Confidence from not trusting the potting angles your seeing.

[Belloz22]

Hey all,

Got a bit of an issue that is really slowed my game down again now. As many people on here know, my game has been massively up and down as shown in my diary, but in the past 3 months I have worked hard on improving my technique................ I relearnt my bridge hand so it is straight on, im trying to re training my eyes for when im feathering, and ive been working hard on cueing through to the chest straight........... however, the big issue that is holding me back is that I am moving my grip hand tremendously when playing angled shots. Now if I play up and down the spots, or play straight shots, im really consistent, but when I play an angle shot, my head goes fussy and I really do not trust or believe I am picking the right angle out. 9 times of 10 I am missing these shots, and as I notice, its because my grip hand has not come through straight, and this I believe is because I don't trust the angle ive picked thus im moving the cue to aim at a line my subconscious thinks is right. I don't know why I do it, and I definetly don't know how to stop it. Yes I know a lot of it is confidence, but I also think a lot of it is im not getting down on the right line. I follow the correct procedure, i.e., nose on line of aim, get down straight etc, so I can only believe it is myself not picking the right angles out to begin with. This is especially evident as as soon as the angle gets bigger, I become more inconsistent, thus this tells me that is due to my angle picking, or confidence, and thus my cue is moving.

Ive never ever felt confident in my judgment of angles, as its amazing the amount of shots I miss to the knuckles rather than miles out. I know the first thing people say is that your probably not cueing straight, but in reality, when I check myself, I do cue straight most of the time, unless I move the cue to adjust due to lack of confidence, but in reality I think a lot of it is really not trusting my angle judgment.

What is the best way to improve this, especially when you don't get much table time? I.e. is there things you can do in the house etc? Or is there a way I should be looking for the angle at all times? Because ive never really had a way of doing that?

Thanks in advance!!

[cyberheater]

One thing that has helped me a bit is making sure I'm aiming at the right bit of the pocket. I used to aim for the center of the pockets but I realise this is wrong. You aim at the center of the widest visible part of the opening of the pocket looking from the object ball. It makes a difference.

[tedisbill]

Well, you just said in your post above, that your grip hand doesn't come through straight because you don't trust that you've picked the correct line. So, maybe you ARE picking the correct angle, but then not cueing straight.

You just need to set some shots up in practice. Pick the angle, and then don't care if you miss or not, just cue straight and try to work out what your problem is.

But you can't blame it purely on your lack of angle judgement, because you just said you don't trust it anyway, so then you don't cue straight.

[Terry Davidson]

Man oh man, I sure get tired of hearing this 'not judging angles correctly' thingy.

Can you steer you car correctly around a corner? Can you walk around a sharp corner? Can you ice skate or roller skate around a corner without banging into a wall? Can you steer your bike around a corner at speed?

How did you learn to do all these things without injuring yourself? The answer is through trial and error (perhaps initially injuring yourself though). I can guarantee you can see and detect the correct potting angle but you've been delivering the cue off-line and your brain unconsciously realizes if you use the potting angle you see then you won't make the pot.

Detecting the potting angle takes a bit of experience but you have managed to screw yourself up royally and are going off on a tangent which eventually will likely make you stop enjoying the game unless you correct it NOW. So give yourself a chance to correct this FIRST and do not work on anything else for awhile until you get it.

On every pot you take on from here on forward just stay down at the end of the shot and watch the object ball with ONLY your eyes...do NOT move the head. This will give your brain the correct feedback you will need to correct this problem. So pick your potting angle when standing behind the shot, point your nose at that point on the object ball and now LOOKING AT THAT POINT ON THE OBJECT BALL drop your head straight down and assume the address position.

Ignore what you think about the potting angle, stay still on the shot, keep the grip loose, use a slow backswing, lock eyes on the object ball and deliver the cue. If you practice this routine enough you should soon get into the correct groove.

Unless you are some kind of autistic or have really bad astigmatism you will see the correct potting angle which is nothing more than mentally putting a ghost cueball in the plant position behind the object ball and aimed directly to the widest part of the pocket you can see or else select a spot on the object ball that the cueball has to make contact with and do the same thing (called BOB method).

Terry

[j6uk]

Hey all,
my head goes fussy

Thanks in advance!!

having been through the mental torture on reading and partaking in your diary, i feel its crucial that you get over your 'fuzzyness' before you can make any inroads into playing this game to the level you think you can

[ace man]

Man oh man, I sure get tired of hearing this 'not judging angles correctly' thingy.

Me too.
I have yet to see or hear about a player who could not aim or judge angles well, but somehow could consistently cue straight and true. In fact, I don't think that such a player exists in this entire universe.

[j6uk]

What is the best way to improve this, especially when you don't get much table time?
Thanks in advance!!

oh and the best way is to realize that you won't improve it! simply take comfort in that some days you'll pot better than others

[itsnoteasy]

Don't despair Belloz, but Terry is right, about judging angles ,it takes a while to learn them but everyone can do it, I know this as I am one of the people who he had to go through this with lol, and as he says the only way to learn them is to pick your point ,cue straight through to it, stay down and see what happens, then learn from it . If it was easy we would all be banging in tons for fun, but its been said before it takes thousands of hours of hard graft to get to a decent standard and that's if you have some ability to do it in the first place.
Also As Tedisbill says you are not cueing straight, as you said you move your hand only on angled shots but not on straight shots, most shots are angled shots, so most of the time you are not cueing straight. We all miss shots with more angle to them, that's because they are harder shots, there is more of an offset to judge ,but that is all about time at the table to learn these things, sometimes I feel a lot of people on here practice a lot but don't think about what is going on, they are just hitting balls around, self analysis IMO is so important, I don't understand the " I'm missing because I'm steering the cue" point, because the answer is right there in front of you, don't steer the cue ,bring it through straight every time to the best of your ability, surely you can see that's the answer?. When your practicing and you get down if your not happy with what you see get back up and get online again and try your hardest to drop down online,(this was where I was going wrong ) as if you wander offline on the way down you will get conflict as your brain will know you are not on the line you picked when standing up, this should all be done by self analysis , as you are the only one who really knows what you are doing.

[thelongbomber]

One way to think about angles and getting the potting line is to understand that on very long shots, it's nearly impossible to see where your cue is pointing. Feathering and your eyes (ie: hand/eye coordination) will give you the feedback your brain is looking for to determine if you are "on" or "off". You have to feel the angles just as much as you can see the angle. In short range, you can rely on vision and cueing to determine if you are offline, but on long shots, you have to rely more on feel and past experience. Long or short, your stance and feet is what gets you into initial position and gets your cue correctly under your dominant vision and into line of aim.

Terry is right. Get the stance and body right, and you will pick up the angles correctly with time and experience. Avoid any tendency to use side to "fix" a badly judged potting angle by the way. As much as you can, use centre ball first.

[itsnoteasy]

As far as I know there is only one place your cue should be pointing and that's through the middle of the white ball, if it's not you will impart side on the shot. All of the cue ball is on the line of aim but some of it overlaps with the object ball and this gives you the half ball pot etc, or the middle of the overlap as the contact point, but you have to cue through the middle of the white to send it down this path.

[Cmbrstefan]

Confidence from not trusting the potting angles your seeing.

belloz22 don't worry and don't give up. I am at the moment trying to get the stance grip follow through as natural as possible. also for the sighting still trying to get a better feel (thinking it's straight but it's not) but don't push to hard, if you have much time take a few minutes off when adrenaline and blood pressure rises. As you will start getting annoyed missing all the time.

But just remember don't give up, until you get the feel for it.

[Belloz22]

as always thanks for the advice.......... and 99% of the time I agree it is bad cueing, but as ive said before, your may have the perfect cue action etc, but unless your down on the right line you will miss. How do you know your on the right line? Or is it a case you accept everytime you miss it is because you have not cue'd straight?

[itsnoteasy]

If you hit the point you picked and miss it's an aiming issue, if you don't hit the point you picked it's a cueing issue. That's how you know.

[j6uk]

as always thanks for the advice.......... and 99% of the time I agree it is bad cueing, but as ive said before, your may have the perfect cue action etc, but unless your down on the right line you will miss. How do you know your on the right line? Or is it a case you accept every time you miss it is because you have not cue'd straight?

sorry lad but your way off! you don't really have the want or time to get good at this game, you know what i'm saying right?! please don't get lost in this 'tsf' because there are thousands of players around the country who can pump in tons for fun and they didn't play this game just because they wanted to because they 'had too'! they had a passion for it! they don't have the time or inclination to get involved with a lot of this stuff here.. this game is about graft and time to do the graft. if you aint got the time then you won't improve, slapping your balls around a couple of times a week then bashing the keys, more times than you practice, is only gonna leave you in a state of delusion

[Belloz22]

far off........ it may not come across I dont put graft in but I do, I just feel alot of my stagnation is due to issues with angles, and I no most of it is bad cueing through lack of confidence. My question is, from a learners level, how would you first learn to identify the angle or would you just tell a beginner to pot loads of balls and you will take in the angles? The reason I ask is surely if you are dependin on feedback for knowledge, the feedback has to be correct..... thus needin to know whether u missed thru cueing or picking the wrong angle