Bob Jewett

Make Your OwnDo-it-yourself help with aiming.

Last month I showed you some poolaiming aids. One of them was Colonel C.M. Western's amazing "Pointer," which hasmultiple rotating arms, sliders,finely engraved scales, and amechanical monkey that playsthe accordion. Well, almost. Ittells you exactly how full to hitany cut shot on the table andwhere the cue ball will then gofor any amount of draw or fol-low. If you're still scratchingyour head about how it works,you're not alone. As soon as Idecipher the 154-page instruc-tion book, I'll try to make itsoperation perfectly clear.

In the meantime, here are twosimple devices that you canmake yourself to help visualize bothaiming and position play.

The first will help you find the truehalf-ball angle and aiming align-ment. This sounds easy — anyonecan see the edge of the object balland send the cue ball in that direc-tion. But in my own case, I foundthat even though the target is obvi-ous, I was off by a little in my cuedelivery and that cuts to the left weredifferent than cuts to the right.

The aiming device is shown in usein Diagram 1. It's formed from twosimple shapes: a triangle and a circle.The circle is placed at the ghost balllocation (where the cue ball willbe when it hits the object ball)with one side of the trianglepointed toward the pocket.Place the cue ball so it is alongthe extension of the other sideof the triangle. It it is easier tosee this line if the triangle isfairly large, but you could use astring to extend the line for asmall one.

The circle is the easy part tomake, but make sure that itsdiameter is exactly the same asthe ball's: 2.25 inches. The tri-angle is a little harder. First youhave to decide on the angle. If there is nothrow, the angle would be 30 degrees, butwith throw included, the cut angle is per-haps two degrees less — 28 degrees.

Diagram 2 shows how to make such a tri-angle. If you use regular 8.5-by-l 1-inchtyping paper, and you use the 11-inch side

for one side, the other side has to be 5.85inches long. The formula is shown in thediagram: 11 * tan(28 degrees), where tan isthe standard abbreviation for the tangent

function of trigonometry.Suppose your set of balls has less throw,

or you want to use a different size of paper.You will need to somehow cal-culate the length for theunknown side of the triangle.Fortunately, www.google.comhas generously agreed to dothese calculations for us forfree. Just go to its Web site,and type into the search win-dow the formula in the formatabove. If you prefer to spellout "tangent," Google is smartenough to know what youmean. This will allow you tofigure out the second leg forany size and angle. As a finalexample, if you want to make

a 30-degree triangle with 22-inchpaper, type in "22 * tangent(30degrees)" and you will get 12.7inches.

In Diagram 3 is an example useof the second aid. It is shaped justlike the first, but it tells you wherethe cue ball is going to go when itleaves the object ball for a half-ballshot. Placement is a little trickier.One side is still along the line of thecue ball's approach, but the circle isnot placed at the ghost-ball posi-tion. Instead, it is pulled back some.This is an allowance for the fact thatthe cue ball slides some to the side

just after it hits the object ball,and this gives an apparentstarting position somewhatback from the ghost ball. Howfar? That depends on yourspeed, cue ball, cloth, objectball, and a few other things.

What angle should youmake the triangle? Start with34 degrees. That should getyou close enough that you canplace the cue ball for a scratchevery time on the shot shown.Once you have that angledown so that you can split thepocket precisely, try placing a

9 ball, for example, half a diamond fromthe pocket and see if you can set up a bil-liard to make the 9. I think you'll be pleas-antly surprised.

34 B D - JANUARY 2D05

Bob Jewett

Frozen Bank ShotsHeat up the table with your new skills.

In Diagram 1 you'll find a situation that wor-ries beginners and champions alike. The objectball is frozen to the cushion, and the only shotavailable is a bank shot. Will the cue ball double-kiss the object ball? After this column, youshould be a lot more comfortable with this kindof problem.

First, you need to have some organized experi-ence with the shot. Go to a table and try the fol-lowing drill. Place the object ball in a convenientplace such as at the first diamond from the cor-ner pocket (A). Place the cue ball where youthink you can bank the ball to pocket P withouta double kiss. Mark that spot with a coin, asshown. At first, don't try any technique that youalready know that might help prevent a kiss; justplay the cue ball withfollow and justenough speed to getthe object ball to thepocket.

If you make theshot from one loca-tion, move the coin alittle farther up thetable and try againwith the cue ball inthe new position.Remember that ifyou do get a doublekiss from one posi-tion, it doesn't neces-sarily mean that youcan't make the shot,since your aim mayhave been off.

Once you have thecoin up the table asfar as you can get it,note where on theside cushion you are shooting "from." That is,note where your stick passes over the rail closestto you.

Next, try some techniques to advance the coinfarther. For the shot shown, left English shouldhelp. Playing the shot with enough draw to be astop shot should also help. (A stop shot with alittle cut angle is often called a "stun" shot.)Finally, shooting the shot harder should permit afuller hit.

The first two methods actually work by thesame mechanism. The idea is to get the cue ballto rub on the object ball to put right English onit. This will be "reverse" English as the objectball goes into the cushion, and will make the ball

leave the cushion "shorter," or more perpendic-ular to the rail.

Why is a stun shot the same as left English onthe cue ball in this situation? The important fac-tor in throw and transfer of sidespin to theobject ball is the direction of the motion of thecue ball's surface when it hits the object ball.For the shot shown at A, there will probably besome cut to the left as seen from the cue ball, sothat for a stun shot, the cue ball will be movingto the right when it hits the object ball. This willboth throw the object ball to a shorter line andtransfer right English to the object ball, whichwill also help to shorten the rebound angle.

Left English on the cue ball is a surer way toget this effect, because as the hit gets fuller, the

"collision-inducedthrow" of the plainstun shot will haveless effect. Also, ifthere is any draw orfollow on the cueball when it gets tothe object ball, thatwill make the surfacemotion less effectivein making the shotgo shorter. To makethe left English mosteffective, try for astun shot along withthe sidespin.

The third techniquefor extending themarch of the coin upto a fuller hit is toshoot harder. Untilrecently, it wasbelieved that shoot-ing a bank hard

caused some kind of rail deformation thatwould make the ball rebound at a shorter angle.In fact, on most tables the speed of the shot doesnot significantly affect the banking angle for afrozen ball.

Please note that I said "frozen ball." On a slowbank shot, if the object ball starts a distancefrom the cushion, it will have a chance to devel-op forward roll before impact. After impact, asthe ball moves away from the cushion, it contin-ues to spin toward the cushion. This will tend tocarry the ball back toward the cushion, curvingits path.

A very interesting (and useful) phenomenonhaving to do with banking is shown in Diagram

32 BD-FEBRUARY 2005

Bob Jewett

2, which looks like a film strip. The imagesare from the Jacksonville Project video, inwhich lots of stick/ball/rail interactionswere captured at rates as high as 12,000frames per second, which is 400 faster thantypical video rates.

The images shown are of a cue ball withfollow approaching an object ball (the 3)frozen on the cushion. The cue ball is com-ing in at five meters per second, which isabout half of break-shot speed. The framesshown are 1/500th of a second apart, so the

entire sequence took place in l/30th of asecond, or in the time of a single frame of astandard video.

The cue ball hits the object ball, and stopsalmost dead. You can see it advance a tinybit in the next seven frames. During thistime, you can see it rotate in place as thefollow doesn't have time to take effect.

What this sequence reveals is how deepthe object ball sinks into the cushion beforebouncing back out. While the cue ball isstopped, the object ball travels into the

cushion to a surprising depth of almost halfan inch. The object ball returns to hit thecue ball full, and stops nearly dead in turn.The cue ball is sent back out with a some-what reduced speed, due to energy losses inthe cushion and between the balls. Notethat the cue ball still has its "follow," whichhas been turned into draw.

Knowing that an object ball sinks so farinto the cushion makes it clearer why it ispossible to bank short by shooting harder.Diagram 2 shows a straight — in shot, andresults in a kiss. But for a cut shot, shootinghard can save you from a kiss, pushing theobject ball deep into the cushion and creat-ing an effect like that shown in Diagram 3.

In Diagram 3, the cue ball is shown com-ing into the shot at an angle that would notlet the object ball escape if it reflected from

the rail instantly. (That approach angle for afull hit is ideally 45 degrees.) What hap-pens is illustrated by the "multi-exposure"drawing (on top) which shows successivepositions of the object ball. Initially, it goesstraight away from the cue ball into thecushion. The cushion gradually turns theball back out, and the ball finally emergesfrom the cushion some distance down thetable, with no chance for a kiss.

How far down the table will the objectball be at the end of cushion contact? Thatdepends on the speed of the shot — hardershot, deeper penetration — and theresponse of the cushion. I've played ontables that seemed to return the object ballmuch faster than the cushions I am used to,and a lot of the banks I was sure of got dou-ble-kisses.

With this knowledge in hand, try toadvance your coin farther for the shot at A.Can you move your "starting point" anoth-er six inches up the side rail? After youhave exhausted the shot at position A, trythe object ball at B. Also, while banks tothe side pockets should work about thesame, try them for good measure.

Finally, see if you can form your observa-tions into some kind of system or rule ofthumb, even if it is as simple as "If the cueball is straight out from the object ball, theball has to be at least one diamond up therail for the bank to be possible using alltechniques."

34 BD-FEBRUARY 2005

Bob Jewett

Hoppe to ItCustom-fit your own system.

There are lots of systems that will tellyou where the cue ball or object ball will gowhen you make a shot a certain way. Theclassic kicking system that is shown inWillie Hoppe's book, "Billiards As ItShould Be Played," works when the cue ballis coming generally from a corner and hitsthe opposite side cushion with runningEnglish. It tells you whereon the third cushion thecue ball will hit. You'verecently seen here a mirrorsystem and a shortenedmirror system for bankingobject balls off the sidecushion. Robert Byrne hasexplained dozens of sys-tems in his books and arti-cles, and Walt Harris hascataloged even moredozens in his "Atlas" seriesof books.

Most players want a littlehelp on various kinds ofshots, and each problemalmost certainly has a cor-responding system that addresses it. If youfind a pre-fab system that seems to apply toyour shot, there are a couple of potentialproblems. The system may not work wellwith your equipment — that's certainly thecase for the "corner five" system whenapplied naively to pool tables. Or, thesystem may be very inaccurate over alarge range of cases — the plain mirrorsystem for banking springs to mind.

Below is a description of how to devel-op a system of your own that covers aparticular kind of position shot. Becauseyou will work out the system on yourown table with your own stroke, it is farmore likely to work for you.

The problem is shown in Diagram 1.You need to cut a ball down the side rail,and you would like to know where on theopposite side the cue ball will hit.Assume that the shot is played as simplyas possible, which means without sidespin and so that the cue ball is rollingsmoothly on the cloth (normal top spin orfollow) when it hits the object ball.

I think you'll agree that sidespin wouldcomplicate the situation, but what about thatsmooth-rolling requirement? Wouldn't it bea simpler case for the cue ball to have no

spin at all (like a stop shot or stun shot)when it hits the object ball? The problemwith playing the shot like a stop shot is thatit is not easy to have exactly no spin on thecue ball when it arrives at the object ball.However, it's very easy to have a smooth-rolling cue ball, as that's what it does natu-rally.

So what does a system for such a shot looklike? If the system simply said that if the cueball and object ball are precisely as shown,the cue ball will land 17 inches from theside pocket, the system wouldn't be ofmuch use, except for the one shot in a bil-

lion where the balls are exactly as shown.The system has to be of more general use. Itshould work for different angles ofapproach, and maybe different object-ballpositions.

The first generalization is that the cue ballcan start from a variety of positions without

really changing the shot. For the shot dia-grammed, it should be clear that if the cueball starts a foot closer to the object ballalong the path it will take to the ball, itsrebound angle will not change. It could alsostart farther back. What's important is theangle of approach. I've placed a marker balleven with a diamond (the 2 ball). As long as

the cue stick is directlyover that ball when you'reshooting the shot, the cueball should have the samerebound angle.

So, we need a way tospecify the cue ball's angleof approach, labeled as"Inbound cue ball slope"on the diagram. One com-mon way would be to notethe line of the shot, and seewhere that line crosses therails as measured by thediamonds. For example, onthe object-ball side, theline of the shot crosses thediamonds at about 2.8 dia-

monds from the foot rail, and the other railat about 5.2 diamonds from the foot rail.You would say that the cue ball is "comingfrom 5.2" whenever you are shooting withyour stick over that point in the "line of dia-monds." Similarly, the shot is "going to 2.8"

on the other rail.

While we could use the line of dia-monds to measure our shots, I prefer togive the location by the position of animaginary ball along the line of the shotthat is touching the cushion. The markerball is such a ball. Also note that the shotis set up so that the cue ball will be evenwith a diamond when it hits the objectball. We can now specify the inboundslope of the cue ball by the separation ofthe cue ball at impact and the markerball over which the cue stick passes. It isexactly two diamonds for the shot dia-grammed.

(In general, the first method, whichuses the line of the diamonds, is called"shooting through," while measuring with aball on the nose of the cushion is called"shooting opposite." One problem withshooting shots "through" is that they dependon how far back on the rail the diamonds areplaced, and there is no standard for that. If

32 BD-MARCH 2005

Bob Jewett

you want to understand systems that use thediamonds, it is important to understand thedifference between through and opposite.Both ways are useful. Learn both.)

The first thing to do, now that we have aframework for measuring, is to gather data.We first want to know where on the secondrail the cue ball will hit when starting "twodiamonds above" the object ball, as in ourdiagram. Try the shot, and when you makeit, note where the cue ball hits, place a chalkon the rail there and freeze an object balleven with the chalk. Now try the same shotagain. Does the cue ball go to the sameplace? Make small adjustments to the mea-

suring ball until you are confident that thecue ball will hit it whenever you make theshot.

When you've zeroed in on the landingspot, measure how far down the table thecue ball has travelled from the first to thesecond rail. This is easy to do —just freezea "mirror" ball even with the diamond thecue ball hits on the first rail, and measurefrom the center of that ball down to the cen-ter of the measuring ball.

That's all for one incoming angle, so nextmeasure for other angles. Move the markerball a diamond farther up the table (shownas the 3 ball), and start a new series of shots.

The measuring ball should end up movingdown the table some. Record the measure-ment, and move on to the other markerballs. Note that for marker number 6, wehave run out of long rail, so we will have tohandle the results slightly differently. I drewup a table: In the first column, I indicatedwhich marker ball the cue passed over. Inthe second column, I recorded the numberof inches between the mirror ball and themeasuring ball. Here are my results for mytable and balls:

Marker Ball Number of Inches2 83 124 175 206 30.5

The farther up the table the cue ball starts,the farther down the table it goes on therebound. This makes some sense, and I sup-pose you could memorize the numbers forlater use, but let's try to find something sys-tematic here. Plotting data is often a verygood way to find trends. Let's try plottingthe inbound slope and the rebound slope.For example, in the first shot, the line of thecue ball travels two diamonds (25 inches)down the table while travelling about 48inches across, if we use the idea of the"from" and "to" balls. (Do you see why thedistance across the table is not quite 50inches?) That is a slope of 25/48 or 0.52. Onmy table the returning slope is 8/48 or 0.17.I've done the arithmetic for the other casesand plotted it in Diagram 2.

The thing to notice immediately is thatwhen plotted like this, the data form nearlya straight line that would go through the ori-gin (0,0) if extended. Whenever this is true,it means that the two quantities are relatedby a simple proportion. In this case, thatproportion is three. This gives us a very sim-ple way to express the "cross-table anglesystem:" When playing a cut down the railwith no English and a rolling cue ball, onrebound the cue ball will go down the tableone-third as much as it did getting to theball.

If you're shooting from three diamonds"above" the object ball, the cue ball will goone more diamond down the table whilecoming back across the table after the hit.This immediately suggests a test. Put theobject ball a diamond, minus one ball diam-eter, from the corner pocket, and shoot"from" the opposite side pocket. The shotshould scratch, or close to it, every time. Ifyou happen to encounter this shot, you maywant to play it with something other thanplain follow unless a useful ball is sitting inthat corner pocket.

Next month, I'll look at some details andextensions of this simple system. In themeantime, get onto your own table andmake your own measurements. Does yourtable also have a 3:1 ratio of slopes?

34 BD-MARCH 2005

Bob Jewett

Do Try This At HomeHere's another set of measurements to get you tuned into your table.

Last month, I described how you couldmake your own system that would answerthe question posed in Diagram 1: If you runthe object ball along the long rail, where isthe cue ball going to land on the oppositeside cushion? I hope you had time to get toa table and try the idea. Have I mentionedrecently that if you remain in your easychair and just read these columns, you mayget better at sitting and reading, but you areunlikely to get better at playing pool?

Last month, the shot had the restrictionthat the cue ball should be rolling smoothlyon the cloth and have no sidespin. Theremarkably simple result that I got on mytable was that for a shot from X diamonds"above" the object ball, the cue ball will goto X/3 diamonds "below" the object ball.That is, the cue ball will not come straightoff the cushion, but will instead be bent for-ward by the follow and go down the tablesome. The factor of one third held over all ofthe approach angles I tested.

I'll urge you again togo to your own table andmake your own tests fortwo reasons. First, work-ing on a system like thisis a very structured,focused form of prac-tice. All of your atten-tion is on one factor ofthe game. A major pointthat Dr. Bob Fanchermakes in his excellentpool-psychology book,"Pleasures of SmallMotions," is that youwant to work on onething at a time — youwill learn it better thatway. The other reason is that tables differ.My tests were on a pool table with slightlyworn, clean cloth, and many tables are notlike that. Similar tests on a carom table gavea factor of one-fourth for the angle ratio.

The test is shown with the object ball along way from the pocket. The main reasonfor this is to keep you from cheating thepocket. If the object ball goes in, you knowpretty exactly the line of the object ball. Ifthe object ball were only one diamond froma gaping cavern of a pocket, you could takegreat liberties with the cut angle, and themeasurement of the rebound angle would be

useless.This leads to a question I'll leave up to you

to answer: If the object ball starts out fromthe rail a little, how does the rebound anglechange?

For a similar reason, the cue ball is shownstarting a fair distance back. This ensuresthat the cue ball will be rolling smoothly onthe cloth as desired, unless you shoot hardor with draw. This removes one more vari-able from the test.

Although the shot is shown with the objectball going along a side cushion, the anglesshould be the same if the shot is along anend cushion. Can you see how to calculatethe rebound for an end-rail shot? The ratiowill be the same as for the side-rail case(unless your table is wacky), but it's harderto use the end-rail diamonds because therearen't enough of them. Get on the table andyou'll see what I mean.

A major thing left out of the study so far issidespin, which makes the shot harder but is

sometimes essential for position. It's time toinclude it.

I tried the shot with two kinds of English.The first was with follow and "pretty good"right English. Your "pretty good" Englishwill be different from mine, which is whyit's even more important for you to do yourown tests when working with sidespin. Ishot relatively softly, so the cue ball wassure to be rolling smoothly on the clothwhen it hit the object ball.

Like last month, I tried starting the cueball from various positions along the longrail, and measured the rebound spot on the

side cushion relative to the "mirror ball."The cue ball ranged from the positionshown in Diagram 1, which I called "2"since it was two diamonds above the posi-tion of the object ball, to position "6." If thecue ball landed on the mirror ball, it wouldmean that the cue ball went straight acrossthe table from where it hit the cushion onthe right side.

For right English, the return of the cue ballwas always "uphill," which means that itlanded on the cue ball's side of the the mir-ror ball. The distances above the mirror ballfor the various starting points were:

Marker Ball Number of Inches2 253 244 255 256 18.5

This is both a very monotonous and a veryinteresting result. Except for case 6, the cueball always returns to location "2," or along

the line of the cue stickshown in Diagram 1.There is no reason toplot the data as I did lasttime, since the obviousrule is: If a rolling cueball cuts an object balldown the side rail withoutside English, it willreturn across the table toa point two diamondsabove where it hits thefirst cushion. This holdstrue until the cut is lessthan about 45 degrees,at which point the fol-low will begin to domi-nate and curve the cue

ball forward. The English needed is "Bob'spretty good outside."

Is the amount of English a little nebulous?Sure. If you try the shot and adjust the spinto get results similar to those above, youwill know what I think of as "pretty good"but not yet "extreme." You could then restatethe spin in terms of "cue tips" of English, ifyou are familiar with that system.

Why is the result so constant? It's alwayspossible that I subconsciously adjusted mystroke to make the cue ball land repeatedlyin the same place, although the result was asurprise to me. One way to explain it is by

BD-APRIL 2005

Bob Jewett

the balance of three interacting forces. Asthe object ball is hit fuller, there will bemore sidespin relative to the speed into thecushion, as the object ball will take morespeed from the cue ball on a fuller hit. Thelarger amount of relative spin will tend tomake the cue ball come back up the tablemore. Also, for a fuller hit, there will be lessspeed back across the table, which will tendto make the spin more effective. Finally,with a fuller hit, the follow on the rollingcue ball will tend to make the cue ball godown the table more. Somehow, these threecancel each other for a fairly wide range ofincoming angles.

As the hit gets even fuller, the cue ball'ssideways speed is so low that the sidespincannot take effectively on the rail, and thefollow begins to take over and move the cueball down the table. Unfortunately, Istopped measuring at position "6" becausethat's where I stopped the no-English mea-surements. I (and you) should return to thetable to find the steepness that will make thecue ball go straight across the table for thiskind of hit. I suspect it will be from aboutthe name plate for the shot diagrammed.This would give a good rule of thumb to usein play.

I also tried inside English. This was also ofthe "pretty good" variety. The results are

plotted in Diagram 2. Also shown in theplot is the line for the "ideal reflection case"— angle in equal to angle out. The data forinside English show that the rebound angleI got was actually beyond ideal reflection.

The landing spots were all on the end railfor cue-ball positions from 2 to 6, whichwent to X and Y respectively. I was sur-prised to get the cue ball to X for the cutshot shown, but sometimes science doesstartle. Stated simply, the data say: Withpretty good inside follow on a cut down theside cushion, the rebound angle follows"angle in = angle out," provided that youimagine the cue ball starting two diamondsfarther up the table.

The "two diamonds" part is taken from the

fact that the rebound slope is 0.5 slope unitslarger in Diagram 2 than the equal angleslope for all values of cut angle, and the fourdiamonds of travel of the cue ball across thetable.

How to apply the system? In the shotshown for cue-ball position 2, imagine thatthe cue ball is coming from 4 instead, andthe object ball isn't even there, and that therail will reflect the cue ball perfectly. (That'sa lot of imagining, but bear with me.) Theresult is that the cue ball should land on theside cushion four diamonds down the tablefrom the mirror ball. That's beyond the endof the table, but if you imagine the railsextended, you get a spot pretty close to X.

If you work with the system a little, I thinkyou'll get a feel for how to apply it even toangles where the diamonds aren't readilyavailable. In those cases, you have to figureout how to get a rebound angle with a slopehalf a unit larger than the inbound angle.

Would it be useful to have an inside-English system where the rebound angleequalled the inbound angle? I think itwould, since then you are liberated from thediamonds. See if you can find an amount ofspin — a little less than "pretty good" —that makes the angles equal on your table.

Go to the table now and do your home-work.

34 BD- APRIL 2005

Bob Jewett

FaszinatingThe Internet offers jaw-dropping pool pics from Austria.

There's a freevideo clip on theWeb that you haveto see. Get to yourcomputer and viewit before you readfurther. You won'tbe sorry. (Well,you may be sorry ifyour computerwon't readWindows MediaVideos, but I can'thelp that.)

The clip is:http://www.bsku-

n i o n . a t / e f l e r /F a s z i n a t i o n _ D r e i b a n d _Windows_ Media_9.wmv.

It needs to be typed perfectlyor you won't be able to connect.An alternative link is at the bot-tom of the page www.sfbilliards.com/misc.htm, which is easier totype.

This remarkable video, entitled"Faszination," was made inAustria by a group includingRobert Leitner and three-cush-ion champion Andreas Efler.

Image 1 shows a ball in flighthitting a cushion. This is likethe diagram I had in a previouscolumn on cushion compres-sion, but it's a lot neater shownin high-resolution color. Youcan see the deep compression ofthe rail, and on the video youcan see the cue ball lose its spinon contact. This is a flattishjump shot to the rail, and thecue ball bounces back at aboutthe same elevation as its arrival.

In Images 2 and 3, you see acue tip hitting a ball, withrather amazing flying chalk.I think that there was extrachalk applied for effect, andin earlier frames you can seethe tip shedding chalk as itapproaches the cue ball.Notice the compression ofthe tip while it is on the balland how the tip seems tohave recovered by Image 3.

If you look care-fully, you can alsosee how much thefront of the shafthas been moveddown during theshot as the ball hasrotated with draw.You can also seethe reflection ofthe cue stick in thecue ball.

Image 4 remindsyou to vacuumyour table. Thedust cloudbetween the

retreating ball and the cushioncame out of the cushion afterthe cue ball struck it.

And finally, Image 5 is evenmore amazing. This is a stillfrom a video clip shot with avery sensitive high-speedinfrared imager. The infraredimager shows the relative tem-peratures of objects using dif-ferent colors. The tempera-ture/color scale is on the right-hand side of this image. Whatthe image shows is a masse shotalmost completed, in which thecue ball was shot out away fromthe two object balls. The spinthen takes, and the cue ballcomes back toward them (toscore a billiard). The cue ball isthe one that looks like it is onfire. In fact, that hot stripe iswhere the tremendous back spinof the masse shot has been rub-bing on the cloth and heatingthe surface of the cue ball. Youcan see the hot stripe develop as

the shot unfolds.

The path of the cue ball isshown by the lighter bluecurve, which is where thecloth has been heated bythe passage of the cue ball.The curve is a parabola —the same arc that you getwhen you throw a ball upin the air at a steep angle.

The start of the path is

32 BD • MAY 2005

different, though. You can seethe hot, bright stick, whichpoints to a hot spot on the cloth.That's where the cue ball was sit-ting at impact. It jumped on ashallow angle to the next brightspot that looks to be about one ortwo ball-diameters away, andthen there are three or four moreshorter jumps as the cue ball set-tles down on the cloth.

While this shallow jumpingbehavior has been predicted andis modeled in simulators likeVirtual Pool, I think this is thefirst time it has ever beenobserved.

Anther segment of the clip is aninfrared sequence that shows afrozen banked ball that is initial-ly struck slightly into the cloth,leaves the table while compress-ing into the cushion, and thenbumps down on the cloth againas it leaves the cushion. Anothershows a jump shot with follow in which the stick wiggles like asnake after the hit.

There is a 25-minute DVD that is the full version of the freeclip, but for now it is only available in the European PAL format.A version that is suitable for U.S. players is in progress.Language is not much of a problem, as the audio track consists

of "Ambient Sound" music by Sascha Borovcanin. This video isintended as entertainment and propaganda for billiards ratherthan as science, but I think it succeeds on all fronts. For moreinfo, go to www.bskunion.at or e-mail andreas_efler@yahoo.com. Also available there are framed images of stills fromthe video.

BD • MAY 2005 33

Bob Jewett

By the BooksParallel aiming through the years.

No matter how manytimes I protest that in thelong run you will have todepend on your pool sensefor aiming, people continueto seek out new aiming sys-tems. If you're still develop-ing a feel for how much ofthe ball to hit on variousshots, maybe the systems (orrather, different versions ofone system) described belowwill help you.

The first aiming system Iwas exposed to was in WillieMosconi's 1965 book,"Winning Pocket Billiards,"which is still in print 40years later. Diagram 1demonstrates the main idea.You start with the line fromthe pocket to the object ball,and imagine that line going through theobject ball. That line is white in the pic-ture, and a ring has been drawn around theobject ball to aid your imagination.

A line parallel to that white line is drawnthrough the cue ball, and a similar ring hasbeen drawn around the cue ball. To makethe shot, all you have to do is drive the cueball forward so the two rings touch andthey are both pointing towards the pocket.If you hit the object ball too full, its ringwill overlap with, instead of just touching,the cue ball's ring. Too thin a hit, and therings will not touch.

In Diagram 2 is BobByrne's take on this systemin an illustration from his1978 "Standard Book ofPool and Billiards." He rec-ommends this system espe-cially for thin hits, where itallows you to easily pick outhow much of the cue ballneeds to overlap with theobject ball. (For fuller hits,Byrne recommends theghost-ball method.) Noticethe two parallel lines again,A and B.

When I first saw the paral-lel-lines aiming system, inMosconi's book, I didn'treally try to work with it.

The first aiming systemwas exposed to was inWillie Mosconi's book.

The explanation seemedreasonable enough, and Ihad already developed a lit-tle feel for angles, and I wasmore interested in makingthe masse shot from "TheHustler," which is shown inthe back of Willie's book.

Joe Tucker's new take onthis old method is designedto get you involved andkeep you involved. For fullimmersion, you will need toget a special cue ball andobject ball set that's madeby Aramith, shown inDiagram 3. The balls comepackaged with a booklet ofinstructions and drills andtwo disks, shown inDiagram 4, to help illus-trate shots. The disks are

marked like the balls, with angles markedfrom 0 to 9 to the left and right for cutangles from 0 to 90 degrees. It's called the"Aiming by the Numbers Method" andshould be available at better billiard retail-ers everywhere.

How does the system work? First, con-sider a corner-pocket shot with the objectball and cue ball in any position. Yourotate the object ball to align the 0-9 num-bers so that the 9s are nearest the sidecushions, and facing away from the pock-et. The cue ball is rotated so its 9s also facethe side rails, and the numbers face the end

with the corner pocketyou're going for. It tookme a little while to con-vince myself that thisalways works out.

Now for the amazingpart. Look on the objectball for which number isfarthest from the pocket.Suppose that's the 3(which means 30 degrees— the angle of the shotrelative to the long cush-ion). All you have to do ismake the 3 on the cueball contact the 3 on theobject ball.

Where did the parallellines go? They are actual-

32 BD-JUNE 2005

Bob Jewett

ly still there, but with the numbers on theballs, you don't have to visualize them. Ifyou must, draw a line from the object ballto the pocket, and through the 3 in thisexample. Draw another line from the cen-ter of the cue ball through its correspond-ing 3. Because the ballsare numbered the waythey are, these two linesare guaranteed to be paral-lel.

Note that the numbers(0-9) don't tell you theangle of the cut — theyjust tell you the angle ofthe parallel lines in theMosconi and Byrne dia-grams. You can actuallycalculate the cut angle bysubtracting the normalnumber and the 0-9 num-ber that your stick isaligned with on the cueball.

The booklet that comeswith the balls alsoincludes extensive drills towork on each of the majorangles. Note that theobject-ball aiming numberis determined by its posi-

tion alone, and not at all by the cue ball.This is very different from fractional-ballaiming. This means that you can figure outthe object-ball number from the diamondon the opposite side cushion from theintended pocket, using the straight line

from pocket to object ball to diamond. Thebooklet gives the diamond locations thatcorrespond to the object-ball numbers, andif you invest a little time in memorizingthese, you can pick out the object-ballnumber very quickly. Or, you can just use

the two pop-outdiagrams in thebooklet, whichillustrate all thediamond intersec-tions.

For side-pocketshots, the system ismodified some, butworks in much thesame way. I thinkthe whole packageis the clearest,most completeexplanation of anyaiming systemavailable. JoeTucker is alsodeveloping a moreextensive workoutbook as well as atraining DVD.Look for themsoon. Bank shotsare included.

BD-JUNE 2005 33

Bob Jewett

Back in 1992, a very useful learning toolcalled Target Pool came on the scene. Itwas developed by Don Wilkie and pro play-er Kim Davenport. The idea is to shoot aspecific set of shots for position, and toland the cue ball as close as possible to thecenter of the target. The main items in thekit are a booklet which describes the shotsand the system of scoring, and two bull's-eye targets made of thin fabric — one forthe open table and one that is cut in half fora target against thecushion.

There are adozen "courses" toplay listed in thebooklet, with 10shots to try foreach course, and apar score based onKim's score. Atypical shot isshown in Diagram1, from "Course 6— Getting to theEnd of the Table."The bull's-eye tar-get is shown drawnto scale. The required hiton the cue ball and othersuggestions are given foreach shot, and you can seeKim's average score to tryto shoot for. This particularshot requires you to go twocushions (side-side) for theposition.

The shots range fromeasy ones that Kim aver-ages 5 on, to one monstershot that requires the cueball to jump off the firstcushion and then go threemore rails to the other endof the table with a par scoreof 0.7. Unfortunately,Target Pool seems to be outof production now.

In researching this column, I discoveredthat a group at the University of Aalborg inDenmark developed a computerizedinstruction system based on Target Pool."The Automated Pool Trainer" had a screento display the shot, a speech synthesizer togive instructions, a speech-recognition sys-

tem that could listen to the student, and avideo camera to check on ball placementand for instant replay. A laser-pointer sys-tem showed where on the real table to placethe balls and target, as well as the requiredpath of the cue ball to the target. The screenwas also used to show the text of the recentinstructions that the system had given ver-bally in case the student wasn't listening atthe time. If you want to learn more aboutthe project, see http://cpk.auc.dk/educa-

tion/IMM/pooltrainer/. The Web siteincludes a video of the system in action.The surface of the pool table becomes a bigtouch-screen display for control — lit bythe laser system — and it shows you yourscore for the shot after the cue ball stopsrolling.

I don't think pool instructors need to fear

for their jobs just yet. Below is a low-costalternative that will set you back the priceof a deck of playing cards.

The idea is to generate a series of shotsthat will take you all over the table. Ratherthan limit the choice to a fixed set, this sys-tem will create pretty much every shot youmight run into. You will draw cards todetermine the positions of the object balland target. The cue ball will be in hand, andif you don't feel challenged enough by a

shot, move the cueball to someplaceinconvenient. Or,you can try to playthe easy positionperfectly.

How to get fromplaying cards to aposition on thetable is shown inDiagram 2. Ituses a grid systemlike the one fromTarget Pool, modi-fied to work wellwith cards. Dealcards from the

shuffled deck, putting anyface card (K-Q-J) asideuntil you get a non-facecard (ace through 9). Thatdetermines how far acrossthe table you go, in half-diamond steps. If your firstcard is a 5, the positionwill be somewhere on thecenterline of the table asshown. Deal yourself morecards until you hit anothernon-face card. If it's a redcard, start counting fromthe left end of the table, orfrom the right end forblack cards. The 1 ball is atthe position for a 5 fol-lowed by a red 3. The 3

ball is at 6,B6, and the 2 ball is at A,B3.

Go through this procedure twice to get theposition of the object ball and the target forposition. To mark the target for position,you can either leave the cards near the spotselected, or use a coin or chalk.

For the first level of difficulty, you're per-mitted to play the shot any way you want to

34 BD • JULY 2005

Target Pool, RevivedTake a new look at this out-of-print training system.

Bob Jewett

make the object ball in a pocket and put thecue ball on the target. If you don't want tobe bothered with scoring, just practice theshot until you get the cue ball close to thetarget — say within the span of your hand,or within a ball's width, if you want to gofor extreme precision.

If you run into a shot thatyou just can't make work,like pocketing the 2 ball inDiagram 2 and putting thecue ball where the 1 ball is,make a note of the problemand practice it separatelylater.

If you want to be fanaticalabout it, mark a ruler sothat within 3 inches is fivepoints, 6 inches threepoints, 9 inches for two and12 inches for one point.For the second level of

difficulty, use the face cardsthat you set aside duringthe deal. You need to hit one cushion foreach face card you've drawn. If you didn'tget any face cards, you have to get from theobject ball to the target without hitting arail. If you got three face cards, you needto figure out a three-cushion path. Thesemore complicated paths may not always bepossible, but see how close you can come.

In Diagram 3 is a shot similar toDiagram 1 generated with cards — 7, red 3followed by 5, black ace. There were twoface cards drawn, so you have to go twocushions to get to the target (marked X).Of course, there may be other paths usingtwo cushions, such as starting the cue ball

at A, and going two cushions at Al and A2.Or you could place the cue ball for a near-ly straight shot and follow to the end railand upper side cushion at B1 and B2.

If you happen to get more than three facecards in your deal, you have to bank theobject ball, but you're not required to hitany cushions with the cue ball. To get good

position from the bank may take a fewshots. If I had to bank the ball in Diagram3, I'd move the cue ball just a little to theleft and bank the 2 cross-corner whilesending the cue ball to B2 and then to theX.

While this is a good solo practice, it canalso be a two-player game.Both players shoot thesame shot with separatecue balls, and closest to thetarget wins the point. It'slike horseshoes, so if youshoot second it's OK toknock your opponent awayfrom the target. Also likehorseshoes, if neither play-er is within a certain dis-tance — a foot? — there isno score. The first playergets to choose the numberof cushions but not whichones; pay no attention tothe face cards. Alternate

who goes first. For more excitement, it canbe a multi-player game with each playergetting two shots, using the two same-col-ored object balls as his cue balls (1-9, 2-10,etc.).

Let me know if you try this type of prac-tice, and if you come up with any interest-ing modifications.

Bob Jewett

Close QuartersLearn to beat one of Wimpy's favorite proposition shots.

[Bob Jewett is on vacation this month.What follows is a reprint of a classicJewett column from August J 993. — Ed. ]

In a past issue [July 1993], I described asystem for aiming when the cue ball isclose to the object ball. This time, I want tosuggest some stroke techniques that willhelp you avoid hitting the cue ball a sec-ond time when the object ball is near.These techniques will be especially valu-able in pool's finesse games, 14.1 and one-pocket.

Shot 1 in Diagram 1 is a proposition betthat I've heard was a favorite of LutherLassiter. The cue ball and the 1 ball are onopposite sides of the headstring and aquarter-inch apart. The goal is to make the1 ball hit the end rail without the cue goingover the line. You must use a level stroke.

First, see how short a stroke you candevelop. Start with the cue ball four inch-es back. Hitting the end rail should beeasy, and if you use draw, the cue ballshould come back without any forwardmotion after contacting the 1. Move thecue ball gradually closer to the 1 ball. I

find that by the time they are half an inchapart, my arm hurts from the unaccus-tomed effort of suddenly stopping the cuestick. Try this drill on a table now.

At this point, your arm should be sore,you have developed a special stroke forvery close shots, you've grown to hate thesound and feel of a double hit, and you'reready to bet that the shot's impossiblewhen the balls are only a quarter-inchapart.

Now for the trick.Place the balls for Shot 1, make a firm

closed bridge with a little draw, and withthe tip about half an inch from the cue ball.Let the back end of the cue stick rest on therail. Without moving the stick, slide yourgrip hand up until your knuckle is pressedagainst the outside edge of the rail, andtake a very firm grip on the cue. Take ashort backswing, keeping the stick rubbingon the rail. Your hand will hit the rail andstop the cue quickly enough to avoid adouble hit. You may need to adjust the tip-to-ball starting distance, depending on thespringiness of your knuckles and how hardyou're willing to hit the rail. Old-fashioned

square rails give a better stop than modernrails that slope away from the cushion.

The bad news: This shot is not generallyuseful, unless the cue ball is the right dis-tance from the rail. The good news:There's another technique that can be usedin many close situations. For Shot 1, youcan make the 1 ball hit the far rail twiceand still not drive the cue ball over the line.

I first saw this technique when ReneVingerhoedt, the great Belgian billiardfancy-shot artist, gave an exhibition in theroom where I was just beginning to learnthe game. He first shot standard artisticbilliard shots. He then announced that hewas going to change to his masse cue forthe second half of the show, but first hewould shoot the "Spanish Dance." Heplaced the balls just like Shot 1, and took atremendous stroke, smashing the cue ballinto the red ball. The red took off at a mil-lion miles an hour, but the cue ball just satwhere it started, spinning and wobbling —that was the "dance" part. Vingerhoedt gotout his case, took his cue apart, andscrewed his masse cue together. The cueball was still dancing.

32 BD-AUGUST 2005

Bob Jewett

How did he do that? With a techniquethat is well-known in Europe but still amystery to most players in the UnitedStates. It's called a whipping stroke. It'srather difficult, so let's start with some-thing simpler that gives some feeling forthe shot without having to master thestrange whipping motion.

In Shot 2, the idea is to find how closethe cue ball can be to the object ball on ahalf-ball cut and still avoid a double hit.The 2 ball is placed so it would be touch-ing a ball on the spot, and the 3 and 4 areplaced on the diamonds. The 3 ball is theresimply to help you place the cue ball onthe proper line. Aim through the center ofthe cue ball at the edge of the 2 ball andslightly into the edge of the 3. Neglectingthrow, the 2 ball will be driven straightacross the table, and the cue ball, if cuedon the equator, will hit the 4 ball.

Practice this shot with a normal follow-through, moving the cue ball closer andcloser to the 2 ball until a double hit occursand the cue ball hits the end rail on the far(high) side of the 4 ball. Next, try the sameprogression using extreme-right Englishon the cue ball. You'll probably find thatthe cue ball can start much closer to theobject ball because it starts moving to theleft just after collision, which makes roomfor the stick to pass. If you use draw with

the English, you should be able to land thecue ball on the near (low) side of the 4. Ifthe draw takes quickly enough, this tech-nique could be used for the proposition inShot 1.

Finally try the shot with outside or leftEnglish. This will result in a double hiteven when the balls are an inch or moreapart, because the cue ball will be movinginto the path of the stick after the collisionwith the 2 ball.

Try the same setup for a fuller shot onthe 2 ball, and you should get similarresults; right English will help you avoidthe foul.

The whipping stroke uses a similar idea,but it is mostly the stick that's moved toavoid the second hit. Instead of using astraight follow-through, the cue isswerved to the outside of the shot duringthe final stroke.

In Shot 1, set up for a lot of right Englishwith the cue stick aimed toward the 4 ball.On the back swing, swerve the butt awayfrom you (if you're right-handed) and onthe forward stroke, swerve back, so that atthe end of the shot, the cue stick is point-ed toward the 3 ball. While swerving thecue, keep your bridge stationary.

This outside-in motion is difficult tomaster, since it goes against the standardideal straight follow-through. It's not easy

to have the tip come back to just the rightplace on the cue ball after having beenpulled clear to the other side of the cueball. And adding object-ball accuracy tothis forceful shot will be even tougher.

Once you've got the timing down, you'llbe able to shoot straight toward the 1 ballin Shot 1, leaving the cue ball spinning inplace. With a little draw beside theEnglish, you can bring the cue ball straightback to the end rail. Best of all, you'llhave the stroke technique to avoid allforms of double hits.

There's one more facet to this shot —whip without English. The purpose ofswerving the cue stick is to get it awayfrom where the cue ball is going to stop.Swerve down is nearly as good as swerveto the side. Aim straight at the 1 ball, start-ing near the center. On the final stroke,raise the butt of the cue so the tip dipsdown to the cloth after hitting the cue ballwith draw. The needed stroke is veryshort, as in the first drill, since the cue ballwill be drawing back soon after the hit andyou need to give it room.

Don't be discouraged if you can't get theaction right away. It took me 25 years toget a reasonable understanding and feelfor the shot after I first saw it in 1966. Ifyou can find an instructor who knows thisshot, take a lesson.

BD -AUGUST 2005 33

Bob Jewett

Taking A LessonDid you learn anything?

I just got back from vacation, part ofwhich involved taking some billiardlessons. This reminded me of what it waslike to be a student. To be a good studenttakes as much effort as to be an instructor.

When I was first learning to play at thestudent union atCal Berkeley,there were fewbooks or instruc-tors available. Itwas 1965,Mosconi's secondbook had justcome out, andHoppe's book wasstill available andhad been for 25years. If you com-pare those two tothe many bookspublished just inthe last five years,you can get someidea of difficultyof self-instructionback then.

We sort of learned from each other, butwe didn't know much, so we couldn'tlearn much. I was impressed by playerswho regularly ran five or six at straightpool. Rumors of a run of 40 at some frathouse were dismissed as unbelievable, ordrunken bragging.

The nearest people known to givelessons were half an hour away in "TheCity." Jimmy Lee would show you aboutcarom billiards if he liked you, and for aprice Tugboat Whaley would pull out hisstack of notebooks on pool and let you inon some secrets. I wish now that I hadtaken that trip more often. Whaley is men-tioned briefly and dismissively inMosconi's biography, which is ironicsince Mosconi seems never to have sharedhis deeper knowledge of the game withanyone. It's too bad that Willie neverbecame a teacher.

Fast forward about 20 years, toCalifornia Billiards in San Jose. It was oneof the nicest pool halls in the country, witha tournament room that had five tables andtheater seating on two sides. They hadtables for carom, pool and snooker. BudHarris, a former U.S. three-cushion cham-

pion, was the resident carom expert. Hewas a careful player, a student of WelkerCochran, and he gave lessons. I signed up.

Bud took me to a quiet table, and the les-son began. About five minutes in, he letme in on the first secret: You can change

Its a little unsettling to betold that the bridges

taught to you by Hoppeand Mosconi were wrong,

but they were.

the amount of spin on the ball by the firm-ness of the grip hand. I was incredulous,and insisted on doing the experiment.With a finger-tip grip and then with awhite-knuckle grip, I shot the cue ballstraight into the cushion with the samespeed and tip offset. The cue ball, as I hadexpected, angled off the cushion alongidentical paths for the two cases. The les-son ended.

Of course, both Bud and I made a mis-take. As an instructor, he had cast his ideasin stone, and could not accept that any ofthem might be wrong. As a student, I madethe larger mistake. Bud had much to teach.Some of it was B.S., of course, but I could

have sorted thatout later. Theloss was mine.

You may wantto try the experi-ment for your-self. With thecue ball on thehead spot, shootstraight alongthe headstring tothe side cushionwith maximumleft or right sideand play theshot with a looseand tight grip.I'm not going totell you whichone Bud thoughtshould get more

spin. There are now camps on both sidesfor spin maximization — the "tight-grip-pers" and the "loose-grippers." Let meknow how your test comes out.

Karma. Fifteen years later — about 2000— I find myself on the other side of thetable. I have a class of three instructor-candidates who want to learn to teachpool. I think it's important for them to beable to demonstrate the fundamentals ofstance and stroke, including a basic shoot-ing sequence. Part of the basic sequence isto take some warm-up strokes and thenstop with the cue tip near the cue ball. Oneof the candidates would not stop the tipany closer than about two inches from thecue ball. He was not willing, even afterrepeated requests and explanations of whyit was a good idea to address the cue ballclosely, to bring his tip any closer to theball. He would not explain why he wasunable to bring the tip any closer.

I suppose that lesson should have endedthen, too. I was clearly not able to reachthe student. If you have suggestions onwhat I could have done, I'd be glad to hearthem. The student himself gave me somesuggestions, including that I should get

30 BD-SEPTEMBER 2005

out of instruction. It was one of thestrangest experiences I've ever had at apool table.

Last month, I was in Vienna to visit theWeingartner Billiard Museum. I had askedHeinrich Weingartner if there was some-one who might be willing to show me a lit-tle about the "small" carom games, suchas straight rail and balkline. The perfecthost, Heinrich arranged for the Europeanbalkline champion, Arnim Kahofer, tomeet me, and we had a very productiveseven hours of lessons. Arnim is athoughtful, thorough, and friendly instruc-tor, and of course he is a master of thegames he teaches.

Almost the first thing he said was thatmy bridge was wrong. It's a little unset-tling to be told that the bridges taught toyou by Hoppe and Mosconi were wrong,but they were. Since Hoppe's day, theEuropeans seem to have invented a newbridge that lets you precisely position thetip for close draw shots. It looks weird,and I had seen it before on anotherEuropean champion, but had dismissed itas a pointless idiosyncrasy of the shooter.I now understand the method to the appar-ent madness.

During the lessons there was even a briefmention of the tightness of the grip affect-ing spin, and I made a note to myself tolook into it later.

While most of the techniques and drillswe covered are more useful to billiardsthan to pool, there was one that shouldhelp your pool safety play. For the shotsshown in Diagram 1, the idea is to startwith an object ball somewhat away fromthe cushion and the cue ball farther out, atsome angle. The goal is to hit the ball andleave both the cue ball and the object ballfrozen to the cushion. No pocket isinvolved at this point. To succeed, youhave to learn how full to hit the object ballin each case.

There is some theory here. In the case ofShot A, both the cue ball and object ballneed to travel about the same distance toget to the rail. If you make a half-ball hiton the right side of the object ball with asmoothly rolling cue ball, the object ballwill be cut 30 degrees to the left and thecue ball will be deflected roughly 30degrees to the right. The theory of a half-ball hit in this case says the cue ball andobject ball will travel the same distance.

In Shot B, the cue ball is very close tothe object ball and they are angled at 45degrees to the cushion. If you play the shotwith stun — no draw or follow on the cueball when it hits the object ball — and cutthe ball 45 degrees, theory says that theballs should split at 90 degrees and travelthe same distance. Does theory hold up?Give it a try.

Try other angles as well. I think you'll be

surprised by some of them — I was.Besides safety possibilities, knowing the"equal travel" hit for various positionsshould also help your position play.

I think that, as a student, it's important toask yourself some questions both immedi-ately after a lesson and when you have hada chance to make the lesson part of yourgame:

• What was the main idea covered?• Is it correct?• What will I do differently now?• Has my game improved?

If you find yourself answering "Don'tremember," "Can't tell," "Not much," and"What was that lesson about, again?"maybe the lesson was not successful. (Butlet's not try to assign blame for the fail-ure.) I think the most important of these is"What will I do differently now?" If a les-son doesn't change how you play, it wasuseless. Since my trip to Vienna, I'vespent a lot of time on the table doingthings I had never done before, and now Ifeel like I'm beginning to learn aboutclose caroms.

BD • SEPTEMBER 2005 31

Bob Jewett TECHTALK

Different StrokesIt takes all kinds.

Recently in the Internet discussiongroups, there have been several conversa-tions about what stroke to use for variousshots. Somebody made a statement aboutthere being only three or five strokes. Thatgot me to thinking, and I started a list.

First, I think we need to define what astroke is and what separatesone stroke from another.Saying that someone has a"sweet," "smooth" or"flashy" stroke may lookgood in a non-technical arti-cle, but it doesn't conveyany real information. I'lldefine a stroke as thesequence of motions fromaddressing the cue ball untilthe stroking arm stops mov-ing.

Are different strokes nec-essary? Yes, there are situa-tions on the table where youreally need a different phys-ical approach to the shot. Inaddition, there may bestrokes used simply to actas a memory aid withoutany real physical purpose.See if you can tell themapart.

What I will call the stan-dard stroke — many playersuse it — is fairly simple.After some preliminary fid-dling or warm-ups, the cuetip is stopped very close tothe cue ball — this is"addressing" the cue ball —and a final check of the lineis made. The stroke thenconsists of drawing the cue back until theferrule is at the bridge hand, bringing itforward through the cue ball at the"address" point, and coasting to a stopwith the tip six inches or so beyond thepoint of contact with the cue ball.

There are two common forms of thisstandard stroke, one in which the elbowremains stationary and one in which theelbow is stationary until the end of thestroke, when it drops about the thicknessof the upper arm — four or five inches.The former is generally for softer shots,and the latter for power shots, such as

drawing or following the length of thetable.

The first form of the standard strokewhich I described above is the classic pen-dulum stroke. The forearm moves like apendulum, with the elbow fixed and theforearm swinging. Many instructors feel

that it is the easiest and most consistentway to hit a ball. The second form Idescribed, where the elbow drops at theend, is a natural development as the speedof the shot increases. With more power, thestick naturally comes forward more at theend of the shot. As the grip hand comesforward, the forearm closes on the biceps,and it is more comfortable to let the elbowdrop a little. This drop should happen aftertip contact, so it doesn't affect how muchdraw or follow you get.

The next stroke I'd like to describe iswhat I call the "piston" stroke, in which

the cue stick moves not like a pendulum,which naturally has a curve to its motion,but like a piston, with the tip's motion trav-elling along a straight line. This requires amore complicated arm motion, with theelbow moving down and up and down tokeep the stick on a fixed line. This might

seem like a minor varia-tion, but the required phys-ical motion is very differ-ent from the standardstroke. Few players usethis stroke, but some ofthem are champions.

A third stroke is what 1call the "rail banger." Inthis, the elbow drops a lot.The rail, if it happens to bein the right place, will stopthe elbow's descent with aloud "whack." The tip endsup in the air, and theknuckles sometimes endup bloody. For more detailsabout the mechanicsinvolved with these variousstrokes and some fieldobservations, see myFebruary and March 2004columns in BD.

Based on the above(somewhat biased) descrip-tions, which of thesestrokes is needed for goodplay?

A stroke that has comeinto play relatively recentlyis the power break, used in9-ball. On a table with atight rack, a relatively softbreak will almost always

pocket a ball, but with a bad triangle orcloth pocked with craters, you can get bet-ter results if you crank up the speed, get-ting more of your body into the shot. Ifyour upper body is moving forward at acouple of miles per hour when the stickhits the cue ball, you get significantly moreenergy into the ball, assuming you still canmaintain control.

I saw one match in which the breaker fol-lowed through so far that the cue tip cameto a halt beyond the center of the table. Hewas breaking well, and the cue ball washopping back from the 1 ball and stopping

30 BD-OCTOBER 2005

in the middle of the table. On one break,the cue tip actually hit the cue ball in midflight over the center spot, a feat whichrequired perfect follow-through and a per-fect hit on the rack. His opponent didn'tnotice the aerial foul.

In both forms of the standard stroke thatI've described, the cue tip is brought backto the bridge hand before striking the cueball. In the "poke stroke," it is only broughtback part way, and the follow-through isusually shorter. Among the top players,Allen Hopkins is known for using thisabbreviated motion. It is often described asugly, but here's something to consider:About 10 years ago, a laser that strappedonto the cue stick, named the Laser Shark,was being marketed at a trade show. It wasvery good at showing any side-to-sidewobble in the mechanics. The companyreported that the only pro player to shownegligible wobble was Allen Hopkins.

Do you want to play like WillieMosconi? Then you have to use the slipstroke, because he did. As shown inDiagram 1, during the backstroke, thehand slips back on the cue stick, then itgrips the stick and the stick is brought for-ward as usual. Former U.S. carom champi-on Allen Gilbert also uses this stroke. Notethat it is almost exclusively pool playerswho use the slip stroke, as carom players

nearly always use rubber wraps which pre-vent any slippage, and snooker playersgrip their sticks at the end of the butt, andif there were any slippage, the stick woulddrop onto the table.

There can be some variation in the exacttiming of the slip. The tip has to move backfrom the cue ball and that can occurbefore, during or after the slip. Can yousee how a slip stroke might be useful? Tryit to see what it feels like.

A different kind of slip stroke is the"stroke slip," in which the stick is releasedduring the forward motion and sort ofthrown through the ball. Mechanically, thiscan get a longer straight follow-throughwithout dropping the elbow. This is shownin Diagram 2. Can you make the motionwork?

One method of squirt compensation,which I call "aim-and-pivot," deserves itsown stroke category, although the definingmotion takes place before the shot, and itcan be combined with the above strokemotions. The idea is to aim a shot with nosidespin, then pivot the cue stick at thebridge hand, and then stroke through alongthe new line. For left English, for example,you would line up through the center of thecue ball, and while the tip is near the ball,move your back hand to the right until thetip is out on the ball for the amount of

sidespin you want. Then you make the nor-mal stroke, using one of the above tech-niques or one described below. If all workswell, the angle the stick pivots through isthe same as the angle that the cue ballsquirts away from the line of the stick.

If the stick has fairly low squirt, or forsome other reason the pivot point is not atyour bridge, the pivot needs to be around adifferent point. One Internet poster saysthat his pivot point is about halfwaybetween his two hands, so to use aim-and-pivot he puts half of the English on bymoving his bridge hand to the correct sideand the other half by moving his backhand.

A related stroke motion is what I call the"aim-and-swoop" stroke. This is like theaim-and-pivot, except it always pivots atthe bridge, and the pivoting motion is partof the final stroke. That is, the cue ball isaddressed in the center without sidespin,then the cue stick is brought back andthrough as the backhand is moved to theside to achieve sidespin. The tip is stillmoving somewhat to the side as it hits thecue ball. Some believe they can get extraspin on the cue ball this way.

In my next column, I'll cover anotherdozen or so strokes. In the meantime, sortout for yourself which of the above areuseful to you.

BD-OCTOBER 2005 31

Bob Jewett TECHTALK

Different Strokes, PartLast month, I described 11 differentstrokes. Briefly, they were: the standard pen-dulum; the pendulum with biceps relief at theend; the piston; the rail banger; the full-bodypower break; the poke; the slip stroke; thestroke slip, in which the stick is releasedbefore impact; the aim-and-pivot; the two-handed pivot, which is a kind of squirt com-pensation for low-squirt sticks; and the aim-and-swoop. You may knowsome of these by other names.For example, the technique of"backhand English" involveseither aim-and-pivot or aim-and-swoop, depending on whom youlearned the term from.

Remember that I defined a"stroke" as the sequence ofmotions from addressing the cueball until the stroking arm stopsmoving.

Here are another dozen strokes— some essential and some justbizarre.

The sidearm stroke is usuallyseen in players who learned to play at anearly age. Instead of the forearm hangingstraight down from the elbow, it is held outto the side with the hand away from thebody. Willie Hoppe — who started earninghis entire family's living through billiards atthe age of 7 — was one player with thisaffliction. In modern times, you need lookno further than Keith McCready, who gotinto trouble in junior high for asking hiscoach to hold onto his horse-chokingbankroll. Young players have to get the stickup to the table, and it's often done by raisingthe hand up level with the elbow. Bud Harristold me that Welker Cochran also startedside-armed, but converted to a perfect pen-dulum when he got enough height.

There are times when you need to raiseyour arm, perhaps to clear obstacles on yourside of the cue ball. Do you do it with asidearm stroke? How straight can you strokewith one?

An alternative way to achieve some eleva-tion is to maintain a pendulum arm positionbut to raise the shoulder and elbow by stand-ing up higher, which I'll call the high-armposition. One fault I've noticed in players,including myself, is that they tend to go upon their toes to get height. Usually that's notnecessary, and a flat-footed stance will get

you high enough with more stability. Anadditional technique I've seen used in somepositions is to press the hip against the sideof the table, or even to put a leg up on thetable, if you're that flexible.

Shot A in Diagram 1 is a drill to practicemoderate elevation with accurate aiming.The goal is to shoot the object ball straight inand draw the cue ball back to where it starts.

Begin with the cue ball several ball diame-ters from the cushion — very easy. Make theshot tougher and tougher by moving the cueball nearer to the cushion. Keep track ofyour progress toward the rail with a coin oran object ball. As the cue ball gets closer,your arm will have to raise. How high canyou rise and keep a pendulum position? Stayflat-footed? Aim well?

The high-arm stroke is also used for somejump shots, but for even more elevation,many players move to the dart grip. Theforearm is nearly vertical, or at least in a ver-tical plane, with the hand up. For a right-handed player, the thumb is on the left sideof the butt with the index finger and maybethe middle finger on the right side of thebutt. The big advantage of this, over usingsidearm and a regular grip, is that it's mucheasier to keep the stick on the correct line foraiming.

Masse shots also require some kind ofraised-arm position. For the nearly verticalshots, many players use a normal grip andbring the forearm up above the shoulder.Many carom players — half- or nearly fullmasse shots are common at both three-cush-ion and the small games — use a dart gripmost of the time. Some use a grip you'veprobably never seen. Make a V with your

index and middle fingers with the back ofyour hand up to the ceiling and your palmdown. Stick the vertical cue stick betweenthose two fingers and grip with the sides ofthem. It may help to curl the fingers so moresurface area is on the stick. This transformsthe V-grip into the "eagle claw." The result-ing motion feels a lot more like throwingthan the typical stroke.

Speaking of carom billiards,there are several special tech-niques that were developed onthe pocketless table for close-ball situations. One is what Icall the "tap stroke," which isused when the balls are veryclose together and a minimumamount of precise motion isneeded on the cue ball. The tapis made without a backstroke atall, like tapping a key on a key-board. You don't need a runningstart to press a key or to drive abilliard ball less than an inch.It's hard to get used to if you

rarely play softly.

Shot B in the diagram is a drill to practiceyour soft shots. Start the cue ball in the jawsof a side pocket and an object ball about sixinches from it, straight toward the oppositeside pocket. The goal is to take as manyshots as possible to sink the ball in the oppo-site side, leaving the cue ball and object ballin position for each subsequent shot. Youlose if you fail to hit the object ball or dou-ble-hit the cue ball. Ten strokes is poor, 20 isfair, 30 is good, and 40 or more is excellent.Once you get to 30 regularly, try challenginga friend. It is not fair to play to hit the side ofthe object ball, just brushing the edge; youmust play more or less straight at the ball,moving it straight toward the pocket. Usingthe thin-hit technique, a hundred shots is nothard.

Another technique from carom for closehits is the "palm slap." Holding the stickloosely, just slap the butt up against yourpalm. This gets a little forward motion onthe stick and can make very soft to medium-soft hits.

In the August issue (which was a reprint ofa 1993 article), I described two other ways toavoid hitting a close ball, but with a lot morepower. One is the "table stop," in which thegrip hand is positioned so that it will hit the

32 BD-NOVEMBER 2005

Here are a dozen more motions, from the essential to the esoteric.

2

edge of the table just before the tip hits theball, and the springiness of your abusedknuckles stops the stick before a second hit.This is usually not useful in normal play.

A second way described in August waswith what is called a "whipping stroke," inwhich the second hit is avoided by gettingthe shaft off to the side of the cue ball. Someof these shots may be fouls, some are cer-tainly fouls, but some are with only one con-tact of stick to ball. This would be a goodsubject for further study with high-speedvideo, and it was covered briefly by theJacksonville Project, but it's hard to be surewhether extra contacts did or did not occur.

Another special technique for getting goodpower into a close ball is the "cramp stroke."Move the grip hand far, far forward. Do thisby getting into position with the tip near thecue ball, and move your grip as far forwardas you can possibly move it while in strokingposition — my hand goes to nearly the jointof my cue. Now when you stroke, your armcan't follow through, because, at the momentof impact, your arm is horizontal and yourelbow, unless it dislocates, will stop furtherforward motion. It takes more than a fewshots to get comfortable with this grip, but Ifind it a very reliable way to hit a close ballwith power.

You may have gotten the impression that Idon't recommend using a sidearm stroke ifyou can avoid it, and the main reason is thatit's hard to keep the stick straight on the lineof the shot. For shots with the mechanicalbridge, a different kind of sidearm is a rec-ommended technique. The stick is held nearthe end of the butt with a dart-like grip, thefingers on top and the thumb below. Theforearm is horizontal, with the elbow at thesame height as the hand, and perpendicularto the stick at the moment of impact. In the-ory, this is a kind of pendulum turned on itsside, and the stick is moving in a straight linewhen the tip hits the ball. When was the lasttime you practiced with the crutch? Wouldyou rather eat broken glass? Start countingthe number of times that you miss shots dueto stretching or shooting opposite-handed,and when you get to 10, go to the practicetable. In Shot C, the balls are on the wrongside of the table for a normal bridge, and youhave to draw the cue ball back, first one dia-mond, then two, and finally back to the endcushion. Can you do it with a bridge? Trysome angles with sidespin and some followshots as well.

There is a novelty stroke from JerryBriesath that Robert Byrne described inthese pages some time ago which you canuse to avoid bridge work. Suppose you haveShot C and there is no bridge and your left-handed shots are nonexistent and you justhave to get back to the end rail, and youcan't shoot behind your back (which is astroke I haven't mentioned yet). Put the cuestick in position flat on the table, reach for-

ward as far as you can with your left handand lift the tip off the table just a little.Rather than a normal stroke, which wouldbe real hard with the butt of the stick restingon the cloth, jam the heel of your right handinto the stick's bumper, driving the tip intothe bottom of the ball. Jerry can draw thecue ball the length of the table.

A kind of stroke that has been specificallyforbidden is the "drop" or "lift." Supposeyou have an object ball a hair from the railand the cue ball straight out from the objectball but only a peppercorn away. What todo? One clever person came up with this:Place the stick so it's pointed to shoot thecue ball straight at the object ball. Stand bythe rail so the stick is also pointed at youand you can look down from above the shot.Move the stick forward a little so the tip isbarely under the edge of the cue ball. Pullthe stick straight up, hitting the cue ballwith a thin, glancing blow. I defy you to geta single hit any other way in this positionwhile shooting straight at the object ball. Awrinkle is to hold the stick above the cueball and just let it drop. Be ready for anintense discussion of the rules if you try thisin a game.

Another illegal stroke technique is theintentional miscue. This can be useful to getout of double hits, to jump over balls, or tomake certain impossible shots, probably bydouble-hitting the cue ball with the side ofthe shaft.

Yet another illegal stroke is the push shot.I'm not talking about double hits, which area separate subject. In a push shot, the tippushes rather than strikes the cue ball andcontact is maintained for a much longertime than in a normal shot. There are someinteresting push-shot trick shots. Aninstructor from my area used to teach themto be used in games. Start with the tip verynearly on the cue ball and then graduallyaccelerate with no backstroke at all. It's sortof an extended tap stroke.

Finally, there is the "scoop stroke," whichI finally understood only a few months ago,thanks to fellow columnist Dave Alciatore,although I had seen it in print a few decadesago. To execute a scoop-stroke jump shot,place the stick on the table and then slide italong on the cloth to the base of the ball.The stick must be on the cloth for the shotto work. Contrary to my previous thinking,no miscue is required on the shot, althoughone may happen. By miscue, I mean slip-ping of the tip on the ball. The cue ball getsinto the air because the table helps to pushit up as the tip is wedged between ball andcloth. Another illegal mode.

Did you think there were just one or twostrokes? Now you know of a couple dozen.Fortunately, only about a third of them areneeded in play and worth practicing. If youhave any other strokes that should be addedto the list, please let me know.

BD -NOVEMBER 2005 33

Bob Jewett

Wrong Size, Wrong ShapeYou should probably have that looked at.

Recently on the Internet discussion grouprec.sport.billiard, Pat Johnson of Chicagomentioned a problem he had with his newcue ball. When he put the cue ball on thetable and surrounded it with six used objectballs from the poolhall, he couldn't get allthe balls to freeze. There would be gapsbetween the object balls, and if he moved theballs around so there was only one gap, itwas 3/32nd of an inch, as shown inDiagram 1. This seemed to show that thepool balls were smaller than the cue ball.Pat's question was: How much smaller arethe object balls?

I made a quick guess that if you dividedthe gap by 6, the diameters of the objectballs would be smaller than the cue ball bythat amount, or l/64th of an inch. It turns outthat I was off by a factor of two. Two otherparticipants in the newsgroup, Jim (whogoes by the user name "JAL") from Indianaand David Hood from Colorado correctlypointed out that the ratio is about 3, so Pat'scue ball was a whole l/32nd of an inch larg-er than the object balls he was trying to playwith.

By a coincidence, just after this online dis-cussion, one of the players in the 14.1 leagueI play in brought his new cue ball to use inhis match. I showed the two players howmuch of a gap the cue ball caused betweenthe surrounding balls, and it looked to be 1/8of an inch. Wethen tried puttingthe house cue ballin the middle ofthe cluster, and wegot a differenttype of gap. It wasbetween thefrozen object ballsand the cue ball,and it was nearlyas large as the gapillustrated inDiagram 2.

A m a z i n g l yenough, accordingto Jim's and David's analyses, you can findthe difference between the cue ball's andobject balls' diameters again by dividing thegap by 3, even though the gap is made in avery different way. For this example, thehouse cue ball was smaller by 1 /24 of an inch.

Is 1/24 of an inch enough to worry about?

It depends. The difference in size has a cor-responding difference in weight, and thatwill make the cue ball rebound off the objectball differently. If you have only a vagueidea of where the cue ball is supposed to goon any particular shot, the difference will notbe noticed, but the better your position playbecomes, the more such discrepancies willbother you.

The better your positionplay becomes, the morethe discrepancies will

bother you.

Let's take an example of a draw shot withthe small cue ball. If a normal ball is 6ounces, the small cue ball is only 5.67ounces. (This is calculated from the cube ofthe ratio of the two diameters, if you want totry a different case yourself.) Suppose you

are making a shot where, if you start the cueball with near-maximum draw, it mightarrive with about half of that after rubbingon the cloth on the way to the object ball,and you would get two feet of draw. On thesame shot, the smaller cue ball will get about43 percent more draw and come back three

feet, just from being that small amountlighter.

Now suppose the poolhall buys new objectballs, but keeps the old cue ball. That wouldroughly double the relative differences indiameters and weights, and for the exampledraw shot I just described, the cue ballwould come back twice as far (four feet) asa standard cue ball against a standard objectball. If you instead try to follow with thelight cue ball, you will be similarly surprisedwhen the ball goes forward only 64 percentas far as you were expecting. So three dia-monds-length of attempted follow ends up awhole diamond short.

How do these measurements compare tothe equipment specifications in the BilliardCongress of America rule book? Balls aresupposed to be 2.25 inches in diameter with-in a tolerance of +/-0.005 inches. (Typicalhigh-quality new balls are much more exactthan that.) Assuming that the middle ball inthe cluster is the correct size, this means thatthe gap when you attempt to freeze six ballsaround it can be no more than 0.015 inches,which is about 1/64 of an inch, or the thick-ness of a business card.

So far, we've been assuming that the objectballs are all the same size. If a ball has to bereplaced, this will not be true. The objectballs we measured above were about 1/24inch smaller than a new ball. Suppose the 9

ball has to bereplaced in thatset. There's noway that you willever get a tightrack with the new9 ball in the centerbecause the old,small object ballsjust can't stretcharound it.

Unfortunately,even a l/64th-inch gap — whichyou might seewith new, in-spec

balls — is large enough to make a differencein how a rack breaks.

Many years ago, before I had my first runof 50 at straight pool, I played day and nightin a rec room with old, worn balls. I thoughtI was pretty good because I could draw thecue ball all over the table. What I didn't real-

32 BD-DECEMBER 2005

ize, even though it was in front of me onevery shot, was that the cue ball was tinycompared to the object balls, relativelyspeaking. With draw coming so easily andnaturally, my position play and patternsevolved to where I was using draw on mostshots.

Eventually, I got up enough courage andfunds to make a trip to the local poolhall totry my luck in a competitive match. The cueball there looked a little funny. It seemedbig. It seemed rough, as if someone hadtaken sandpaper to the surface. Maybe itwas a big barbox cue ball that had migratedto a regular table, or perhaps it was an old,mud break ball. In any case, it didn't draw. Iwas helpless. The local hotshot would missuntil the last three balls, because he quicklyfigured out there was no way I could getposition two shots in a row. I didn't have myrent money with me, so the lesson that daywas worth more than the price, although ittook me a while to figure out what the les-son was.

I've mentioned here before that cue ballscan also be off-center or out of round. Youmay notice this when the ball is rolling along way to a stop. One time it might roll alittle to the left. The next, along the samepath, it might roll to the right. Back whenivory was the preferred material for caromballs, this sort of behavior was fairly com-

mon, and shots were often made or missedby the little hook the ball took at the end ofa low-speed shot. When a billiard ball gottoo oval, it had to be turned down with a spe-

cial lathe to make it "true" again, and theballs became smaller and smaller.

Trying to test the roundness of a pool ballis far harder than testing the size. You mightmeasure a bunch of diameters of the ball, buteven if they are all the same, you can't besure that the ball is really round. Look at thetwo-dimensional shape in Diagram 3.Measure its "diameters" or the distances

across in all directions — they are all thesame, but the shape is clearly not a circle.Similar weirdnesses can happen in threedimensions. One simple test is to use a per-fectly circular hole just a little larger than theball and make sure there is a constant clear-ance all around the ball no matter which wayit's turned in the hole.

One tool I've seen in a billiard-supplystore is a stand where the ball sits on threeball bearings while a feeler gauge touchesthe top of the ball. As you rotate the ball onthe bearings, the feeler gauge indicates howmany thousandths of an inch the top of theball moves up and down. One precise tech-nique scientists use is to measure the devia-tion from roundness of a bunch of "great cir-cles" around the alleged sphere. A great cir-cle is a circle on the surface of a sphere thathas the same diameter as the sphere, divid-ing it into two equal hemispheres, like theequator on the Earth. Mathematical tech-niques allow scientists to connect the circlestogether to find the topography of thesphere, accurate to about 1 part in 10 mil-lion. I think for the purposes of pool, justwatching for inconsistent roll-off as the ballcomes to a stop is good enough.

Should you worry about all of the above?Only when your game is ready for thesedetails, such as when you can control the rollof the cue ball to better than one diamond.

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BD-DECEMBER 2005 33

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