How long did it take?

[nrage]

Here is what you need to do, either;
- Go to a coach who uses a video camera and can play back frame by frame, or..
- Do it yourself.

There is plenty of free software, like AviDemux which will let you rotate and crop video off something as simple as a phone. My HTC desire is quite good, and for not much I kitted it out with a joby gorillapod w/ mobile attachment. Terry mentioned some free video software which he uses, which I have at home but cannot recall the name of. It's good for playing the video back frame by frame (sort of*) allowing you to see any flaws in the cue action.

I found that my grip hand was moving away from my body and back again during the stroke. And my good days were caused by the timing of that being perfect, my bad days were when the timing was all out and I was adding side. This pretty much explains why my potting and general play is not improving. Terry has suggested some changes to grip etc and initial signs are good. I need to get back down the club with my camera to see what it looks like now.. if only I had a table at home

* some video formats are 'streaming' which means they don't really have a concept of a 'frame'. That said, the renderer has to be output frames for the screen, so any decent renderer can render 30-60 of those and call it a 'frame'. Going backwards is the problem, you don't know how far back in the stream to go, to get 30-60 of them..

Oh, the ideal position/shot to record is a long blue, place the camera over the green side black pocket, and play from the yellow. Line the camera up so the pocket, white, object ball and pocket below the camera are in a straight line. This lets you easily see when the elbow, grip, etc moves out of line.

[the priest]

It took ronnie 3 years to make a ton (starting at 7yrs old) it took jimmy 3 years to make a ton starting at 10yrs old.. it took me 3 years starting at 18.. the similarities between me and them end there im afraid lol.

Anyhow i got better in leaps and bounds when i started playing on my own more and copying shots id seen on the tv till i had them down pat.

Coaching wont teach you a thing if you dont put in hour after hour working on sticking this bit here an that bit there. Watching better players work the cue ball around will help more than a coach at this stage so long as you endeavour to work on the shots you have
seen.

Head still on every shot.. elbow as much over your cue as you can.. and most of all.. no rushing cos youve seen ronnie do it !

[tedisbill]

Well, the hard work is paying off. I had an 80 break yesterday playing my mate.

I don't miss silly balls anymore. Something has clicked into place.

[sancho1983]

Read most of this thread and as I am struggling to get past 20-30 and have been playing for quite a while I think there is probably something fundamentally wrong with my game. Getting a coach for a few sessions seems to be the general consensus of how to pick out what's wrong, only question is how do I go about finding one?

The club in our town shut last year and one of the pubs bought one of the tables, me and my friend are probably the only people who use it, it is well looked after, but no one around to ask about my game

I can regularly get 15-20, probably 2 or 3 times a frame, but never any higher, missing silly shots doesn't help I suppose

[nrage]

Read most of this thread and as I am struggling to get past 20-30 and have been playing for quite a while I think there is probably something fundamentally wrong with my game. Getting a coach for a few sessions seems to be the general consensus of how to pick out what's wrong, only question is how do I go about finding one?

If you cannot find a coach, or just want to give this a go...

1. get a camera, a nice phone camera will do.
2. place it on the black pocket, green or yellow side
3. setup to play a long straight blue into this pocket.
4. make sure the camera is 'seeing' straight from the center of the pocket through the object, cue ball, cue, and that you can see the pocket leather behind you (as a reference).
5. record 10 long blues.
6. upload onto a computer, download/install avidemux (free) to rotate, crop, etc the video
7. download/install kinovea (free) and play the video back in slow motion, watch for grip hand movement, elbow movement, and the way the cue moves.

I was in the same situation as you, with similar results and the realisation I had a fundamental flaw to solve. I did the above, then took advice from Terry (on this forum) and made some changes which seem to have worked. I then had coaching with Terry Davidson (who was/is in Glocester recently/currently) and he found very little wrong with my basic technique. I have some things to work on, but I am/should now be delivering the cue straight more of the time.

[sancho1983]

Thanks for that I may give it a go.

After looking around I've discovered I live about half an hour away from del hill's snooker farm, in fact it turns out my grandma used to know him! So I might go over there for a weekend, then try to remember as much as possible

[tedisbill]

Well. It's now the 1st of September, and how am I getting on.

Lost count of my 50+ breaks. Had 72, 80, 81 and 87.

So basically, for me, 8 months on, and I've more than achieved what I wanted I'd say.

[caesar]

Wow! That's a fantastic improvement. Are they all breaks in matches? Who was your coach? He's done a good job.

[tedisbill]

Wow! That's a fantastic improvement. Are they all breaks in matches? Who was your coach? He's done a good job.

They are all breaks against people I play, but not in league matches. All proper frames though.

The coach I had was a guy that plays in my club. He's had many 140+ breaks and really knows his stuff. Opened my eyes.

Since I've been thinking in the right way and keeping life nice and simple, I've really come on loads.

I said at the start of this thread, that I couldn't see the point in seeing a coach. I'm totally against that now. If you're doing the wrong things, you'll just continue to do the wrong things. Now I think right, the breaks come all the time.

Without meaning to sound big headed at all, you can have a 50 break quite easily. Just about keeping life nice and easy.

[nrage]

What are of the country are you in? .. I could use a regular coach you see..

[tedisbill]

UK mate. I miles away from you though.

Any coach that knows what they're on about will improve your game. I'm sure even I could give you a few pointers now.

What's your highest break?

[nrage]

UK mate. I miles away from you though.

lol, whoops "are" was supposed to be "part" (in my post)

Any coach that knows what they're on about will improve your game. I'm sure even I could give you a few pointers now.

What's your highest break?

My highest break is only 26. Over the last year or so I have been concentrating on technique and I reckon my action is now fairly solid. I still have days where it just doesn't seem to work, so I suspect I have a timing related issue which I haven't managed to get rid of, yet.

The bigger problem for me, I reckon, is that I am not very good at the positional side of the game. Likely this is because I started cue sports with pool, where good potting can pretty much get you out of any bad positional situation. But with snooker you cannot rely on low percentage shots going in, if you want to make regular breaks.

I had a coaching session with Terry Davidson a while back and found that when I had someone talking me through shot selection things started to flow much better. I know that I tend to consistently over hit most shots, but at the same time I can apply too little screw, due to not thinking the shot through, or inaccuracy striking the bottom of the ball.

So, I think I know what I need to work on, and I haven't had a lot of time lately (with moving house etc) but I would like to sort out some sort of regular coaching session to help keep me focused. Especially now that my regular Wed night competition has stopped - due to the club closing.

[cazmac1]

I haven't read all the replies so might have missed a bit. What I would like to add is that there is a guy who comes down my club He practices 7 days a week from 12 to 4:30 and has not improved one little bit. His stance, grip cue action is all wrong. He cues across the ball almost every shot. I have tried to help him but he just won't listen and blames the table for every ball that he misses. My point is that this guy could spent his whole life in the club and never improve. How long it takes depends on so many things but if your basic's are wrong from the start and you don't get them sorted it may well take you a life time.
IMO i think I'm an Ok player and after visiting Del Hill I picked up some new things which I slowly started to put in to my game. Every one says how well I'm playing and I'm scoring quite heavy amongst the balls and my all round game is solid. So I've made an improvement thanks to some good coaching and having a sound basic Technique. So in a nut shell a good stance sound basics and a little talent will determine how quickly you progress

[OVER HULTON NUMBER ONE !!]

Hello , My 12 year old son as been playing once a week ( 2 hours ) for appox 7-8 months , He has been coached by an Ex-pro for last 5 months or so and he has an excellent cue action and is knocking in alot of 25 plus breaks two last week a 38 and a 30 he also plays League players ( 25 and 30 men ) in the snooker club and beats most with no handicap start (already signed on for a team when he is 14 ) So good luck to him and His coach has helped him no end so i think Coaching is an excellent way to go ,Regards ..

For you to get very good?

I have been playing every Saturday for the last year, and I make 20 breaks, and maybe one 30 each time I go.

I want to be consistently making 50+ breaks. How long did it take until you achieved this, and how often do you play?

[vmax4steve]

I started to play snooker at the age of 27, had been playing pool for three years before that and the pure size of the snooker table daunted me for a while, but it soon clicked into place and I made my first 50 break within a couple of months. Now 27 years later my highest break in a match is 86 and I have made one total clearence (uncounted) in solo practise.
My hand/eye co-ordination is pretty reasonable most of the time, but sometimes it borders on the fantastic which is when I really hit a peak and can't seem to miss a ball. Unfortunately this never lasted very long, approx five minutes, and everyone I knew told me it was because I played far too fast, yet my logic told me that I also played very fast when I was potting everything so this couldn't be true. Yet I listened to them and slowed down and made no improvement so then I bought quite a few books on the game and started to change quite a lot of things, again no improvement, in fact it made things worse as my head was full of things to do instead of just looking at the shot and just doing it. I quit the game for two years and learned to play the guitar, went back to it, quit again for three years and went back to it again but this time determined to just forget all negative things I thought I had about my game and just play like I used to.
And it worked. I now know that I have to play fast because that is my natural timing. I don't have to think about where I put my feet because if I look at the point of contact on the object ball I naturally get down in line behind the white with the cue pointing in the right direction. I know that if I keep my eyes on the point of contact on the object ball at the exact moment that I strike the white then the white will travel on the correct path and the pot will be made and I now know that the only reason I miss is when I take my eyes off the point of contact on the object ball and look elsewhere making the cue follow where I'm looking rather than where I'm supposed to be looking.
I firmly believe that if I had never listened to others and had just carried on as I started then I would have worked this out for myself a hell of a lot sooner than I did and would have had a better break history to my game and would be a lot better and more consistant than I am now. As far as coaching is concerned I don't believe for a second that any coach can make a player out of anyone who doesn't have good hand/eye co-ordination. A coach can give good advice to someone who does have good hand/eye co-ordination but has obvious faults like moving his head or dropping his shoulder, but only if he can tell said player exactly why he is doing this, for example; telling a player to simply stop moving his head won't work if that player is moving his head because he is taking his eye off the object ball as he may simply keep on taking his eye off the object ball without moving his head.
A coach must give reasons otherwise the pupil can just throw Alex Higgins into their coaches' face and ask them to explain that. Everybody does things differently, or rather they used to, now there is only a right way of doing everything thanks to this doctrine of coaching and sport has suffered as a result. There are no more George Best's in football, no more Barry John's in rugby, no more Alex Higgins in snooker because any youngster that shows any talent is immediately given to coaches and taught how to do it "THE CORRECT WAY" and we are all now denied that little bit of art in sport that used to inspire us.