This is a great thread.
I've found that over the years as my performance has improved, my awareness of exactly where the tip was contacting the cue ball has become more and more clairvoyant.
If you ask yourself the question, "How Do We Play Pool", the absolute core answer is "we impart a vector force upon the surface of the cue ball". That's it. That is all we are allowed and able to do. The components of the vector force are 1) where on the surface of the cue ball the vector force occurs, and 2) the magnitude of the force.
What is feel??? When your brain analyzes the problem of trying to make the object ball go in the pocket, it recruits an enormous amount of information gathered from experience. A lot of times you can play pool fantastically for short periods of time if you allow your brain to drive. What your brain does is causes your muscles to contract in a sequence that, via precise timing, will cause the cue tip to hit the cue ball in such a location that it will solve the big picture. However, dependency on this timing is volatile, because as you play your brain is also gathering more information. The new information that it collects as it watches you effortlessly pocket balls enters its algorithm, and it starts over-compensating for some part of the timing. Then you start missing shots again and wonder why. (You dip in and out of dead-stroke).
I think that you can play/practice like this for a long time, and after a while the amount of information you gather will be so large, that your brain algorithm will reach a steady state. I think that is what people refer to “Hit A Million Balls” (HAMB) theory. HAMB does not require precise awareness of the vector force because experience and timing have built the vector force into the solution. Thus you can play well after 30 years or so, having never spent dedicated time working on fundamentals, and thus advising others that fundamentals doesn’t matter.
What are fundamentals??? What fundamentals means to me is training your body to deliver that force vector to exactly where you want to, AND, becoming highly aware of where the cue tip actually landed compared to where you thought it landed. A few years ago I ALWAYS thought that the cue tip was going where I wanted it to, and that my misses were due to a flaw in my aiming method, or something else. As I gained experience points, I was able to see that my stroke wasn’t always doing what I thought it was doing.
I think that things like “making sure your elbow doesn’t move”, “staying down on the ball”, “following through”, “accelerating through the ball”, etc. are all related to helping reduce the average statistical spread of vector force position errors. The mistake I made in the past was that I would focus too much on one particular piece of fundamental advice, say, “keep elbow still”, and would end up creating even MORE vector force position errors than if I just left things more natural.
Soooo, what I am saying is that somebody that has good fundamentals will have a very small “vector force position standard deviation”, REGARDLESS of how their stroke may LOOK.
Do good fundamentals help feel??? Yes, I believe so. Since I think feel is the big algorithm in the brain, if you are able to physical deliver the cue tip exactly where you think you are delivering it, than your algorithm doesn’t need to accumulate extra information to calculate timing in your stroke. It simplifies the problem to be solved in a way. You become a better player in less time than someone who utilizes the HAMB theory. You also better UNDERSTAND what is happening, have a much better facility for teaching pool to other people in the long run. It’s impossible to teach someone your personal brain algorithm.
That’s my take on it. I re-read it and agree with what I wrote, so I’ll post it now.
I've found that over the years as my performance has improved, my awareness of exactly where the tip was contacting the cue ball has become more and more clairvoyant.
If you ask yourself the question, "How Do We Play Pool", the absolute core answer is "we impart a vector force upon the surface of the cue ball". That's it. That is all we are allowed and able to do. The components of the vector force are 1) where on the surface of the cue ball the vector force occurs, and 2) the magnitude of the force.
What is feel??? When your brain analyzes the problem of trying to make the object ball go in the pocket, it recruits an enormous amount of information gathered from experience. A lot of times you can play pool fantastically for short periods of time if you allow your brain to drive. What your brain does is causes your muscles to contract in a sequence that, via precise timing, will cause the cue tip to hit the cue ball in such a location that it will solve the big picture. However, dependency on this timing is volatile, because as you play your brain is also gathering more information. The new information that it collects as it watches you effortlessly pocket balls enters its algorithm, and it starts over-compensating for some part of the timing. Then you start missing shots again and wonder why. (You dip in and out of dead-stroke).
I think that you can play/practice like this for a long time, and after a while the amount of information you gather will be so large, that your brain algorithm will reach a steady state. I think that is what people refer to “Hit A Million Balls” (HAMB) theory. HAMB does not require precise awareness of the vector force because experience and timing have built the vector force into the solution. Thus you can play well after 30 years or so, having never spent dedicated time working on fundamentals, and thus advising others that fundamentals doesn’t matter.
What are fundamentals??? What fundamentals means to me is training your body to deliver that force vector to exactly where you want to, AND, becoming highly aware of where the cue tip actually landed compared to where you thought it landed. A few years ago I ALWAYS thought that the cue tip was going where I wanted it to, and that my misses were due to a flaw in my aiming method, or something else. As I gained experience points, I was able to see that my stroke wasn’t always doing what I thought it was doing.
I think that things like “making sure your elbow doesn’t move”, “staying down on the ball”, “following through”, “accelerating through the ball”, etc. are all related to helping reduce the average statistical spread of vector force position errors. The mistake I made in the past was that I would focus too much on one particular piece of fundamental advice, say, “keep elbow still”, and would end up creating even MORE vector force position errors than if I just left things more natural.
Soooo, what I am saying is that somebody that has good fundamentals will have a very small “vector force position standard deviation”, REGARDLESS of how their stroke may LOOK.
Do good fundamentals help feel??? Yes, I believe so. Since I think feel is the big algorithm in the brain, if you are able to physical deliver the cue tip exactly where you think you are delivering it, than your algorithm doesn’t need to accumulate extra information to calculate timing in your stroke. It simplifies the problem to be solved in a way. You become a better player in less time than someone who utilizes the HAMB theory. You also better UNDERSTAND what is happening, have a much better facility for teaching pool to other people in the long run. It’s impossible to teach someone your personal brain algorithm.
That’s my take on it. I re-read it and agree with what I wrote, so I’ll post it now.
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'The Game is the Teacher'
), so no offense here. Just be careful not to black-and-white things without investing energy to understand them, lol.