JoeW said:
Thanks Mike, I am now an official subscriber to YouTube and your stuff. Could not find the SFB discussion but I'll keep trying.
It's part of the response to item 7, ** How should I choose a cue?
The "aim-and-pivot" method of squirt compensation:
For each cue stick, there is a particular length of bridge for
which you can aim straight at a close object ball and then pivot
about your bridge hand and shoot straight through the new line and
hit the object ball full. (You can also use this (very old) method
for non-full shots too, but a full shot is best for finding the
right bridge length.) For a stick you want to measure, just find
the needed bridge length. A hint: if you shoot softly at a ball
far away, the cue ball will curve on its way to the object ball,
and your measurement will be useless. Do not give the cue ball the
time or distance to curve. Shoot firmly. Use as much side spin
as you can without miscuing. The shorter the bridge, the more
squirt the stick has. ("Close object ball" means about a diamond
away.) The cue ball should sit in place spinning like a top when
it hits the object ball full.
For a long pivot length, the bridge is too long to be a comfortable
pivot. Arrange to have the pivot over the rail, and use your back
hand to hold the stick at the pivot while the bridge hand moves.
An alternative is to slide the bridge hand forward after the pivot
to a more comfortable bridge length. Take care to keep the stick
aligned in the new direction.
If several cues are available, including house cues, compare them.
Squirt is the most important characteristic of a cue stick after solid
construction. Less squirt is usually better, especially if you use
something close to "parallel aiming" on spin shots. More squirt means
more aiming compensation on any shot with side spin. The one possible
advantage of squirt is that if the pivot length is the same length as
the bridge, it can compensate for inaccuracies left-to-right in the final
stroke.
Here is a further description of how to use the aim-and-pivot method
to compensate for squirt when using side spin:
The squirt pivot point is the point on the cue such that if
you first aim using a dead center hit, then pivot the cue
about that point to apply left or right hand english, the
cueball will still take off in the original aiming direction.
The lower the cue's squirt characteristic, the further from
the tip will be this pivot point.
If the pivot point of a very low squirt cue is all the way
back at the grip hand, you would aim center-ball and then
move the bridge hand (i.e. pivot about the grip hand) to
eliminate the necessity for compensating for the squirt.
If the pivot point of a very high squirt cue were located
where the bridge hand is normally placed, you would aim
center-ball and then move the grip hand left/right for the
english (i.e. pivot about the bridge hand).
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