June172009
Pool is a game of nearly endless depth and richness. For beginners this may not be readily apparent, but as one learns more of what’s possible it becomes more and more obvious. Which ball to play next, which route to take to get there (there’s more than one?), playing position not just for the next ball but the ball after that, etc. These are just the first eye openers on how many levels there are to truly understand the fullness of this game.
I’ve written about practice more than a few times, but one thing that I keep coming back to is the value of learning things in the right order. There’s only so much time to spend on practice, so it behooves you to work on the things that will make the largest improvement in your game.
There’s only so much time to spend on practice, so it behooves you to work on the things that will make the largest improvement in your game.
Improving your ability to bank by double will only help you out maybe once a game, but improving your ability to get position on your next ball will help you every shot. Practicing your break sounds important because every time you watch 9 Ball on TV the expert commentator will remind you that it’s the most important shot in pool. Well, only after you’ve already mastered all the things you need to know to be able to run the rack once you’ve made a ball. If you can’t do that with any degree of reliability, it doesn’t help you. And if it doesn’t help you, don’t practice it.
Many players, beginners especially but intermediate players as well, want to do the cool things in pool. Making an eye opening shot, one your opponent can’t make, has a power to excite that is more intense than the feeling you get from just winning the game. Any practice regimen that eliminates these shots takes too much of the enjoyment out of the game.
Thinking about this, I tried to put together an easy way to determine when a player should start to practice some of the more advanced parts of the game. It’s very rough, and far from ironclad. It needs contribution by others to be refined and enhanced into something that would work for most everyone.
Making an eye opening shot, one your opponent can’t make, has a power to excite that is more intense than the feeling you get from just winning the game.
I use playing the ghost as the measure of overall playing ability. It’s simple and easily graduated into many levels. To make sure we’re all on the same page, let me explain what I mean by playing the ghost.
The ghost is your imaginary, omnipotent opponent. You get to shoot first, and if you run out you win. If not, since we imagine that your opponent is perfect, he’ll always run out and hand you a quick loss. To make playing the ghost a reasonable way to spend your time, we adjust the level of difficulty so that you have a chance to win. We do that by limiting the number of balls on the table. At the low end we also limit the location of the object balls to half the table.
Let’s say you want to play the 5 Ball ghost. Throw 7 balls out onto the table in a random fashion. When they come to rest, take the 2 balls closest to any pocket off the table. Now take ball in hand and run the balls in sequence, lowest ball first. Play a race, preferably to 11, but at least to 7. If you win, move up a ball to play the 6 Ball ghost next time. If you lose, subtract a ball and play the 4 Ball ghost next time. For the half table variants, just make sure the balls are all either above or below the side pockets.
Pool is a game of nearly endless depth and richness.
I associated an advanced skill with each of 10 levels of playing the ghost. The idea is that you not try to learn these skills until you have reached the level of mastery against the ghost that they are associated with. For example, until you can beat the 6 Ball ghost, you should not spend any time trying to learn about caroms and billiards. You aren’t ready, and the time would be spent much more productively on more fundamental things.
I know that saying “you aren’t ready” raises a lot of hackles, and I don’t mean that you aren’t yet capable of learning that skill, only that you will benefit much more from learning other, more fundamental skills, or getting better at them.
So, here’s my list of levels and their associated advanced skills. I’ve added a couple of sentences about each one to explain my logic. Requirements vary based on the game being played, so 8 Ballers might warrant a slightly different order than 9 Ball players, but at this stage of this idea, I tried to keep it simple and make just one list. I’d love to hear from you, especially if you disagree with me, on what you think of this idea, and of my rankings.
01 3 Ball Half Table Safeties
Safeties are an important part of everyone’s game. They can be a valuable play when the offensive shots available to you are too tough. They can be even more valuable when you fit them strategically into your plan. Since many are easy, and many people need to be encouraged to use them more often, I’m making them the first, most important of the specialty shots.
02 4 Ball Half Table Kicking
Sometimes your opponent will leave you with no clear shot to make a legal hit. This happens often enough (and even more often when you add in the times you do it to yourself), and the penalty for missing (ball in hand) is severe enough, that you’ll need to learn this skill early in your career. Plus, if your opponent knows you can’t kick, you see lots of them.
03 3 Ball Full Table Banking
While it’s true that you should usually cut rather than bank, sometimes only a bank will do. Or, getting shape off a bank shot may be much easier than off a cut. It would be nice to think this was rare, but it isn’t, so banking skills will be required relatively early.
04 5 Ball Half Table English
Great pool requires getting excellent position on every ball. While most of the time you can do that with only stun, follow and draw, sometimes more is needed. With english you can adjust the trajectory of the cue ball off the rail, giving yourself extra flexibility in choosing a route for whitey. English can also add or reduce speed off the rail, opening up even more choices.
When you start using english aiming gets more difficult, because of all the additional factors you now need to compensate for. You’ll miss many more balls until you get the hang of it, and that won’t happen for a while. Be prepared to work hard on this one; it’s deceptively tough but you can only go so far without it.
05 4 Ball Full Table Throw
Knowledge of throw will help you make frozen balls that point slightly away from the pocket, as well as helping you control cue ball movement in tight situations. It can even help you make balls where a blocker is in the way just a little bit. Not dramatic, but not at all difficult.
06 5 Ball Full Table Rail First
This one is great for making balls near a pocket that are blocked by another ball. Especially useful in 8 Ball, but valuable in all games, this variation on the kick can really deflate your opponent who’s sure you can’t get out.
07 6 Ball Full Table Caroms & Billiards
Conceptually simple, these beautiful shots can be difficult for some players to get a feel for. Based on the tangent line and a stun shot, they can get you out of all kinds of jams, especially on crowded tables.
08 7 Ball Full Table Tickies
A combination of a rail first shot with a carom or billiard, knowing these will help you get blocked balls near a pocket that you couldn’t get to with a simple rail first shot. Easier than they sound, and more useful than you might guess at first, these will take some effort to get comfortable with.
09 8 Ball Full Table The Break
This one will probably generate the most criticism, since so many others are advocating breaking practice. When you can beat the 8 Ball Ghost, and you make a ball with a controlled break, you have a good chance to run out. Before now, you’ll mostly run out enough balls to make the run out easy for your opponent.
10 9 Ball Full Table Partial Massé
Another way to get around a blocker ball is a partial or half massé. These are difficult to control, requiring much practice, and not needed as often as other, simpler techniques.
You’ll probably notice that I have not including jumping in my advanced skills list. I won’t take anything away from the skill of jumping, I just don’t like jumping because it damages the cloth. Yes it’s legal and you can jump if you like, I just don’t encourage it.
So there you have it. Let me know if you think this idea has merit or is too dumb to consider. I look forward to your feedback.
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May312009 Is this story familiar? You have a friend, let’s call him Joe, who’s crazy about pool. He plays all the time, buys nice equipment, reads pool books and magazines and watches a lot of the pros play, both at nearby tournaments on TV and the web. Joe loves the game and wants to be a much better player. He’s not happy with his rate of improvement, so he books a lesson from a respected instructor. This might be a four hour session, or a weekend boot camp, or a short series of lessons an hour or so at a time. Joe’s all excited about it, tells all his friends, maybe enjoys their jealousy a little, and anxiously awaits his lesson. The day finally comes, and Joe has his lesson. He’s ecstatic. The instructor was amazing, he found Joe’s flaws and explained and showed him how to fix them. He video taped the session and not only used it to show Joe exactly what he was doing, but provided him a copy of the video so Joe could view it whenever he wanted to, as a refresher. Joe’s not happy with his rate of improvement, so he books a lesson from a respected instructor. Joe tells everyone about his lesson(s). He’s always got the utmost respect for the instructor and his methodology. He can’t say enough good things about his experience and tries to sell his friends and playing buddies that they too, should spend a few hundred dollars and take advantage of this wonderful experience. The only thing is, Joe doesn’t get any better. Nobody says anything to him, of course, but everyone who knows his game notices. And Joe does too; he’s not blind. Soon, Joe stops talking about the lesson and his instructor and moves on to something else; his new favorite book or video, perhaps, or maybe a new cue he has his eye on. What happened? It’s simple, really. There is no magic pill for improvement in pool. What works is practice. You have to put in the time and effort to turn knowledge into ability. Joe got plenty of value for his money. He just squandered that value by not following up on what he learned. He paid a lot of money, but he received something he couldn’t get from a book or a DVD. He got expert and objective feedback about HIS stroke, about HIS game. He learned that X and Y and Z are not his problems and instead he should focus on A and B and C. If he learned that there’s a flaw in his stroke, he needed to work on that until it got better. His instructor provided exercises, drills or practice routines designed to work on the very flaw that was Joe’s problem. He may have even provided a mechanism for Joe to gauge his progress. Did Joe do those any of those things? Probably not. Did he do them faithfully for as long as it took for them to become his new standard? Almost assuredly not. Did he waste his money? You know he did. There is no magic pill for improvement in pool. What works is practice. Don’t be like Joe. Don’t try to buy yourself a better game. Spending your money on professional instruction can pay huge dividends. It’s likely to become the best money you ever spent on pool. But it will only be helpful to you if you are prepared to follow the guidance of your expert and put in the hours on the practice table. And think ahead. If you know that your league lasts another 4 weeks and you aren’t going to be able to put in the time practicing until then, schedule the lesson after your league season ends. Even if you do have the time to put in extra practice, remember that changing your stroke, or the way you play the game, will hurt your results initially, until you’ve mastered the changes, and your performance will then improve past where it had been, and the improvement should be permanent. Let us know about your experiences with lessons. How did they help you, what did you do to cement the changes into your game, who did you use and what did you think of them, etc. Done well, professional lessons can make an important difference in your game, so make sure you follow up with practice and don’t waste your time and money. Honesty is the Best Policy
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