Personally, I think time is the best teacher. Barring time, a teacher is the best teacher. Get a lesson and practice what they give you. Basically, once you have your preshot routine, stroke, and aim down, every missed shot is a potential learning opportunity. Evaluate what kinds of shots give you the most trouble, i.e; cue ball on the rail, object ball on the rail, straight in long shots, off angle cut shots, etc. Take the biggest hitters and practice them. Look at Bob Jewett's stuff on the San Francisco Billiards Academy web site to learn about progressive drills. You don't need to necessarily make the shots you are attempting. Your brain will start to figure out what you need to do and all of a sudden you'll find that in a game you are able to make that shot that was giving you trouble before. Once you get to the point where you can make most open shots on the table, then getting shape should become your primary focus. Learn to plan three or more balls ahead. Learn to get the cue ball where you need it to be on different types of shots. Get some hole reinforcers for notebook paper so you can set balls up in the same place every time and start trying different things with the cue ball to see where it goes. Do not think that you are going to get better right away. It may take months or years. I've had my table for 2.5 years and I'm just now starting to feel comfortable with my game, even though I've made many jumps up in ability over that time. I realize that I still have a few years to go before I can compete with the best. There are many good books on the subject and many good matches to watch, too. However, I have about 4-500 pages of tips, drills, and instructional how-tos that I got off the web for free. There are another 4-500 pages of stuff I read but never printed out. There are also games on ESPN every day to watch or record for free, not to mention the low resolution variety to be found in abundance on the web. Above all, be patient and work on the stuff that you know you should be working on. If you don't know, get a lesson to guide you in the right direction. Better to do it now than wait until you've formed a lot of bad habits that you will have to break down the road.