I liked that little diagram, had not seen that one. I don’t focus on the amount of energy a pro applies, I have been focusing more on the direction of the applied energy. If the ball is in contact with the tip for roughly .0013 of a second that means the object ball has to accelerate from 0 to say 15 fps in that short time span. A less than perfectly directed stroke would have a very brief time during the acceleration of the cue ball to move slightly off of the contact point. This is where it appears the novice is loosing the sharpness on his strike. I am trying to imagine that brief period on a draw shot, the ball would be hit low and immediately start to accelerate over a short period of maybe 1/4" or so. In order for the tip to stay in contact with the point of original contact it seems like it would have to be free to move slightly down as the ball started rotating backwards. Most of the diagrams I have seem treat the problem as if acceleration and leaving the cue tip are instantaneous.
Yes. Or inducing other unwanted pitch or yaw. The point of the follow-through (in any ball sport) is entirely that (absent special cases) you want the impact to occur during a steady-state motion of your cue / racket / bat / foot / hand.
Competitive firearms shooters want a smooth continuous build-up of pressure on the trigger so they’ll be surprised at the moment it gives way and the weapon fires. Squeeze, not pull. Same idea.
Humans have a hard time being both dynamic and smooth and tightly controlled. So aim for smooth and tightly controlled while trying to avoid dynamism in the moments immediately pre- and post-impact.
Not talking about myself or anyone for that matter, I am talking about perfect or absolute Vs imperfect. Really not even discussing the shot. Just what happens upon impact until the ball leaves contact. very brief period of time being discussed, about 1/1000 of a second is where the entire discussion should be focused.
I meant “you” as in…if one stabs at the cue ball (i.e. not directed at any person).
In terms of where the discussion should be focused, I’m not sure I’m following you. I am trying to discuss how a difference in playing the shot affects that 1/1000 of a second contact…I thought this was the point of the thread?
Yes, we all do that including myself. Hard to avoid discussing that. I was hoping to figure out the impact dynamics and then go back to the stroke itself. I wasn’t trying to be critical of you. It is just one of those things that tends to wander off the pinpoint area of discussion.
This is getting a bit far from the OP’s point, but since the OP has themselves come to see the light and dropped the whole “wrist action” idea, and therefore the initial question I don’t think it’s out of line to very briefly introduce a side question.
Yes, the swift acceleration, I think everybody knows here (maybe not the barroom bangers trying to impress their girlfriends!), is the key. And, I think it was Dr Dave in one of his demonstrations either on his COState website or in his book Principles showed just how much or little one can count on adding effective mass to the cuestick through bodyweight.
But I am slightly curious about this, just in an opinion sort of way. In 8-ball, lets say, where one desires a wide break, every ball, everywhere, pretty much, and then run out.
The best “cannonball break” people I’ve known IRL use mostly leg motion to drive the cueball into the racked balls. It looks nothing like a regular shot to me! That’s how I’ve ended up breaking in 8-ball…just straight-on at the head ball, and heavy propulsion. Yes, I’ve used second-ball breaks and all that, mostly when I was just starting out, for novelty, but for me nothing beats pure meat and m/s/s to make that table a smorgasborg.
And then, on those times one has to hit an object ball pretty firmly for position, then, yes, it looks like a normal stroke. Just one object ball and a few rails vs. a tight rack. (That’s kind of satisfying, aesthetically, when playing a rack as usual, with medium strokes at best, and then people at the bar’s ears perk up when they hear you actually pound the ball…it’s the local entertainment!)
I haven’t watched tape of master/mistresses of pool in quite a while, but I’m a bit curious if there’s an example that comes to mind.
Yes, my favorite game is 14.1, but I play a bunch of 8 or 9 ball as well, just in bars and stuff. I think my hard break is strong (not champion-calibre breaks, but consistently…OK, good scatter…but, no, I hardly ever pocket anything on a 9-ball break shot, but that’s a different thread entirely) for but I was curious whence your observation.
After giving this some thought and seeing some comments in the pit I thought I might come back and try to clarify a bit. My question will quickly lead to a discussion on the stroke once I feel we have come to some kind of conclusion as to what takes place when the cue tip strikes the cue ball. I think we all agreed that the cue ball behaves very differently when hit by a pro as opposed to a novice. I think I can identify at least two factors that might be a significant when comparing the pro to a novice. #1, I think maybe the pro just selects a more precision.angle to strike the ball when getting English, and #2 ( This is kind of a guess) The ball stays in contact with the tip for about 1/4" over a period of about .0013 of a second. If the player were to lower or raise the back of the cue at precisely the right moment keeping his tip in the same contact point throughout the shot, I think it may greatly improve the hit.
Nope. ‘Swiping’ the tip across the cueball does absolutely nothing, other than help,you miss the shot.
Nope. The cueball behaves the same if hit in the same place at the same speed with the same vector, regardless of whether they are novice or pro. There is nothing mysterious or secret about the way pros use a cue. They practice to hit the ball exactly where they want, and any wrist action in play is merely an adjustment to keep the cue level through the stroke.
No one is snapping their wrists to spin the cueball. Well, no one who wins, anyway. It’s a fairly common myth, and some players try to do it.
The true secret the pros have? Practice. Careful, directed practice. Again and again. Thousands of times. Set up a draw shot and shoot it 100 times, and you will get better at it, if you pay attention to what you are doing wrong. Just shooting balls around is play. You’ll get a little better, but you’ll cement in a lot of bad habits and mistakes.
To get really good at something, practice hard and smart. Pros do that. Most recreational players don’t. That’s the difference.
I’m as willing as the next person to subscribe fully to the Hit A Million Balls (HAMB) method.
However, there is one small point that bolsters the OPs contention: equipment.
I’m not saying low-deflection shafts are a magic bullet, but I would go so far as to say that getting used to the characteristics of the tip one uses has a large an effect on side-english. Leather: is it soft or hard or medium? Is it shaped like a dime or a nickle in terms of curvature? Is it a phenolic tip such as used on some “break cues”? Does it hold chalk?
As well as people who’ve spent years compensating for squirt on “vintage” pool cues that they know very well how to predict.
No, it’s not the whole picture, but it does support the OP’s contention that there are some differences in the way a rank novice vs a player extremely used to the peculiarities of his or her own favored equipment will tend to shoot.
In addition, where is the weight tending to in terms of the balance of the cue? That will affect one’s stance, and overall weight of the cue can affect action on the cueball depending on the condition of the felt. Not that it’s magic or will turn a mook into a Mizz, but it’s there.
Very small point, but it can’t be ignored completely, IMHO.
I believe Dr. Dave at his Colorado State web page details some of this information in a pretty detailed way. Notwithstanding tales of a young Efren Reyes shooting the lights out with a ten-dollar cue carried around without a case for years, which feat I’m sure a gifted/experienced player can duplicate about 100% of the time.
When it comes to equipment, I always think in terms of margin of error. In this case, literally the size of the circle that covers where my shots end up Vs where I wanted them to end up.
How much of the radius of that circle is attributable to equipment generated error, and how much to my incompetence? Tempting as it is to convince myself that investment in the next level of kit will shrink that circle, I try to remember that it’s almost certainly not worth splurging on shiny new high tech wonderstuff until equipment error is like, 90% of MOE.
Agree completely. With a quibble-ish footnote for the differences in tip compliance, tip shape and regularity, cue quality, chalk quality, and chalking technique between a pro with their personal equipment vs. Joe Barroom with the random stick he picked off the rack 5 minutes ago.
The old saying “Practice makes Perfect”? Complete bullshit. The correct form is something more like:
Perfect practice makes perfect. Imperfect practice makes bad habits.
Words to live by if you hope to win at whatever level you play whatever sport(s) or game(s) you do.
Agree completely.
I used to be regionally competitive in real sanctioned 14.1 pool competitions, not barroom stuff, but that was decades ago. My equipment is the same as it ever was; newer and better in fact. My proficiency is in the shitter. My current margin of error is horrific compared to old me. It ain’t the stick, Bubb; it’s the operator.
But my MOE tunes up quickly when I bear down for a few racks-worth of practice set-ups. Unfortunately, my arms and attention fatigue a lot more quickly than when I was in competitive shape, so real quickly that peak wears back off. My second hour of play is atrocious compared to the first. Both of which suck compared to when I was good.
Our OP steadfastly refuses to believe there’s not some other magic taking place in those couple of milliseconds besides accurate aiming and simple mechanical reliability and repeatability to very, very fine tolerances. I’m not sure either anecdote or data will convince him. But we can keep trying.
Why do you say I refuse to believe I’m simply trying to theorize any possible differences in the way a q may hit the cue ball and yes there are differences at least possible differences I’m a pool player myself and I handle the cue ball pretty well but I don’t handle it near as well as the pros. The contact point on the cue ball can possibly be a different size depending on the cleanness of the hit I think that would be basic physics now what effect that has I don’t know but I suspect it’s the difference between pros and amateurs
Well, that has a very easy, literal answer: is it a 13mm tip or something comparatively tiny, and what is the curvature of the tip?
That’s an easy question to answer right off the bat. And it can be proved pretty easily by just looking at chalk marks on the cue ball (depending on what kind of chalk/etc), or at least some kind of high-speed photography. Lasers or something!
Of course the contact on the cue ball has a huge effect on where and more importantly how the cue ball goes (not even talking about CB deflection/squirt/etc.)
We can be talking about millimeters of difference. Sure, of course there will be different points on the CB one can contact, and the size of the contact point will of course differ depending on equipment, probably acceleration of the cue as well.
For me it was 8 ball and 9 ball. Went to the Vegas VNEA 8-ball championships once, played in the Alberta Open 9-ball tournament once, and lots of local tournaments. I usually lost, but had fun. The competition in Edmonton was brutal back then, with several Canadian champions in the local area.
My favorite game is straight pool, but I still struggle at it. Running more than two racks or so is still a rare event for me. The 15th ball and position for a good break is usually what kills me.
Or as Bob Byrne said: You can give an amateur the best cue stick in the world, and give a pro an old broom with a good tip on the end of the handle and the pro will crush the amateur then sweep out the joint after.
I have a $1,000 cue my wife gave me for a birthday once. It’s a beautiful thing, with 8 points, cocobolo wood and ebony points, custom made by a well known cue maker. I also had a Dufferin ‘Sneaky Pete’ that cost about $70. The Dufferin cue plays at least as well. Expensive cues are ornamental, and don’t bring more functionality to the game. The tip is everything.
There are a lot of misconspceptions about pool cues. Everyone focuses on cue weight and balance, and those are almost irrelevant. There are people who break hard with 20oz cues, and people who break hard with 17oz cues. Where the cue is balanced has pretty much no effect.
What matters in a cue is stuff like how whippy the shaft is, the diameter of rhe shaft and tip, whether the cue has a ‘pro’ taper on the shaft or one more suited to games that use open bridges like snooker. For 8 ball and 9-ball, most players use 12-13mm cues with pro tapers.
But all this is on the margin. The most important part of the cue is the tip. It should be quite hard so the center of the impact point doesn’t change with speed, but not so hard that it doesn’t hold chalk. I use Le Pro tips, and use a tip tapper to rough up the surface to hold chalk.
I really think the difference between people who can get good cueball action and those who can’t comes down to tip maintenance and a good stroke. Nothing else required. But if you use house equipment with mushroomed or flat tips and don’t chalk properly before every shot, at best you will be very inconsistent in your ability to move the cueball where you want it to go. Add in bad technique and trying to do things like use wrist action or ‘dive’ the cue at the cueball, and it’s no wonder so many amateurs struggle with English, draw and follow.
Acceleration does seem to be a factor that plays in. So I would ask myself how does acceleration express itself in the footprint’ ( Chalk mark). Very minute differences seem to have dramatic effects. I know golf has been studied pretty hard and I am starting to wonder if that wouldn’t be a good place to look even though there are distinct differences.
Sigh. Acceleration has nothing to do with it, other than to change the speed at which the cue hits the ball.
Just what are you looking for? The physics of pool are simple and well understood. There are no mysteries. It’s been explained by multiple people in this thread, all of whom have more pool experience than you do. Hit the cueball in the same place at the same speed, and you will get the same result. Follow-through is important, but not because it adds anything to the cueball. Follow through is important so that you don’t change the dynamics of your stroke just before hitting the ball. That’s it.
Most amateurs probably don’t know how far off center thay can actually hit without miscuing, because they play with lousy, poorly maintained equipment. A hard draw shot will have a 13mm cue tip almost scraping the cloth at impact.
You are talking about how to hit the ball, I am asking what a good shot looks like during that .001 of a second. Thats all my question is about. I want to know how the footprint of a good shot compares to the footprint of a less than good shot. Forget about anything that happens prior to contact. I have considerable experience at playing pool and actually hit the ball pretty well, much better than any novice. My question may have no practical value beyond curiosity.
i guess i could rephrase the question. Under a microscopic analysis how would the chalk marks on a cue ball differ between a pro and a novice shooting either draw or follow shots. This might better express my question.
I can see from the counter that exactly one person went to your video (probably me). But it makes it incredibly obvious what’s going on. Here’s the video inline:
With a good hit, it’s a textbook example of an elastic collision. Single point of contact, almost instantaneous. Nothing matters about the stick aside from the mass, velocity, and point of contact. The idea of finessing things by swiping the tip or whatever is absurd. The acceleration is so quick that it basically amounts to an impulse: the stick and ball are going at one velocity before contact, and a different velocity after contact. The human could let go of the stick completely just before contact and it would make no difference.
The one exception is with a bad hit, where wild things might happen after the initial hit, like multiple bounces or the tip dragging on the surface. Those might happen over an extended time. But you’d never intentionally do this and it would be impossible to control in practice. Well, maybe some trick shot people practice certain special cases, but it’s not going to be used in general.
The only difference: After a number of hits, the pro’s CEP (circular error probability) will be much smaller than the amateur’s, and will be centered on the proper contact area for the cueball action they want. An amateur’s will be much more spread out, leading to less consistent shotmaking.
There will be no difference in the shape of the impact point, which will be determined by how hard the tip is, how it is shaped, and how hard the shot is. If both players use the same cue, you won’t be able to tell an amateur impact point from a pro one, because there is no difference.
If you are looking for a telltale ‘signature’ of a pro shot, you won’t find it. Because pros don’t shoot any differently. They’re just better at hitting the cueball in the correct spot.