A Few Cue Tips

• If you can afford it, have two cues exactly alike. It may mean winning your tournament heat instead of losing it.
• As in most other pursuits, as much good is accomplished by the things that are let alone as by those that are accomplished.
• For instance, when both object balls are in perfect losing hazard position, why break them up for a cannon with its uncertain results.
• In brushing the table, use the brush much more lightly under the top and bottom cushions than under the side ones, as the brushing is now across the nap and heavy treatment soon leaves marks.
• When an almost straight run-through has to be made it is a good plan to get the cue dead straight and then deflect it ever so slightly. There is no definite point of aim for this stroke, unless a 1/32 off the centre can be called definite.
• It is a moot point whether, in very fine in-offs into a somewhat blind pocket, the use of side does not tend to sacrifice more in accuracy of aim than it gains in pocket enlargement. Try both ways for twenty consecutive strokes and abide by the result.
• It is good billiards never to choose the easy cannon when an in-off or pot will set up another equally favourable position.
• Only the best players know where the balls will be after a cannon, but the poorest are soon able to estimate where they will be approximately after the use of a pocket.
• Avoid changing from ivories to composition and vice-versa unless absolutely necessary, but, if taking part in a tournament, keep rigidly for some weeks beforehand to the class of ball that will be there used. Nothing renders a player more unfit for a serious encounter than the miscarriage of shots that would have been properly made with the more familiar medium.
• Equal foes to successful play are too strong and too gentle play. Hard play is the foe to position, and play that is only gentle without being at the same time firm and discriminating means covers, balls touching, and all sorts of annoyances.
• What is the use, for example, of a gentle wide cannon with side that merely leaves cue and object ball almost touching?
• In making all-round cannons a great secret lies in rather fine contact. Not only is the annoying kiss of cue ball and first object ball avoided, but much less force is required and the side acts a great deal more freely on the cushions.
• In practising straight draw-backs, begin with the balls near together and with the cue tip only a little below the centre. As the distance between the balls increases the cue contact must be lowered, but the great thing in finished billiards is to ascertain with how little screw, side, top, or force a stroke can be accomplished, rather than with how much.
• In making a half-ball right-angled screw when the cue ball is within a foot of the object ball, difference in force makes no difference in the throw-off of the cue ball, but with fuller or finer than half-ball contact less and more strength must be respectively used to obtain the same amount of deflection.