Will a low deflection shaft help me?

bhe is back hand english...

What is bhe?

bhe stands for back hand english.

You aim straight on without any sidespin and rotate the cue at the bridge to apply side spin, you have to angle the cue from the bridge by moving the back hand to the side, hence, back hand english.

Jaden
 
for me a LD shaft works just like a regular shaft the only difference is you have to try harder with a regular shaft so if you are playing for money and been playing for a long period of time it makes sense for a rail beater like me to play with a LD shaft if you get where I am coming from lol
 
Before I bought my predator sneaky Pete I played with a meucci. I prefer my preadtor but shot just fine with the meucci. Most of this is mental. Psychosomatic tendencies come up in pool so much with an upgrade of one of your tools. But even if you buy a better cue. You still be the same player, just with a lil more confidence. A LD shaft may help in reality by 3-5%, I don't see how (without changing one's brain) it could help much more with shot making or your overall game.
 
Before I bought my predator sneaky Pete I played with a meucci. I prefer my preadtor but shot just fine with the meucci. Most of this is mental. Psychosomatic tendencies come up in pool so much with an upgrade of one of your tools. But even if you buy a better cue. You still be the same player, just with a lil more confidence. A LD shaft may help in reality by 3-5%, I don't see how (without changing one's brain) it could help much more with shot making or your overall game.

Interesting thought. I know pool is largely about feel, and that differs among individuals, however I am surprised by the large variance in answers in these threads.

Plain and simple, a LD shaft allows for less CB squirt away from the desired target, thus you do not have to adjust as much as you would with a regular shaft. If you asked a sniper if he would rather shoot in no wind or 20 mph wind, which do you think he would choose, and which do you think he would consistently shoot a tighter group with. Certainly they can do the math and adjust for the wind, but all in all, it is easier not to have to.

If you have been playing a long time, I can see why you wouldn't want to change as their would be some adjustment needed, and I can also see why some would not like the different hit, although the tiger x pro I played with did not feel much different than my regular shaft (although I like small diameter tips). If you want to reach your best ability though, it seems like an LD shaft would help accomplish that.
 
you don't seem to understand the benefits of BHE...

Interesting thought. I know pool is largely about feel, and that differs among individuals, however I am surprised by the large variance in answers in these threads.

Plain and simple, a LD shaft allows for less CB squirt away from the desired target, thus you do not have to adjust as much as you would with a regular shaft. If you asked a sniper if he would rather shoot in no wind or 20 mph wind, which do you think he would choose, and which do you think he would consistently shoot a tighter group with. Certainly they can do the math and adjust for the wind, but all in all, it is easier not to have to.

If you have been playing a long time, I can see why you wouldn't want to change as their would be some adjustment needed, and I can also see why some would not like the different hit, although the tiger x pro I played with did not feel much different than my regular shaft (although I like small diameter tips). If you want to reach your best ability though, it seems like an LD shaft would help accomplish that.

with BHE, you rarely have to adjust at ALL!!!!

once you get comfortable using BHE and you learn to trust it and stroke straight, you don't adjust at all.

with a LD shaft, you have to adjust your aim or learn to automatically correct your aim through experience.

With BHE, once you have the correct pivot point, as long as you bridge from there, you don't have to do anything but aim like you normally would and rotate your back hand to adjust for squirt and then stroke straight while trusting the new aimline.

Jaden
 
Now matter what shaft or tip you use, you need to spend many many hours of getting to know the two, and know how much they contribute to deflections. One advantage of high (not low) deflection shaft, i find, it seem to never fails to deflect (when you want it to do so) when your tip miss the target at the cue ball contact point during the shot by a hair, where as LD might fail you, and miss the shot because it did not deflect enough.
I find smaller tip , as small as 7/16" or even smaller tend to give better control of tip cue ball contact point, some what consistent, and help better learn the stick, where with large tips, you might not take it all the way to extreme left or right as required to match anticipated deflection.
I advise you mark the cue ball with small dots, and start hitting few English shots, check every time where tip contacted CB (chalk marks) , this will give you good indication of where you actually contacting the CB,

Best of luck.
 
I don't need many hours...

Now matter what shaft or tip you use, you need to spend many many hours of getting to know the two, and know how much they contribute to deflections. One advantage of high (not low) deflection shaft, i find, it seem to never fails to deflect (when you want it to do so) when your tip miss the target at the cue ball contact point during the shot by a hair, where as LD might fail you, and miss the shot because it did not deflect enough.
I find smaller tip , as small as 7/16" or even smaller tend to give better control of tip cue ball contact point, some what consistent, and help better learn the stick, where with large tips, you might not take it all the way to extreme left or right as required to match anticipated deflection.
I advise you mark the cue ball with small dots, and start hitting few English shots, check every time where tip contacted CB (chalk marks) , this will give you good indication of where you actually contacting the CB,

Best of luck.

Give me five minutes to find the pivot point of a cue and I can shoot any shot with it.

Jaden
 
Give me five minutes to find the pivot point of a cue and I can shoot any shot with it.

Jaden

I agree, but just knowing something is not enough in pool, mastering is a must, so the information is locked in the brain, and can be applied at the heat of moment.
 
with BHE, you rarely have to adjust at ALL!!!!

With BHE, once you have the correct pivot point, as long as you bridge from there, you don't have to do anything but aim like you normally would and rotate your back hand to adjust for squirt and then stroke straight while trusting the new aimline.

Jaden

Unfortunately, the luxury of shooting at exact pivot point is not always available due to balls, rail, you name it, which contradicts your statement (with BHE, you rarely have to adjust at ALL!!!!)
 
I personally don't think LD is for everybody. In fact, I'm not sure its for me, but I bought a Predator and I'm going to stick with it for one competitive season to see what happens. I have been playing for about 20 years, and I reached a fairly high amateur level at about the 10 year mark. At my peak, I knew nothing about pivot points, BHE, aiming systems, SIT, CIT, squirt... I had just figured out how to make the ball go in.

For me the change to LD was devastating. Many shots that I had not been making any adjustment for (presumably due to the squirt offsetting the swerve and SIT/CIT) I was now adjusting 1/2 ball or more for. With my old Judd shaft, the Scruggs shaft before it, or the Schon & Huebler shafts before that, I could load up with maximum inside spin and not make a (conscious) allowance of more than 1/2" from the ghost ball; now I regularly find myself aiming to miss by 1" or more with only moderate amounts of side spin, and I no longer even attempt to use maximum spin.

In practice, I can make the adjustments and get to feeling pretty comfy with the LD shaft, but I suspect under the pressure of competition, that comfort level will deteriorate substantially, and I will ultimately be more beatable than I have been for many years. And if that happens I will switch back to a traditional shaft next year.

I know LD is a godsend for many players, and I think it's great that they now have equipment available to them that makes the game simpler, but I also think there are some of us who are better off with traditional equip.

Aaron
 
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Plain and simple, a LD shaft allows for less CB squirt away from the desired target, thus you do not have to adjust as much as you would with a regular shaft. If you asked a sniper if he would rather shoot in no wind or 20 mph wind, which do you think he would choose, and which do you think he would consistently shoot a tighter group with. Certainly they can do the math and adjust for the wind, but all in all, it is easier not to have to.

Problem is - there is still wind. Would the sniper be really excited if he went from always having to adjust for a 20 mph wind to only having to adjust for a 5 mph wind? Maybe he would - I don't know much about sniping.

The question for me still remains - what's the difference between adjusting say a 1/2 ball versus having to adjust a full ball? I guess you could say that with less adjustment there is still the chance that you would be able to use the object ball as a reference for aiming.

I really don't know what I think about this anymore. It's really a funny thing but the more I learn about this game the less I want to know.
 
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To the OP, go ahead and try ld shafts. It may be that you take to it and it improves your game. They never did anything for me. I like maple shafts too much and have been playing long enough to be able to adjust to the way any cue plays. I can't imagine paying thousands of dollars for a custom cue, and then sticking a ld shaft on it. Why not just buy that manufacturer's cue, get the ld shaft that comes with it and save yourself thousands of dollars!!

Good luck!

mosconi wouldnt even be the best player in my pool hall today!


I don't want to insult you, but this may be one of the most ludicrous posts I have ever read.

That being said, I'm wondering if maybe Earl Strickland or Efren Reyes are regulars at your pool hall. Because they may be the only two players ALIVE, that could make such a statement not seem so incredibly insane!
 
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with BHE, you rarely have to adjust at ALL!!!!

once you get comfortable using BHE and you learn to trust it and stroke straight, you don't adjust at all.

with a LD shaft, you have to adjust your aim or learn to automatically correct your aim through experience.

With BHE, once you have the correct pivot point, as long as you bridge from there, you don't have to do anything but aim like you normally would and rotate your back hand to adjust for squirt and then stroke straight while trusting the new aimline.

Jaden


I wasn't really speaking in reference to BHE, just shooting regularly with a normal or LD shaft. I really haven't used BHE, so I will have to check it out and see how it affects my game.
 
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