You’ve begun studying how to play pool for beginners, you’ve become more comfortable with your stance and stroke, and you are finally seeing success from your accuracy practice. Yet you are still losing games! What do you need to do in order to get yourself to the next level? What can you do next in order to develop some significant finishing power? Well, that’s why I’m here: to expose you to the next big step. Stance, stroke, and accuracy can only take you so far towards winning your pool balls. Once you built a solid foundation for you mechanics, you need to work on you position play, your cue ball control. Here, let me explain…
No matter what game you play, be it 8 ball or straight pool or 9 ball, making balls is only half the battle. You need to be able to control the cue ball so that it travels from the shot you are taking on over to the next shot you want to make. If you cannot control the cue ball, then you are stuck praying that cue ball will come to rest in a good spot by pure luck. Luck has little value in pool. It is a game of skillful execution and educated-planning. You NEED to learn cue ball control if you are going to advance you skills and your winning success.
So how do you do that? How the heck do you learn position-play? I’m going to give you one kind of drill you can use: target practice. All you need is a small, thin piece of paper about the size of a coaster and a pool table to practice on (any table at all, be it a nice Mizerak pool table or a beat up bar table). Setting up this drill is pretty simple, just set up a few balls to shoot in and then give yourself cue ball in hand. Before you place the cue ball, I want you to decide where you want the cue ball to go next. What position do you want to be in to shoot the next ball? OK, place the marker (that piece of paper) onto the spot you chose. Now, decide on the best way to make the cue ball travel to that spot from the shot you want to take. Do you need a small angle or a straight on shot? Do you want to use center, draw, or follow? How fast/hard do you think you need to hit the cue ball?
Now make your approach, settle into a balanced stance, and take your shot. Remember that once you have chose how you want to hit the cue ball, make sure that you focus on making the shot successfully according to your intended hit. If you want a medium hit with center, then concentrate on that, concentrate on making the shot. Once you execute the shot, watch all your results carefully! Did the shot go in? did you hit the cue where and how you wanted to? Did you get the effect you wanted from that hit (center, draw, follow)? Did the cue ball travel along its intended path? Did the cue ball travel too fast or too slow or just right? Most importantly, did you get the cue ball to the target?
These are all important things to take note of. You need to perfect observing and analyzing your own efforts as well as perfecting your execution. Observing your results will help you decide what changes you need to make in order to get the results you want.
From here, continue to set up different shots and choose positions you want to get to. I’d suggest using only one kind of hit for each practice session. Say, the first time you make yourself use all center-ball hits. Set up different angles, and see how the cue ball travels with a center-ball hit from those shots. Hit the cue at different speeds, and then once you have an idea of how it is supposed to work, lay out your position marker and try to get the cue ball to land on top of it, or as close as possible. Once you become a bit comfortable with center, and with getting close to the marker after each shot, I want you to move on to using follow.
Use follow for an entire practice session, going over the same ideas I just listed above. And finally, have a session using only draw. Separate your drills like this so that you have an easier time absorbing the results you get for each kind of hit. Then take your newly improved skills out for a night of competition against your friends or league competition! By practicing your position play diligently and with %100 focus, you will give yourself the best chance to improve your pool playing skills.
