A Few Cue Tips

• Care should be taken, when carrying a cue around, that the point be carried over the table.
• To use a cue efficiently it is necessary that the player stand firmly on his feet. This is by no means always done.
• Beginners should always avoid playing with the cue behind the back, as it will take years to learn to strike with accuracy.
• Unless quite sure of the stroke, avoid very gentle play, which, following failure, would be sure to set up a game for your opponent.
• Play briskly and confidently, but never hurry your stroke.
• There is no stroke in billiards, however simple, that cannot be better played by taking care.
• Very fine strokes at any distance are treacherous. If you could not quite easily run a coup past the object ball, even a feather contact would be too risky.
• Aptitude and confidence in playing with the left hand are soon acquired by practising against one's self and playing left-handed with one white ball and right-handed with the other.
• It is rarely that, in a very full follow through with side, the cue is held perfectly parallel with the intended run of the ball. These strokes should, consequently, be carefully practised without side.
• If, when shaping for a comparatively simple stroke, you feel some doubt as to the result, do not strike. Straighten yourself up and chalk your cue, and then try again. This time you will succeed.
• Avoid trying to accomplish too much in one stroke. If a second score of some kind is foreseen, make the immediate stroke as simply as possible, and leave the ideal position to shape itself up a little later.
• In practising the safety play that is necessary after one miss, decide how you would not like the balls to be left for yourself, and endeavour, by gentle contact with one of the object balls, to leave them there.
• Everything that happens to the balls in billiard playing is according to the fixed and immutable laws of rotation, concussion, etc. To ascertain and follow these laws is to take the line of least resistance and the one that leads to success.
• Cushion cannon play is not so difficult as it looks. The worst danger is a cover, but close approximation of the balls greatly aids both precision and strength. The stroke, or tap, should be extremely gentle, yet crisp, and the object balls kept in front of the cue ball.
• Before playing any half-ball stroke, always glance through the object ball from a point half-an-inch inside the edge at which you are aiming. This will show you the direction that the object ball will take and enable you to guide it to a scoring position or to vary the intended stroke if anything undesirable is looming in the way.