What beginner pool tip do you wish you learned sooner?

Bob Jewett said:
The way that Maurice Daly put it is:

"[...] I do not know of anything that prevents improvement, that keeps fairly good players back in their game so much as making the wrong shot and then having it come out well. (Daly's Billiard Book, page 171)​

I met one pretty good nine ball player who shot all his three-cushion kicks hard and with lots of draw. He could sometimes make hits that way. I think it's usually the wrong way to play three-cushion kicks.
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I was leaning towards form and stroke. I see some really strange, to me, ways of holding a cue, the bridge, and the stroke. I was instructed by Mark Powell and from what he taught, and what I see, are far different from what he instructed. Brian.
 
a1712 said:
I was leaning towards form and stroke. I see some really strange, to me, ways of holding a cue, the bridge, and the stroke. I was instructed by Mark Powell and from what he taught, and what I see, are far different from what he instructed. Brian.
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All areas are susceptible to wandering off the beaten path. Sometimes that's good, but nearly always it is a less effective way to play. I think would-be trail blazers should ask themselves, "Why is this a better way to play than what others are doing?" "It's my way," is not a very good answer.
 
Bob Jewett said:
The way that Maurice Daly put it is:

"[...] I do not know of anything that prevents improvement, that keeps fairly good players back in their game so much as making the wrong shot and then having it come out well. (Daly's Billiard Book, page 171)​

I met one pretty good nine ball player who shot all his three-cushion kicks hard and with lots of draw. He could sometimes make hits that way. I think it's usually the wrong way to play three-cushion kicks.
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I knew a pool guy that hit every shot bottom right, he had been playing that way for decades. I would guess that he eventually figured out he could go 3 rails around the table better one direction than the other, could only kill the cue ball on shots that he hit to the right, and had to cut the ball thinner when cutting to the left vs right.
 
Bob Jewett said:
All areas are susceptible to wandering off the beaten path. Sometimes that's good, but nearly always it is a less effective way to play. I think would-be trail blazers should ask themselves, "Why is this a better way to play than what others are doing?" "It's my way," is not a very good answer.
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I would add "Why is this a better way to play than others who are running racks on a consistent basis and I'm not? They must be lucky I guess..........
 
When playing league on an away table with a heavy cueball that is pretty much impossible to draw unless you are really close don't even try to draw. Play top only shapes. Which was not my game.
 
sam74 said:
When playing league on an away table with a heavy cueball that is pretty much impossible to draw unless you are really close don't even try to draw. Play top only shapes. Which was not my game.
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Maybe it's in my imagination, but I feel like I also scratch more using top with those things, like it's a little harder to cheat the pocket
 
HawaiianEye said:
A BIG old-school cue ball is HEAVY.
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It's basically a billiard ball.

HawaiianEye said:
I never had trouble drawing a big cue ball table length on a bar table.
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All things being equal, you can get further away from the intended rotational axis. Leverage.
Lot of the issues I had with the big ball were cloth and environment related. On a big table fitted with good rubber and 360, you'd probably have the same options (give or take) as you would with a standard ball.
 
Patrick Johnson said:
For me the objective in pool is to continually improve, and that means being open to trying new methods and upgrading my definition of "working".

pj
chgo
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If you keep changing things, how do you know whether you are better off? Maybe if you put the energy into the original way you were doing things you might have made more improvement.

This is to say that not all new things are better. The grass isn't always greener. It is a trap because often people perceive overall improvement when they change things simply because a change is inherently a temporary step backwards, but the early learning curve of anything is very fast.

I completely changed my stance and stroke of a dozen years at 25. I didn't think I got better as quickly as if I had just refined what I was using.
 
Bob Jewett said:
All areas are susceptible to wandering off the beaten path. Sometimes that's good, but nearly always it is a less effective way to play. I think would-be trail blazers should ask themselves, "Why is this a better way to play than what others are doing?" "It's my way," is not a very good answer.
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Agreed. You better have a damn good reason to stray from conventional wisdom. That said, SVB was way closer to conventional in his early career and then really leaned into that wavy stroke with a super brief follow through and an extreme preset in his wrist later on as he rose to #1 in the world. Mika Immonen came from snooker and had many centuries under his belt with a standard snooker piston stroke technique before abandoning it for his flowy Pinoy style which made him a killer and player of the decade in the 2010s.

Those techniques ARE better...and not just if you can practice 8hrs a day. SVB and Mika would not adopt those ways if they made them worse. More consistency and less susceptibility to breaking down under pressure.
 
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Patrick Johnson said:
For me the objective in pool is to continually improve, and that means being open to trying new methods and upgrading my definition of "working".
Click to expand...
DeeDeeCues said:
If you keep changing things, how do you know whether you are better off?
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If you don't try new things, how do you know whether you are better off?

DeeDeeCues said:
Maybe if you put the energy into the original way you were doing things you might have made more improvement.
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Maybe if you were open to new things you might have made more improvement.

DeeDeeCues said:
This is to say that not all new things are better.
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Like with anything, you gotta use a little discrimination - you don't have to adopt (or avoid) every new idea.

pj
chgo
 
WobblyStroke said:
Agreed. You better have a damn good reason to stray from conventional wisdom. That said, SVB was way closer to conventional in his early career and then really leaned into that wavy stroke with a super brief follow through and an extreme preset in his wrist later on as he rose to #1 in the world. Mika Immonen came from snooker and had many centuries under his belt with a standard snooker piston stroke technique before abandoning it for his flowy Pinoy style which made him a killer and player of the decade in the 2010s.

Those techniques ARE better...and not just if you can practice 8hrs a day. SVB and Mika would not adopt those ways if they made them worse. More consistency and less susceptibility to breaking down under pressure.
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are you saying the unconventional methods they adopted
lead to " More consistency and less susceptibility to breaking down under pressure "
so should be adopted by everyone ??????
or they just worked better for shane and mika
 
If you are a good player and have the ability to run multiple racks, the only thing you need to concentrate on is keeping the same mental state that you had wile running racks.

Your fundamentals are already ok.
 
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