they can use to improve their game.

Bill,
Your experience with the college community further reminds me of an observation by the great H.L. Mencken.

...Warning...dictionaries may be required...

Mencken's pervasive individualist Weltanschauung gave an unappreciated consistency to his views on many different subjects. It gave a system to his superficially piecemeal forays into innumerable fields. Let us take, for example, such a supposedly "non-political" field as folk-music. It is not accidental that both the Socialist Left and the Nationalist Right—those twin enemies of individualism—in our century have made a virtual fetish of the "people's" folk-song. Mencken cut to the heart of the matter in his inimitable review of Dr. Louise Pound's Poetic Origins and the Ballad:

Dr. Pound's book completely disposes of the theory upon which nine-tenths of all the pedagogical discussions of the ballad and its origins are based. This is the theory that the ballads familiar to all of us...are the product, not of individual authors, but of whole herds of minnesingers working together...in brief, that the primitive balladists first joined in a communal hoofing, then began to moan and hum a tune, and finally fitted words to it. It is difficult to imagine anything more idiotic, and yet this doctrine is cherished as something almost sacred by whole droves of professors and rammed annually into the skulls of innumerable candidates for the Ph.D. Dr. Pound proves...that the ballads really did not originate that way at all—that they were written, on the contrary, by individual poets with talents...and that most of them first saw the light, not at vulgar shindigs on the village green, but at fashionable and even intellectual ale-parties in castle halls.

The notion that any respectable work of art can have a communal origin is wholly nonsensical. The plain people, taking them together, are quite as incapable of a coherent esthetic impulse as they are of courage, honesty, or honor. The cathedrals of the Middle Ages were not planned and built by whole communities, but by individual men; and all the communities had to do with the business was to do the hard work, reluctantly and often badly. So with folk-song, folk-myth, folk-balladry.... German folk-song...used to be credited to a mysterious native talent in the German yokelry, but scientific investigation reveals that some of the songs regarded as especially characteristic of the folk-soul were actually written by the director of music at the University of Tubingen, Prof. Dr. Friedrich Silcher....

The English ballads are to be accounted for in the same way. Dr. Pound shows that some of the most famous of them, in their earliest forms, are full of concepts and phrases that would have been as incomprehensible to the English peasantry of Elizabeth's time as the Ehrlich hypothesis of immunity—that it is a sheer impossibility to imagine them being composed by a gang of oafs whooping and galloping around a May pole, or even assembled solemnly in an Eisteddfod or Allgemeinesangerfest. More, she shows the process of ballad making in our own time—how a song by a Paul Dresser or a Stephen Foster is borrowed by the folk, and then gradually debased.​

For the complete article go here: http://www.mises.org/story/1115

Colin

 

[Mr. Wilson]

I didn't vote for anything listed, despite they are all very important.

I think the commitment choice is close. I find you have to really believe in yourself, your ability to make that shot.....because as soon as you have a doubt, you'll miss.

 

[JoeyA]

For example, you can have the best preshoot routine ever, and if move your head you are doomed.

Has anyone really considered why this is the case?

The inner ear has that fluid that maintains balance and if your head is moving even minutely during the shot, the chances or your success are greatly diminished. Keeping your head still helps build consistency in your stroke, eye movements, and everything else.


IMHO, this is step number one and everything else follows.

I am a ball banger and have tried everything, but this works best for me if I want to get into some sort of stroke

While you may or may not be a ball banger, you have some SAGE advice for those willing to listen and apply.
JoeyA

 

[Colin Colenso]

Colin, as usual, you bring a worthwhile insight to the table. Your comment about "Wikiality" (a reference to Wikipdeia, the online encyclopedia) or truth by consensus reminds me of a project I was involved with years ago when a college was trying to create a "vision" statemet. We worked for a full year taking suggestions for elements of a vision statement from all components of the college community. Then we boiled all this down using many small group discussions and a voting poll. We finally ended up with a vision statement that looked great on paper but which wasn't really ANYONE'S vision of the college's future and ended up as nothing more than anyone filing cabinet full of paper. So, while I agree that just combining everyone's ideas into a final product is no sure path to truth, I'm still thinking that someone out there will find a nugget or two in this process that they can use to improve their game.

After the somewhat abstract, though to me always entertaining, quotation of Mencken on the subject, let me offer some more positive remarks on the usefulness of the process of collecting and decifering community opinion.

Firstly, it provides for us a good check list of ideas or methods we may have overlooked in our training and execution.

It provides a broader focus, which may prevent the tendency to get stuck in our own prefered pet theories.

The information would be even more useful I think if each idea could be ranked by experienced players and coaches on a level of importance, from 1 to 10.

This would provide us with a good benchmark for perceived importance, and for a system builder would offer much better advice than their own inexperienced guessing of which factors to work on.

However, certian flaws arise, which require a more indepth analysis, or insight to go about producing a more effective system, and for a methodology of applying it to various student of different needs.

It could be that some of the ideas are interdependent, and some may be moreso symptoms rather than actual causes. For example, I believe that lifting on the shot is far less often a cause for a bad shot than a symptom of being poorly pre-aligned to the shot. If this is true, and the majority of players have not come to realise this, then the data will draw the wrong conclusions for which cause is the most deserving of attention.

So in conclusion, I think the data provides useful insights, but narrowing it down to something that is most valuable requires one to analyze it with a more indepth insight. If that is done well, then it provides a powerful tool for predicting where and why certain players are making mistakes and how to best instruct them (or oneself) toward a more effective approach.

As to the question, what is the ONE key thing to focus on, I'm not sure there is a good answer, but I'm weighing toward the idea that it should be the one aspect that best allows them to play to their best ability, or conversely, a focus on preventing the one thing they have a tendency to do that leads them toward the most costly errors.....and I suspect these things are different for most players.

Colin

 

[Colin Colenso]

For example, you can have the best preshoot routine ever, and if move your head you are doomed.

Has anyone really considered why this is the case?

For me, it matters little if I move my head during the stroke. Hence I can pretty much cancel it out as an important variable.

Yet, during the alignment phase keeping the head still is absolutely crucial.

The reason I am quite sure is that alignment requires accurate visual data, and the data is not so clear when the head is moving, or it is not positioned in exact same place as the data is usually collected from.

I believe the reason that many players miss more when they move the head during the shot, is that the great majority of players do not pre-align accurately. Instead, they rely on intuitive adjustments during the stroke. Usually a noticeable swipe during the stroke, often toward the outside english side of the CB.

For this intuitive process to work well, the player needs to observe the shot intently during the stroke. But if you pre-align well, knowing the exact intended manner of the stroke, then a high degree of accuracy and consistancy can be obtained even if the body lifts during the stroke, or even if the eyes shift their focus to the CB instead of the OB.

Colin

 

[JoeyA]

One last thing, when focusing on the object ball, just before pulling the trigger, I have recently been trying to mentally MOVE MY LOCUS nearer the object ball, sort of anticipating the path the cue ball is going to take. Please don't suggest psychotherapy, I promise I'm not developing schizophrenic delusions/hallucinations here!

By locus, I assume you mean your center of attention.

I have noticed that when I am playing my best pool, I have a special proprinquity to the object ball that is not there when I am playing my average or below average pool. It is almost as if I am part of the object ball, my attention to the object ball is so deep that I almost become one with the object ball, knowing that it will go into the hole before contact is made. I do not have this feeling with the cue ball or cue as when I am in stroke as I hardly know they are there. There is an affection or connection or both that is part of the higher end of my game and it is the object ball that is the recipient of my deepest empathy.

You may or may not be delusional but delusional insights in pool offer some of the most interesting perspectives.

JoeyA (just a day-dreamer)

 

[JoeyA]

The information would be even more useful I think if each idea could be ranked by experienced players and coaches on a level of importance, from 1 to 10.

It could be that some of the ideas are interdependent, and some may be moreso symptoms rather than actual causes. For example, I believe that lifting on the shot is far less often a cause for a bad shot than a symptom of being poorly pre-aligned to the shot. If this is true, and the majority of players have not come to realise this, then the data will draw the wrong conclusions for which cause is the most deserving of attention.

So in conclusion, I think the data provides useful insights, but narrowing it down to something that is most valuable requires one to analyze it with a more indepth insight. If that is done well, then it provides a powerful tool for predicting where and why certain players are making mistakes and how to best instruct them (or oneself) toward a more effective approach.

As to the question, what is the ONE key thing to focus on, I'm not sure there is a good answer, but I'm weighing toward the idea that it should be the one aspect that best allows them to play to their best ability, or conversely, a focus on preventing the one thing they have a tendency to do that leads them toward the most costly errors.....and I suspect these things are different for most players.

Colin

Colin, there is no doubt in my mind that each player is likely to have different needs to focus on. I had never considered that rising up is a mark of possible mis-alignment but that is interesting. I think rising up is a sign of lack of confidence for that particular shot, which could come from your knowing that you are not aligned correctly, that you didn't commit fully to the shot, that you stroked the cue ball with the wrong stroke, that you had other things on your mind and a host of other things which detract from a perfect shot. (Unless you are Keith McCready who rises on EVERY shot).

I would like to see you refine the list with your input in mind and then possibly we could all in our individual locales quiz the local professional pool players and develop a consensus from their perspective.
JoeyA

 

[Colin Colenso]

Colin, there is no doubt in my mind that each player is likely to have different needs to focus on. I had never considered that rising up is a mark of possible mis-alignment but that is interesting. I think rising up is a sign of lack of confidence for that particular shot, which could come from your knowing that you are not aligned correctly, that you didn't commit fully to the shot, that you stroked the cue ball with the wrong stroke, that you had other things on your mind and a host of other things which detract from a perfect shot. (Unless you are Keith McCready who rises on EVERY shot).

I would like to see you refine the list with your input in mind and then possibly we could all in our individual locales quiz the local professional pool players and develop a consensus from their perspective.
JoeyA

Joey,
Your description above is pretty much what I think is happening most times when a player makes that awkward non usual lunge, lift or swipe on a shot.

During the stroke, their is an intuitive feeling that the shot is not aligned correctly, and so the stroke tends to include some kind of physical reaction to try to compensate. Often times you'll see a player do this actually after they have struck the CB.

Certainly there are times when a player is properly aligned but then just second guesses himself during the stroke, but I think players often get confused that the former is actually the later. And the end result is that they start analyzing their stroke, perhaps their elbow or their wrist, looking for the cause, but in fact usually the cause is that their bridge position was placed in a position that basically made it impossible to make the pot without severe swiping or swerving.

The problem often is, that because players often make small adjustments during the final stroke, by slight swiping to change the line of the CB to the one required, that they become lazy with bridge placement.

My own opinion is that bridge placement is far more an important a factor in accurate potting than the variations that arise from stroking inaccuracies.

I suggest the next time you watch some medium to good players play, watch to see if their cue moves straight through on execution. Then ask if they could move it through straighter if that was their primary goal. I think most of us can move a cue reasonably straight when that is our goal, but most players would miss a lot of pots if they actually did so. (Because they align slightly off and then swipe slightly to adjust during the stroke).

This is also one reason that I think a lot of players miss when they stroke with power. Because the cue tends to travel straighter with power, so they cannot make that intuitive adjustment during the stroke. It shows up their lack of accurate pre-alignment.

Colin

 

[Cornerman]

Joey,
Your description above is pretty much what I think is happening most times when a player makes that awkward non usual lunge, lift or swipe on a shot.

During the stroke, their is an intuitive feeling that the shot is not aligned correctly, and so the stroke tends to include some kind of physical reaction to try to compensate. Often times you'll see a player do this actually after they have struck the CB.

I agree with this completely. The quick lunge upwards is a result, not a cause.

Fred

 

[Dawgie]

I voted for the pre-shot routine. However each and every one of the ideas you posted are important and interrelated.

 

[lewdo26]

By locus, I assume you mean your center of attention.

I have noticed that when I am playing my best pool, I have a special proprinquity to the object ball that is not there when I am playing my average or below average pool. It is almost as if I am part of the object ball, my attention to the object ball is so deep that I almost become one with the object ball, knowing that it will go into the hole before contact is made. I do not have this feeling with the cue ball or cue as when I am in stroke as I hardly know they are there. There is an affection or connection or both that is part of the higher end of my game and it is the object ball that is the recipient of my deepest empathy.

You may or may not be delusional but delusional insights in pool offer some of the most interesting perspectives.

JoeyA (just a day-dreamer)

Beautiful post, Joey.

On a more mundane level, I actually notice that, when I'm at my best, I do not look at the OB full-on in the center unless it's a straight in shot. Instead I look at the object ball where it's going to be struck and I maintain my commitment to that stroke path.

Oh, another thing that hasn't been mentioned in the poll, which I believe is of the utmost importance, is to assess your mistakes and maintain your composure when you flub it...

In the end, pool will not be played perfectly, no matter how accomplished one might be. I'm starting to realize that process is all that matters in this game. The pleasure derived from pool I think is more akin to a dance than a concrete accomplishment. Feeling your rhythm and your body movements is all there is to it. The balls are simply a conduit.