My game has died - help!

[the_unrepentant]

I haven't been a long time poster in these forums but I love the game so much, I am desperate to improve my very basic play. I started wearing contact lenses in October and wow, what a difference it made to my game. It was astonishing. Now let me tell you, I am not that great a player. I am a good potter, but sometimes position lets me down. At my best with my contacts, I was regularly knocking in breaks in the 20's and I have had a few breaks over 30 but consistency has always been my problem. I can play 6 frames and not get a break over 15 but I was getting more consistent around the 20's. I don't ask for much, it was improvement for me and I was happy at the slow progress. I had chemotherapy in November and didn't play again until December. At first, with the contacts it was superb and I carried on from where I left off but since the turn of the new year (literally, on New Years day) I cannot play anymore. If you saw me play, you would think i have never played before. My vision is moving (it feels like I am drunk), I am concentrating so hard, it feels like i am straining and the run of the balls is relentless, its like the table is conspiring against me and I have lost my rhythm, confidence and ability. I just came back from the club now and i wanted to snap my cue in half and give up. I have never had this happen to me at snooker. I play the drums and I equate it to all of a sudden, not being able to play the drums anymore. How does this happen with snooker? I am so in love with the game, I am pretty upset that I have lost it. I play 3 or 4 times a week and it just keeps getting worse.

Has this happened to anyone else on here and if so, what did you do to overcome it? I am thinking of seeing a snooker coach to see if he can spot the obvious.

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

Rich

[sberry]

First of all best wishes with the treatment and hope it goes well but you must consider not being one hundred percent and having quite strong treatment can affect more than just your snooker, so don't expect to be playing at your best at this time, don't over-analyse or beat yourself up if you have a bad session or few.

I would also recommend talking to your doctor as it could be important information if it's affecting something like a hand/eye co-ordination game that involves mental concentration.

Other than that, go back to basics and check your cueing, try some line ups and clearances or mini breaks and remember you're having strong treatment, your practicing on and off and you've just changed to contacts and contacts alone took me a while to get used to them when I tried them - give it a month or two and if you're playing a couple of times a week make notes of how each session goes and try to understand what may be coinciding with the good and bad and inddifferent, which we all get.

[cally]

Hi fella, have a good look through the coaching section here and check out youtube >> pro snooker tips are some good vids with plenty of basic technique info etc.. And will for sure point you in the right direction too improvement.

Or look for a local coach to you and go see him for an hr or so which won't cost alot...
Good luck, it's a cruel mistress is snooker...

[golferson123]

forget snooker, that sounds like panic attacks!.dont equate straining to concentration, you are just locking everything up.relax and have fun, having breaks of 20s to 30s you are at the very early stages of learning snooker far to soon to be breaking cues.just let it happen.

[x53]

I haven't been a long time poster in these forums but I love the game so much, I am desperate to improve my very basic play. I started wearing contact lenses in October and wow, what a difference it made to my game. It was astonishing. Now let me tell you, I am not that great a player. I am a good potter, but sometimes position lets me down. At my best with my contacts, I was regularly knocking in breaks in the 20's and I have had a few breaks over 30 but consistency has always been my problem. I can play 6 frames and not get a break over 15 but I was getting more consistent around the 20's. I don't ask for much, it was improvement for me and I was happy at the slow progress. I had chemotherapy in November and didn't play again until December. At first, with the contacts it was superb and I carried on from where I left off but since the turn of the new year (literally, on New Years day) I cannot play anymore. If you saw me play, you would think i have never played before. My vision is moving (it feels like I am drunk), I am concentrating so hard, it feels like i am straining and the run of the balls is relentless, its like the table is conspiring against me and I have lost my rhythm, confidence and ability. I just came back from the club now and i wanted to snap my cue in half and give up. I have never had this happen to me at snooker. I play the drums and I equate it to all of a sudden, not being able to play the drums anymore. How does this happen with snooker? I am so in love with the game, I am pretty upset that I have lost it. I play 3 or 4 times a week and it just keeps getting worse.

Has this happened to anyone else on here and if so, what did you do to overcome it? I am thinking of seeing a snooker coach to see if he can spot the obvious.

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

Rich

Willy Thorne stop playing because he couldn't see properly. Imagine it wasn't easy for him to stop.Snooker lessons want help you if you cant see. Save money and have a good break as well as rest from the game. Sorry fella.

[the_unrepentant]

Willy Thorne stop playing because he couldn't see properly. Imagine it wasn't easy for him to stop.Snooker lessons want help you if you cant see. Save money and have a good break as well as rest from the game. Sorry fella.

Well, i will not give up as i love the game so much. I am trying to find an answer. If anyone thinks regular breaks of 20 or so is pathetic, remember, you were once there. Chemo or not, I know there is something wrong and i want to fix it.

My eye sight is better then 20/20 with contacts and that is not the problem. My problem with my sight is clearly post chemo and stress. I can calm down and work on that. Thanks for telling me to not try though. I am sure the best players give up that easy!

[nrage]

As others have said, try relaxing and not forcing it and I am sure it will come back to you. Everyone goes through rough patches and often there isn't a clear reason why. Most of the time I think it's stress or fatigue .. perhaps you're not sleeping as well lately?

Something else you can do if you want something a little more pro-active is to get a session with a coach. Even a single session will make a difference and they should be able to give you bite sized goals to work on, which will get that feeling of progress back again.

If you can't do that for one reason or another, as cally says there are plenty of videos to watch and the "snooker pro tips" videos are very good (I think most would agree).

I would encourage you to set yourself some small goals, for example I like to practice potting a straight blue in the side with top (from various distances) and following it in with the white. This will give you a good idea of how straight you're cueing, whether you're putting accidental side on the white, etc. It's a good simple test of your cue action and it's easy to set some goals and work towards them.

Start by finding out how many you can pot (blue+white) and try to beat it. Spend maybe 15-20 mins doing this exercise each time you practice/play and then find something else to work on. Don't keep at it for too long or you might wind up getting frustrated and tense. I think that our brains are able to process and absorb things in the background while we're doing something else and we only notice this effect the next time we come back to play.

I used to do a lot of Karate and was successful enough to be one of those chosen to attend a national training camp where I recall we did some visualisation training. The idea here is that visualising yourself doing something is almost as good as actually doing it. For example, it turns out that imagining yourself cueing a ball fires almost all the same neurons as actually doing it. I'm not at all sure if this really works, or it's mumbo jumbo - and I haven't done it myself for ages (but I mean to give it a go again) but I figure any time you're sitting around waiting for something and you have some spare mental time, you may as well picture yourself practicing.. at worst it'll do nothing, but I suspect it does help.

Snooker is one of the most difficult things I've ever tried to do and people say it takes 10 years or more to really master it so as you might expect progress is often slow and sometimes we take a step back before we take one forward.

[Siz]

Rich,

The contacts might have had an unwanted effect. Try this:

Before you start to get down to the shot - before you move your feet or start to bend down - take a moment or two longer in sighting the shot. Get settled in your mind on exactly where you are going to hit the ob.

Then, mind your work as you start getting down to the shot - by this, I mean keep focus on the shot you are trying to make and and don't rush.

Then just try and trust your stroke.

[DG GIBERT]

I wanted to snap and throw my cue out the window and i have no where near the problems you have,
keep smiling and trying.

[nrage]

This is interesting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCXLTF6byEg

Watch the first 30 sec (at least). Apparently we actually get better at stuff while we sleep (up to 20%).

[cally]

What a freaky looking woman she is eh..

She scares me a bit........

What if i'm not dreaming or thinking about snooker or anything productive in my sleep then? what if i'm having some weird dream about walking in space or walking on water, would i be 20% more likely able to do it?.. i don't buy it.

[nrage]

What if i'm not dreaming or thinking about snooker or anything productive in my sleep then? what if i'm having some weird dream about walking in space or walking on water, would i be 20% more likely able to do it?.. i don't buy it.

Firstly, "up to 20%" was the statement made in the video. If you're terrible at something the gains are likely to be higher than if you're already good, thus the "up to". The point is that gains have been measured.. this is science after all, not "some bloke reckons"

[mooneyy]

What if i'm not dreaming or thinking about snooker or anything productive in my sleep then? what if i'm having some weird dream about walking in space or walking on water, would i be 20% more likely able to do it?.. i don't buy it.

She said that dreams could be a conscious manifestation of these things we are learning asleep. But they don't know yet whether there's any relation whatsoever.

[nrage]

She said that dreams could be a conscious manifestation of these things we are learning asleep. But they don't know yet whether there's any relation whatsoever.

Right. What they have measured is the brain activity when someone does something, then the brain activity while asleep and they've found identical patterns, meaning the same parts of the brain which were active when they did something are re-activated during sleep. This reactivation is (almost) identical to the "real thing" so has the same effect on learning, retention, etc.

The other interesting thing is that they can trigger the re-activation with sounds or smells. So, if you were to go to sleep and someone was to pump the smell of chalk or cue oil into the room then there would be a greater chance that you would re-activate the memory of playing snooker - rather than dreaming about being in space, etc.

[nrage]

More cool stuff about sleep/learning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB7HqZc2p2Y