Practice a predictable stroke, or see how predictable your current stroke is, by using this simple exercise:

Take a striped ball and place it inside the jaws of a corner pocket, with the stripe going straight up and down. Strike the ball dead in the center and shoot medium soft, aiming in a straight line through the diamond in the middle of the opposite end rail.


In a perfect world, the ball will bank straight into the other corner pocket on your side of the table, but there are quite a few things that can keep this from happening. The most common culprit is striking the cue ball off center — any off-center spin will change the angle the ball comes off of the rail. Hitting the ball too hard or too soft will also keep the ball from rebounding at a true, reflective angle.

Furthermore, even if your stroke is perfect, the table you are playing on may not be perfectly level. There may be small chunks dug out of the slate of the table that change the path of the ball. Maybe the rails are so new, old, cold, or humid that they react oddly. These are all things that a player cannot control, only adapt to.

With practice, on a well groomed playing surface, you should be able to reproduce very nearly the same result with this shot time and time again. Observe the results of repetitive attempts to pocket the ball — this will tell you precisely how reliable your stroke currently is. Using a striped ball makes it easier to see when you have put sidespin on the ball – and also shows how hitting the rail affects the spin of the ball.

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