Thanks Billiards Digest!

I was checking my blog traffic yesterday and noticed a few hits from a URL which contained the characters ‘…billiardsdigest…’ Curious, I decided to click the link to see what I would find.  Guess what?  Billiards Digest picked my blog as the best pool blog of 2011!  Yipeeee!  They also cited a friend and fellow PoolSynergy blogger Melinda Bailey’s blog as the runner-up pool blog for 2011!  Congratulations Melinda!!!!

I took a screen shot of part of the article and included the excerpt below (not sure if I’m violating any copywrite laws here, if so, let me know!)  You can read the full story at the Billiards Digest website.  Both of our blogs will be featured in the August 2011 magazine edition of Billiards Digest.  I want to say “Thanks!” to all the folks at Billiards Digest for the recognition and kind words.  This was completely unexpected.  I really do appreciate it!

The Seven Day Miracle: Part 7 of 7

Pulling it together

Figure 1

This is the final post of my seven part series to improve your game.  Today I will pull together all the pieces we have studied and show you how to apply what we learned to play the perfect game of pool.  As a review, here are the individual components that we worked on:

1.  Aiming shots with the Ghost Ball method

2.  Calibrating our arm to control the speed of a shot

3.  Predicting the cue ball deflection angle after collision with an object ball

4.  Predicting the cue ball rebound angle after it hits a rail cushion

5.  Adjusting the speed of a shot to compensate for energy lost in the cue ball / object ball collision.

Figure 2

Now, let’s get down to business!  Take a look at the table layout in Figure 1.   This is a game of eight ball, we are stripes, and we have only one stripe ball left to pocket.  What we want to do is pocket the fifteen ball, then make the cue ball travel around the table to get into position for the final shot, which is the eight ball.  That looks like a pretty hard shot doesn’t it?  How do we make it happen?  Should we just hit it hard and hope for the best?  Heck no!  With the knowledge that you now have, and with the countless hours you spent calibrating your arm in part 3 of this series, you should be confident and totally in control!

Let’s analyze the shot.    First, we need to figure out how to make the fifteen ball go into the pocket.  We will use the Ghost Ball aiming method.  See Figure 2, where we have imagined the Ghost Ball, and determined the aiming point.  Notice the aiming line that extends through the ghost ball.  The aiming line just barely touches the edge of the object ball.  If you refer to the Angle of Deflection chart in part 4 of this series, you will see that this is a half ball hit.  According to the Deflection chart, the Angle of Deflection will be about 30 degrees, so in your mind’s eye, see the “Peace Sign” to determine the initial direction of the cue ball after collision.

Figure 3

In Figure 3, we utilize the Angle of Reflection from part 5 of this series to estimate the path of the cue ball after collision with the first rail and subsequent rails.  Based on the extension of this “natural” path, we should check to see if any of the solid balls are going to get in the way.  Fortunately, in this case, none of the balls are in our way.  Yippeee!  This means there’s no need for us to use extra cue ball spin to avoid unwanted collisions!  Now we can just hit the ball and try to make it land it somewhere near the spot marked “X”.  But wait a minute.  Do we really need to be that exact?  Take a look at Figure 4, and notice the position of the eight ball and the blue line that I drew on the table which outlines a “safe” zone highlighted in yellow?  As long as the cue ball lands anywhere in this yellow zone, you should be able to make the final shot and win the game fairly easily; therefore, there’s actually a pretty large margin for error on this shot.

Figure 4

Now the question is: “How hard do I need to hit the cue ball in order to make sure it stops in the yellow zone?” If we extend the cue ball path through the yellow zone, we can put limits on how soft and how hard you can hit the cue ball.  See Figure 5.  The point marked “A” is the softest you can hit, and point B is the hardest you can hit.   But wait, we get a bonus!  If the cue ball makes it all the way to point B, it will collide with the green ball and come to a stop.  The green ball will act as a stopper to keep the cue ball safely within the yellow zone.  As such, we can actually hit the cue ball even harder, and still be able to keep the cue ball in the yellow zone.  We could probably hit the cue ball hard enough to theoretically make it to point “C” (if the green ball were not in the way).  Now, let’s calculate the distances the cue ball would have to travel to get from its starting point to points “A” and “C”.  The distance to point “A” is ~10 diamonds.  The distance to point “C” is ~16 diamonds.  If you refer back to the exercise from part 3 of this series, this translates into an arm stroke with a speed between 3 and 6.

Figure 5

So we want to hit the cue ball with an arm speed between 3 and 6, but remember, today we are also hitting an object ball with a ½ ball hit.  As such, the object ball will be ‘stealing’ some energy from us, so we need to make an adjustment for that.  According to the “Speed after Collision” chart from part 6 of this series, the object ball will take 4 parts of the cue ball’s energy, and the cue ball will retain about 3 parts of its energy.  Just to make the math easy, let’s assume the energy split is 50/50, even though it’s really about 57/43.  This means that the cue ball will only retain about half its energy after it hits the object ball.  In order for the cue ball to end up with enough speed to get into the yellow zone, we will need to multiply our calculated speed range by two, since object ball will steal about half of the cue ball’s energy.  So the modified distances are 20 diamonds for point “A” (10 x 2) and 32 diamonds for point “C” (16 x 2).   This translates into newly calculated arm speeds of 8 (minimum) and 14 (maximum).

After you’ve done all the thinking and calculating, let’s review the final answer:  In order to hit the perfect shot, you will need to do the following:

1. Use a half ball hit on the object ball
2. Hit the cue ball with normal ‘running’ English
3. Hit the cue ball with an arm speed between 8 and 14.

That’s it!  At this point, there’s nothing else to worry about.  Just get into your stance, use proper fundamentals, and execute the shot with the proper speed.  If you take your time and go through this type of analysis on every single shot, you should be running tables in no time.  Nothing to it!

The Seven Day Miracle: Part 5 of 7

The Angle of Reflection

Hello World!  Sorry for the tardy post, I’ve been in bed for two days sick, but hey baby, I’m back!  Since I’m a day behind, I’ll do two posts today.  I’ll start with the Angle of Reflection, then later today when hopefully I feel a little better, I’ll write about the next topic, Speed after Collision.

So here we go…the Angle of Reflection.  When a cue ball rolls toward a cushion, hits the cushion and rebounds back, how do we predict the angle the cue ball will take when it leaves the cushion?  That seems like an easy thing to predict, huh?  Well, in some ways it is.  The generally accepted rule of thumb for predicting the angle of rebound goes something like this: “The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.”  This is a concept borrowed from classical physics.  Although this approach is very accurate when applied to light waves or other forms of electromagnetic radiation (with little or no mass), this rule of thumb can be highly influenced by other forces when applied to a real world setting that is filled with rolling and spinning spheres of significant mass.

Figure 1

Let’s start simple.  In figure 1, I show the classic concept from physics, where the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.  This is actually a very accurate guideline for predicting the path of a cue ball bouncing off a rail under the following three conditions: (1) if the cue ball is rolling naturally (not over spinning, sliding, or rotating backwards), (2) if the cue ball has a very slight horizontal rotation to it (in this case, a slight right spin, also known as “Running English”), and (3) if the cue ball is hit with normal speed (between 3 and 7 on the Arm Calibration scale from my November 10, 2009 post).  Under these three conditions, the angle of reflection will almost exactly equal the angle of incidence.  However, if you vary any of these three factors, the angle of reflection will be modified from the theoretical value.  How much will it be modified?  Unfortunately, you have to go to the table and experiment with these factors to get a feel for how much they influence the rebound angle.

Here are the general rules for determining the influence of these factors:

1.  For very large angles of incidence (the cue ball is approaching the rail at a shallow angle), the angle of rebound will be even shallower than the theoretical value (more oblique).  Conversely, for shots into the rail that are nearly perpendicular, the rebound will be even more perpendicular (more acute) than theory suggests.

2. If you hit the cue ball hard, the angle of rebound will be sharper (more acute).  For cue balls hit really soft, the angle will be fatter (more oblique).

3. Cue ball rotational at the time of impact has a MASSIVE affect on rebound angle.  This motion can be present in two forms: (1) Forward/Backward rotation, and (2) Side Spin (commonly referred to as Spin or English).  As an example, in Figure 1 above, if the cue ball was rolling forward and had a hard right spin, the cue ball would come off the rail at an angle much more oblique (more parallel to the rail) than expected.  Conversely, on the same shot if the ball had backward rotation and/or hard left spin, the angle of rebound would be modified to be much more perpendicular to the rail than theory would suggest.

OK, sounds interesting (or maybe not), but how much do I really need to worry about this?  If you want to be able to predict the path of the cue ball, you need to develop a good feel for how much influence these factors have.  What’s the worst that can happen?  Just for fun, I’ve included some graphs below that demonstrate some of the most extreme examples of shots that I’ve seen that deviate from the “angle of incidence = angle of reflection” rule of thumb.  All of these shots are possible, given changes in the three factors that I mentioned above: the angle of incidence, speed of the shot, and rotational spin.  Don’t believe it?  Yes, these are extreme examples, but they are possible.  Maybe in a future post I’ll go into a little more detail on how these shots are performed.

Examples of deviant Angles of Reflection

Later today, I’ll post the final technical installment called Speed after Collision.  Then Saturday I’ll wrap up the series and show you how to apply these concepts in a real game.

The Seven Day Miracle: Part 1 of 7

Mr. Miyagi

Do you remember the movie The Karate Kid?  In it, a teenager named Daniel is trying to learn Karate from Mr. Miyagi.  Mr. Miyagi takes an unconventional approach to training: instead of teaching Karate directly to Daniel, he breaks it down into a few critical skills, then focuses on each until it is mastered.  In one scene, Mr. Miyagi hands Daniel a set of wooden sanding blocks and tells Daniel to sand his entire deck.  He tells Daniel to use a circular motion: “Wax on, Wax off.”  At first, Daniel thought that Mr. Miyagi was just using him to get work done around the house.  In actuality, Mr. Miyagi was utilizing Daniel’s focused efforts to build Myelin and reinforce the proper techniques that would allow him to excel in competition.  This approach is very similar to the approach discussed by Daniel Coyle in his book The Talent Code.  Now, for the first time, I will apply the same approach to the game of pool.  Over the next few days I will present to you the few critical skills of pool that, if mastered, are guaranteed to take your game to the next level.

Tomorrow I will start with part two of this series titled The Ghost Ball, in which I discuss the Ghost Ball aiming method.  This is one of the simplest methods for determining the precise place to aim in order to hit an object ball into a pocket.  In part 3, Calibrating Your Arm, I will describe the process you need to follow in order to develop the ability to precisely control the distance a cue ball travels after you make a shot.  This is a skill that very few players practice, which is fascinating to me because it plays such a crucial role in your ability to run the table.  More than any other, mastering this one simple skill will lead to huge improvements in your game.  On Wednesday we will cover part 4, The Angle of Deflection.  In this part I reveal to you the answer to one of pools greatest mysteries:  How does a player determine the exact angle at which the cue ball will deflect after it collides with an object ball?  In part 5, The Angle of Reflection, I will share with you a concept borrowed from classical physics that allows you to predict the path a cue ball will take after it hits a rail and rolls around the table.  On Friday I’ll cover part 6, Speed after Collision. In this part I will show you how to apply the concepts presented in Part 3 of this series, and we will determine the exact speed you need to give the cue ball in order to move it around the table and stop it exactly where you want it to stop.  Next Saturday I will present the final part of this series, Putting it together. In this part I will review all the concepts presented, and then I’ll show you how to bring it all together and take your game to the next level.

So there it is dear reader.  Over the next week, I’m going to ask you to step up to the proverbial fire hydrant and open your mouth as wide as you can.  Once you are in position, I’ll turn the lever and then LOOK OUT!  Even if you only catch 10% of the information I’m going to share, it should be enough to take your game up a notch or two.  So batten down the hatches, sit back, and prepare for one heck of a ride!