Concentrate On Cue Ball Positioning
After you’ve played pool a while, you advance beyond the beginner stage. You get your stroke pretty well established and working smoothly. You know how to hit the balls and aim. In other words, you know your way around the pool table a little better.
This is the time when you should start to work on your cue ball positioning. No matter what game you play, you always want to leave the cue ball in a good position for your next shot. If you get stuck behind a ball or down on the wrong side of the table, there’s a good chance that you will miss your next shot and have to give up your turn.
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If you want to win pool games, this is one of the worst thing that can happen. If you don’t maintain control of the table and keep shooting, your opponent will, and he will do his best to run out his balls and win the game.
By taking control of your cue ball positioning, you can greatly increase the likelihood of having good position for your next shot, and therefore have a much better chance of running the table for the win. If you want to improve your pool-shooting skills and win more games you simply have to play better position pool.
Besides making a conscious effort to control the cue ball during games, you should practice with this goal in mind. I like to recreate tough shots I had from previous games, and try to figure out what I should have done differently, to get myself out of trouble. This is a great way to raise your skill level.
Next time you practice, setup a shot on the table and try to make the cue ball travel to a certain spot after taking the shot. Keep trying the same shot, but pick different spots or sections of the table to leave the cue ball. When you can leave the cue ball in the approximate area you picked before the shot fairly consistently, you are making real progress.
This is where your follow, draw, and english skills will really get polished. You will have to use all of them in different shots to get the cue ball position you desire. Don’t forget that how hard you hit the cue ball will also have a major affect on where it ends up on the table.
After you get this working fairly well, try putting some extra balls on the table like you would have during a real game. This forces you to not only attempt to get the cue ball to a certain part of the table, but also to avoid any of the balls that are in the way.
I don’t remember where I first heard the term, but this could certainly be called “scientific practicing”. Anyone can just knock the balls around and call it practicing. If you make the effort to make things a little harder for yourself and work at the game with certain goals in mind, I believe you will get much more out of your practice time, and will get to be a high-level shooter a lot faster.
Tags: Aim, Approximate Area, Ball Games, Balls, Beginner Stage, Better Chance, Conscious Effort, cue ball, Cue Ball Position, Goal In Mind, Good Chance, Likelihood, Opponent, play pool, Pocket Billiards, Pool Games, Pool Table, Position Play, Previous Games, Skill Level, Stroke, Travel, Wrong Side