Beginner - What to focus first

[Tomhet]

Hey,

i am playing snooeker for about 6 months now and i really love the game.

But somehow i don't exactly know what to focus on.

So i thought about how i best begin to learn snooker. There is one snooker coach around here and i will take a lessen with him next year but this will be next year.

I think the basics are stance, bridge, straight cue action and the three basic shots, stun, screw and follow.

To get a nice straight cueing action, dows it make more sense to play the three shots from lets say blue, pink, black? I saw some others playing some sort of line up and training positional play but i think i am not at this point.

What are the very basic routines to successfully play the basic shot straight?

Thank you for help.

[hotpot]

The basics like you said are important and a fundamental part of the game if you want to improve . Once comfortable with these i would focus on potting angles . Manouvering the white around the table with stun , top , side is bottom important but if you cant pot consistently then they dont mean nothing .

[nrage]

.. this, as usual, turned into a bit of a novel.

I think the single most important part of snooker, for any player is to have consistently straight cue action. A lot of things will affect this, from stance, to bridge, but the most dominant factors seem to be the grip and the speed of the cue action.

There are loads of posts here by Terry and others describing the stance, bridge, bridge arm, how to walk into and get down on the shot consistently, so do a quick search and start by working on those until you can do them without thinking about it.

The grip is key, it should be loose enough that the cue slides easily in it. It's less like a grip and more like you form the hand around the cue without exerting any extra pressure to keep it there. On the stroke the cue should be allowed to push the 4th, 3rd and possibly the 2nd finger out of the way on the way back, and on the way forward they come back onto the cue naturally, but without adding pressure. It takes quite a while to learn to do this, so don't be too disheartened if you cannot get it working immediately. Just concentrate on not squeezing the cue as you take your shot, or if you do squeeze make sure it's after the cue has struck the white.

You want to feather 2-3 times in a controlled manner, some people feather fast (Judd Trump), some slow. Many coaches recommend that before the final back swing and shot you pause with the cue tip as close to the white, and check you are striking the white where you want, this is called the "front pause". On the shot itself you want to think about the speed of the cue on the back swing as starting gradually, speeding up, then slowing again to stop at the fully pulled back position, from here it gradually starts forward and continues accelerating until your hand hits your chest. There should be no rapid acceleration as this is harder to control and therefore more likely that you will move the cue off line. It should feel more like you're "pushing" the cue through the white ball, than "hitting" it with the cue.

I find the best exercise to really see whether you are cueing straight, for a beginner, is to play reds from the blue spot into the side pockets with a small amount of top spin. The idea here is to pot the red, and have the white follow it into the pocket. Any accidental side spin (from striking the left or right of the ball) will cause the red to go one way, and the white to go the other. One or both may then miss the pocket. Playing with top spin gets you in the mind set to play right through the ball vs how many people tend to pull up short on a stun or screw shot. Make sure you line the balls up in a dead straight line, any slight bend here will amplify itself in the final path of the white. You can set the balls up in 3 basic positions and many in between positions.
1. white on blue spot, red 1/2 way to pocket. (easy difficulty)
2. red on blue spot, white halfway between spot and pocket. (medium difficulty)
3. red on blue spot, white close to cushion (hard difficulty).

That should give you plenty (some would say too much) to start with