A Few Cue Tips
- When sending your ivory red ball to be re-dyed it is as
well to send the set to be adjusted, if necessary, to the
same size.
- In making a double baulk don't be content with merely
getting the balls behind the line. It is just as easy to treat
the contact with the red as a cushion pot in pyramids and
direct it to a given (and safe or scorable) point.
- Don't be afraid to look fixedly at the object ball in striking
from fear that you will lose your original aim. Your
cue, it you keep it gentry going once or twice, will adjust
itself to the line of aim if the bridge has been made right.
- If your opponent, being ahead of you and feeling comfortable,
employs his time while you are playing in talking
to someone, take no notice of him and continue scoring.
He will stop talking if you put another aspect on the game.
- Very slow (but not timid) near screws cannot be too
much practised; for these the cue ball must be struck as
low as necessary and the contact must be rather less full.
The minimum disturbance then takes place and better control
can be exercised over the ball or balls.
- To show how little strength is needed to send an object
ball a yard, put the red on the billiard spot and the cue
ball a foot behind itin the line of the corner pocket.
Now play to leave the cue ball only three inches beyond the
spot with a central stroke, holding the cue very lightly, and
pocket the red.
- When you have nothing better to do take an object lesson
in free ball rotation by raising the butts of two cues and
allowing a ball to run down and between them and on to
the table. The tips should be just so far apart as to permit
the ball to take the cloth smoothly. Note the beautifully
free way in which such a ball strikes and propels another.
- If you do not feel comfortable and unconstrained when
addressing the ball be sure that something is wrong. Perhaps
your cue hand is tucked in or pushed out, or you are
holding the cue too short or too long, or you are twisting
your body away from the cue instead of leaning over it.
At any rate you must feel perfectly easy if you are to strike
successfully.
- All-round cannons, disturbing or scoring from double
baulk, are not the difficult shots that they often appear to
be. Aim taken at a given point of a given cushion on the
same table and played in the same way always brings the
cue ball to the same spot in baulk, and from a few such
known points all the other positions in baulk can be provided
for.
- Invaluable potting practice at short range may be obtained
as follows:Mark two dots on the cloth twelve inches and
twenty-four above the middle spot in baulk and four other
dots three inches apart to the left or right of the farther
dot at right angles. Now place the red ball on the nearer
spot, the cue ball on the baulk spot and pot with such
contact as will direct the red ball over the four extra dots
or midway between them. Then, in actual play, take your
first glance to the pocket at a point twelve inches beyond
the object ball and play for the same contact that the practice
has shown you to be the right one.