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After answering a few questions on blue to pink play I was thinking perhaps it's time to expand on a fairly simple method of learning how the cueball will take off after contact with an object ball...so here goes.
I teach the Nic Barrow school to both students and when certifying Master Coaches and Nic uses a theory called 'the perfect stun angle'. To explain...if you had cueball and object ball at any angle except straight in and on a frictionless surface, if you hit the cueball as a perfect stun then the cueball will ALWAYS take off from the object ball at 90degrees (this is true and just physics, but you can test it out if you like).
So starting there, if you hit the cueball ABOVE centre then you will REDUCE the angle the cueball will take off and conversely if you hit the cueball BELOW centre you will INCREASE the angle the cueball takes off at.
We are left with looking at a shot, let's say a black off its spot where the cueball is level with the black. If you stun the cueball then the cueball will move at 90degrees to the line of the pot towards the side cushion to get on a red just below the pack let's say. If you wanted to get to the other side of the pack (the side you're hitting from) then you would use some type of screw and depending on the angle you need the cueball to come back at you can (with practice) learn how deep to hit the cueball. So just below centre on the cueball should take the cueball directly straight up the table towards the pink, or hitting just above centre (perhaps a half a tip width) will have the cueball moving up the table 1 or 2 inches on the far side of the pink. (This is where a lot of players go wrong when breaking the pack off the black. They will hit the cueball too deep with too much screw and actually to hit the centre of the pack you only need to hit just below centre probably 1/2 to 3/4 of a tip width).
Similarly, using the blue ball and attempting to bring the cueball down to either cannon a red to get on another red or even to get the cueball to softly move down a line you want you should remember a perfect stun shot will take the cueball down to where it will just miss the pink (on your side), so depending on what side of the pack you want you can narrow the angle the cueball takes off on by using a slightly above centre hit to cannon the pink or slightly below centre for the other side of the pack (or pink) on your side of the table.
The reason you need to practice these shots is power used will make a difference in the amount of bounce you get with the cueball, so for instance if you have a 3/4 blue and want the cueball to come down on your side of the pack or pink then you need to hit what's called a 'soft screw' which will be quite deep on the cueball but with very low power.
The perfect stun angle theory can be used for any pot which isn't straight in as a straight in pot has only two ways for the cueball to go, no matter what height you hit the cueball. With a little practice this theory becomes automatic and requires almost no thought at all. So when you're standing behind the shot you can decide what angle you want the cueball to take off on in order to get your desired position and adjust the height of your bridge to correspond to that height.
A great way to practice and learn this is to do the line-up as you end up with a lot of black pots at different angles and another way to learn it well is to run the colours but don't play for exactly dead-in pots on anything but the black (or for even better practice try getting on the black so you can get back to the yellow and see how many times you can run the colours in sequence. Three times in a row is excellent.
Any questions?
Terry
I teach the Nic Barrow school to both students and when certifying Master Coaches and Nic uses a theory called 'the perfect stun angle'. To explain...if you had cueball and object ball at any angle except straight in and on a frictionless surface, if you hit the cueball as a perfect stun then the cueball will ALWAYS take off from the object ball at 90degrees (this is true and just physics, but you can test it out if you like).
So starting there, if you hit the cueball ABOVE centre then you will REDUCE the angle the cueball will take off and conversely if you hit the cueball BELOW centre you will INCREASE the angle the cueball takes off at.
We are left with looking at a shot, let's say a black off its spot where the cueball is level with the black. If you stun the cueball then the cueball will move at 90degrees to the line of the pot towards the side cushion to get on a red just below the pack let's say. If you wanted to get to the other side of the pack (the side you're hitting from) then you would use some type of screw and depending on the angle you need the cueball to come back at you can (with practice) learn how deep to hit the cueball. So just below centre on the cueball should take the cueball directly straight up the table towards the pink, or hitting just above centre (perhaps a half a tip width) will have the cueball moving up the table 1 or 2 inches on the far side of the pink. (This is where a lot of players go wrong when breaking the pack off the black. They will hit the cueball too deep with too much screw and actually to hit the centre of the pack you only need to hit just below centre probably 1/2 to 3/4 of a tip width).
Similarly, using the blue ball and attempting to bring the cueball down to either cannon a red to get on another red or even to get the cueball to softly move down a line you want you should remember a perfect stun shot will take the cueball down to where it will just miss the pink (on your side), so depending on what side of the pack you want you can narrow the angle the cueball takes off on by using a slightly above centre hit to cannon the pink or slightly below centre for the other side of the pack (or pink) on your side of the table.
The reason you need to practice these shots is power used will make a difference in the amount of bounce you get with the cueball, so for instance if you have a 3/4 blue and want the cueball to come down on your side of the pack or pink then you need to hit what's called a 'soft screw' which will be quite deep on the cueball but with very low power.
The perfect stun angle theory can be used for any pot which isn't straight in as a straight in pot has only two ways for the cueball to go, no matter what height you hit the cueball. With a little practice this theory becomes automatic and requires almost no thought at all. So when you're standing behind the shot you can decide what angle you want the cueball to take off on in order to get your desired position and adjust the height of your bridge to correspond to that height.
A great way to practice and learn this is to do the line-up as you end up with a lot of black pots at different angles and another way to learn it well is to run the colours but don't play for exactly dead-in pots on anything but the black (or for even better practice try getting on the black so you can get back to the yellow and see how many times you can run the colours in sequence. Three times in a row is excellent.
Any questions?
Terry
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