Can't do dominant eye test

[dave8]

I've tried to do the dominant eye test using chalk at one end of the table. When I point my finger at the chalk I see double vision on my fingers so I can never see if one is dominant. Can anyone tell me what this means.

[vmax4steve]

You're supposed to see two fingers, which one is pointing at the chalk, there's your answer.
Bloody hell, why the need to point this out !!!!!!!

[Terry Davidson]

Or even better is form a hole with your 2 hands and put the hole over the chalk and then draw the hands to the eyes whilst keeping the chalk in vision.

[dave8]

Thanks this works great and confirmed my right eye is dominant. Great stuff Terry - cheers.

[Nic Barrow]

Take Care

Thanks this works great and confirmed my right eye is dominant. Great stuff Terry - cheers.

Thanks this works great and confirmed my right eye is dominant. Great stuff Terry - cheers.

Hi Dave
you must be very careful that you do not confuse eye dominance/preferedness with STRENGTH.
10% of clients I test discover their 'dominant' eye is WEAKER THAN their other eye.
The other huge coaching myth is that you should your dominant eye and then cue underneath that eye.
This advice causes more problems for players than virtually any other coaching mistake, and gets me a lot of work in helping players recover from this error.
This video should explain more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXEzWmhm5z0

[dave8]

Hi Dave
you must be very careful that you do not confuse eye dominance/preferedness with STRENGTH.
10% of clients I test discover their 'dominant' eye is WEAKER THAN their other eye.
The other huge coaching myth is that you should your dominant eye and then cue underneath that eye.
This advice causes more problems for players than virtually any other coaching mistake, and gets me a lot of work in helping players recover from this error.
This video should explain more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXEzWmhm5z0

Thanks Nic.
I'll check the video when I get chance.
I use to practise with the cue centre under my chin then heard about all this eye dominance switched to my right eye thinking that was dominant but found caused me to miss 90% of the time so switched back to central for a while. Then read again about dominant eyes and decided to try again - using the test Terry suggested to confirm right eye dominance. Again, after a couple of hours of practise it seems to be causing me to miss 90% of the time. I'm just not sure anymore. I know it could take a long time to train my brain to use the right eye.

[Terry Davidson]

Too many players think too much about their 'dominant' or 'preferred' eye. So a player will develop a set-up and alignment where he is cueing centre-chin and plays reasonably well but then he reads about how 'important' it is to favour one eye over the other and they change their set-up and alignment to account for this.

Now what happens is there is around a 50-50 chance this player might have IMPROVED his alignment (he also might make it worse) but in any case it will be different from the alignment he developed when he was young and first learned to play (which is probably the most natural alignment for that particular player).

When players come to realize virtually any half decent alignment will work with snooker (just look at the variance among the pros) AS LONG AS THEY STICK WITH IT in order to allow their brain to become trained to it and automatically select the correct sighting alignment through habit and experience.

One other very important fact is 99% of pots are missed because the cue was not delivered straight down the line of aim. The other 1% are those blind shots to closed pockets where the player needs to practice those and get his brain trained. Learn to deliver the cue straight FIRST and forget about all these other issues which are debated continuously on here.

[Steve748]

Make an O with your thumb and forefinger and look through it with both eyes at an object then close one eye and then the other.

When the same object can be seen through the O when the other eye is closed that is your dominant eye.

[dave8]

Too many players think too much about their 'dominant' or 'preferred' eye. So a player will develop a set-up and alignment where he is cueing centre-chin and plays reasonably well but then he reads about how 'important' it is to favour one eye over the other and they change their set-up and alignment to account for this.

Now what happens is there is around a 50-50 chance this player might have IMPROVED his alignment (he also might make it worse) but in any case it will be different from the alignment he developed when he was young and first learned to play (which is probably the most natural alignment for that particular player).

When players come to realize virtually any half decent alignment will work with snooker (just look at the variance among the pros) AS LONG AS THEY STICK WITH IT in order to allow their brain to become trained to it and automatically select the correct sighting alignment through habit and experience.

One other very important fact is 99% of pots are missed because the cue was not delivered straight down the line of aim. The other 1% are those blind shots to closed pockets where the player needs to practice those and get his brain trained. Learn to deliver the cue straight FIRST and forget about all these other issues which are debated continuously on here.

Thanks for the advice Terry.

[Nic Barrow]

Disaster

Thanks Nic.
I'll check the video when I get chance.
I use to practise with the cue centre under my chin then heard about all this eye dominance switched to my right eye thinking that was dominant but found caused me to miss 90% of the time so switched back to central for a while. Then read again about dominant eyes and decided to try again - using the test Terry suggested to confirm right eye dominance. Again, after a couple of hours of practise it seems to be causing me to miss 90% of the time. I'm just not sure anymore. I know it could take a long time to train my brain to use the right eye.

It is a disastrous coaching error to take people through that dominant eye test and then tell the player to cue only under that eye.
It causes more problems in players (and gives me more work) than any other error I see from coaches.
If you did something that was working, THEN KEEP DOING IT - you do not need to reinvent the wheel.
Almost ALL players who come to me who are completely messed up with their aiming have followed this 'cue under the dominant eye' theory, instead of going with their natural head position that they settle on as soon as they start playing - which is more often than not the perfect head position.

[Nic Barrow]

Cueing or aiming?

Too many players think too much about their 'dominant' or 'preferred' eye. So a player will develop a set-up and alignment where he is cueing centre-chin and plays reasonably well but then he reads about how 'important' it is to favour one eye over the other and they change their set-up and alignment to account for this.

Now what happens is there is around a 50-50 chance this player might have IMPROVED his alignment (he also might make it worse) but in any case it will be different from the alignment he developed when he was young and first learned to play (which is probably the most natural alignment for that particular player).

When players come to realize virtually any half decent alignment will work with snooker (just look at the variance among the pros) AS LONG AS THEY STICK WITH IT in order to allow their brain to become trained to it and automatically select the correct sighting alignment through habit and experience.

One other very important fact is 99% of pots are missed because the cue was not delivered straight down the line of aim. The other 1% are those blind shots to closed pockets where the player needs to practice those and get his brain trained. Learn to deliver the cue straight FIRST and forget about all these other issues which are debated continuously on here.

If someone's eye alignment or angle recognition is wrong, they will miss 99% of shots due to aiming (or only be able to pot balls with bad cueing).
But, even if their aiming is perfect, players under 100 break standard will still miss the majority of their shots because their cueing is wrong.

Yes to a degree players can learn to aim with a certain head position, but it is easier to find what is one's optimum vision centre and build your game from that.