Help Me Cue Straight

[joe.l]

cueing straight

make sure your stance allows your cueing arm to line up straight behind the white , get a empty coke bottle , put it on the table , insert the tip of your cue and stroke in and out of the bottle without hitting the sides of it . when you get cueing straight speed it up and when you can do it with speed , try closing your eyes and doing it at speed ...later Joe

[Rethunk]

I cue under my left eye - when doing the drill of cue on brown spot and over the blue, pink, black spots and hopefully back. The cue ball always drifts/spinds to the yellow spot.

It seems you are imparting unintentional side, which could mean that one or both of the following hold:

1. Your eye is not centered over the cue.
2. You finish your stroke a bit right of a true center ball hit.

If your eye isn't centered over the cue, then what appears to you to be a center ball hit will be slightly off center. Perhaps you are stretching your head a little bit too far to the right when you bring your left eye over the cue.

I'd suggest having someone take photos and/or video of you as you stroke the practice drill. A tripod would be especially handy to ensure the camera doesn't shake or change position. Try shooting video from the front (to check alignment) and the back (to check stroke).

Alternately--and just as a test--shoot the normal drill and intentionally move your head a little to one side or the other. As you do this focus on getting a center ball hit. As a first test I'd suggest moving your head about a centimeter to the left, or perhaps even less.

[C-J]

make sure your stance allows your cueing arm to line up straight behind the white

important indeed,especially for right handed/left eyed.

If you hit the ball slightly right of center but this feels like centerball to you it can be hard to convince yourself of this.A good test is to line up from the blue spot to a center pocket and push the ball in the pocket.You will not be able to this if you are slightly off.

[Nic Barrow]

Cueing straight

I'd like to think that I am a decent player, but nothing spectacular; high break of 38, I get breaks of 30s on a good day, 20s more often than not and 3-5 ball breaks most of the time. I've known for a while that I don't cue straight, but unfortunately I have been too lazt to address the issue. I did so today and I was vatly disappointed with my cuing.

I did the drill where the cue ball is placed on the brown and hit over the spots and hopefully it comes back to the tip. But it never did. I think the only thing that was good about it, was that the cue ball kept going to the left (yellow) side.

Before I started playing seriously, I used to have a Ray Reardon like elbow which stuck out of my body, I've fixed that up. Also, I'm technically blind in my right eye, so I cue under my left eye.

Does anyone have any suggestions in how to fix this problem.

TBH, I find it boring to that drill, so what I tried was to just pot straight balls and follow through into the pocket, more often than not - at a short/middle distance I had no problems.

Cue control is what you need.
Take the cue ball off the table and just move your cue VERY SLOWLY all the way back so that the tip stops on the bridge hand 'v' between thumb and first finger. You move it much more slowly than you ever have before (EG between three and five seconds for the whole backwards movement) because you then increase your feel for what the cue is doing - which means you are then more able to improve what is going on. What you are not aware of, you cannot improve!
Hold it there for five seconds. This will show you if there is anything uncomfortable in your set up position that you need to work on.
Move the cue through, again in slow motion, until the grip hand touches the chest.
Hold it there for five seconds. This will show you if there is anything uncomfortable in your set up position that you need to work on.

With regard sidespin:
Set up the cue ball on the brown spot to play it up and down the spots. Play with different amounts of side until you can accurately hit the cue ball into the chalk mark over the black spot and then with side over the yellow spot then green spot then half way between both then quarter way between both etc.
Set a target of doing each target twice. You can even put a ball in each target position so that you make six cannons twice each. But the result ONLY counts if you deliver the cue straight AND keep totally still until the cue ball passes the baulk line again.
Staying still for too long like this will show you if there is anything uncomfortable in your set up position that you need to work on.
It will also make you certain that you have followed through straight or not.
Eventually your eyes will begin to 're-learn' where the centre of the cue ball is. If you have vision in one eye though, your eye will only be able to have the full chance of learning the centre of the cue ball if the eye is DIRECTLY above the cue/cueball/line of aim. Joe Davis did this if you look at his videos on youtube.

[C-J]

Cue control is what you need.
Take the cue ball off the table and just move your cue VERY SLOWLY all the way back so that the tip stops on the bridge hand 'v' between thumb and first finger. You move it much more slowly than you ever have before (EG between three and five seconds for the whole backwards movement) because you then increase your feel for what the cue is doing - which means you are then more able to improve what is going on. What you are not aware of, you cannot improve!
Hold it there for five seconds. This will show you if there is anything uncomfortable in your set up position that you need to work on.
Move the cue through, again in slow motion, until the grip hand touches the chest.
Hold it there for five seconds. This will show you if there is anything uncomfortable in your set up position that you need to work on.

With regard sidespin:
Set up the cue ball on the brown spot to play it up and down the spots. Play with different amounts of side until you can accurately hit the cue ball into the chalk mark over the black spot and then with side over the yellow spot then green spot then half way between both then quarter way between both etc.
Set a target of doing each target twice. You can even put a ball in each target position so that you make six cannons twice each. But the result ONLY counts if you deliver the cue straight AND keep totally still until the cue ball passes the baulk line again.
Staying still for too long like this will show you if there is anything uncomfortable in your set up position that you need to work on.
It will also make you certain that you have followed through straight or not.
Eventually your eyes will begin to 're-learn' where the centre of the cue ball is. If you have vision in one eye though, your eye will only be able to have the full chance of learning the centre of the cue ball if the eye is DIRECTLY above the cue/cueball/line of aim. Joe Davis did this if you look at his videos on youtube.

Very good advice.Cueing straight from under your eye is indeed the base,if for some reason you don't do this the other advices in this thread are useless.You can make nice breaks without hitting the middle of the cue ball,but only if you can cue confident and straight from under the eye.

[1lawyer]

Very good advice.Cueing straight from under your eye is indeed the base,if for some reason you don't do this the other advices in this thread are useless.You can make nice breaks without hitting the middle of the cue ball,but only if you can cue confident and straight from under the eye.

Sorry don't agree there is some very good advice in this thread...Nic is just another coach with his own ideas and you should not disregard anything other members may say. I'm not saying he is wrong but you can learn a lot if you are willing to listen and take a little of what works from others around this forum too.

As it happens Joe Davis was part blind in one eye and this is the reason he cued under his eye. Finding the correct line of the shot, staying solid on the shot with stance and bridge hand is very important for perfecting a straight cue action and so it is NOT just one thing that aids this it, it includes drive and grip, learning to cue thro the ball correctly etc and takes practice to perfect all aspects into one complete package. Learning everything at once is hard and a player should only try correcting one thing at once or he/she could throw other things off i agree.

The simple advice someone gave in this thread about cueing next to the rail is good. Personally I cue up to the brown across the baulk line. I don't hit it I just then drop my cue and see if it lines up with the baulk line correctly. This way a player can work out his/her own way until they start getting down on the shot correctly and the cue lines up perfectly with the baulk line when getting down to address the brown. I work on this until I am confident that I start getting down on line. This as good as anything for me at least.

No two players are alike if they where everyone would cue under one eye and shut the other and we would all look like Popeye ug ug ug.

[felipecocco]

One thing I did today on a pool table (im assuming it'd work just as well for snooker) which helped me loads is to use this set up EVERY SINGLE SHOT I take:

Find the line of aim for the shot you are going to take. Then, behind the cue ball, place two balls such that they form a little pathway for your cue to go through on the shot (the narrower the harder it is). The idea of course is for you to hit your shot without hitting any of the other balls, thereby showing you that you cued straight. In over 50% of the shots I was missing my cue would hit one of the balls, and I realized that the one thing they all had in common is that I wasn't staying down on the shot. Sounds ridiculously simple, but it took this drill to show me how much I needed to focus on it.

[C-J]

th

No two players are alike if they where everyone would cue under one eye and shut the other and we would all look like Popeye ug ug ug.

i didn't mean that everyone has to cue from under one eye,sorry if it came over that way.What i really ment was to hold your line of aim is the base(left eyed,right eyed,even eyed).It's not to difficult to this with no balls.A bit more difficult with one ball,but with 2balls and angles it's start to get complicated because now you can get the wrong thoughts at the wrong time.

This is why i said holding your eyeline is the base because even if your slightly of center but still cue straight from under your eyeline the balls will go in nicely,but if you start searching for new contactpoints,aiminglines or middles during your wiggles your new straigtline is not straight,so no point in practising this.