High center ball or low center ball?

The next time you head for a billiard parlor for a game, maybe you may want to do some practice first.

If you think by hitting the ball straight is easy, think again, it is not as easy as you think it might be. There are a few ways for you to find out whether you have achieve hitting the ball at the center. The first is to take an object ball and locate any markings on it and treat it as the center of the ball. Place it on the billiards table with the center facing you, now chalk your billiard cue stick and hit it. Hold up the object ball that you have just hit and find the chalk mark, see whether you have hit the center. The second is to get an object ball with a stripe marking all around it. Place the ball with the stripe perpendicular to the billiards table. Now hit the object ball, if you hit it right, the stripe will glide visually in a straight line, if it is out of center it will wobble visually on the billiards table.

This center ball hit is the foundation of all shots, you have to get it right before any other fancy shots, one way to practice this at home is to place a beer bottle sideways on the table and aim your billiard cue at the mouth of the beer bottle. Be careful though, you might hit the rim of the mouth and damage your billiard cue stick.

You will notice that the cue ball slides a bit before it starts rolling when you hit it. This action is important in billiards playing. A new or clean billiards table cloth will allow the cue ball to slide further. And also if you hit the cue ball harder it will slide further. Why is this important? Because the effect or the behaviour on the object ball reacts differently when the cue ball slides or roll before it is in contact with the object ball.

Remember the other article when I say about to be in control of the game, that is why the center ball hit is important. Because if practice right, you can predict pretty much where your ball is going, you are in control. You can predict more correctly with a center ball hit rather than any other shots.

Now let me show you the fundamentals of the position you have to hit the cue ball. Have you ever played computer games where you have a joy pad, and on the joy pad are the markings of the up and down, left and right arows? Now transfer this thinking on the cue ball, imagine the cue ball in front of you have the markings of up and down, left and right markings; that will be your vertical and horizontal axis. Hitting the cue ball in the vertical axis will not drive the ball off the straight line before it hits the object ball. But hitting the all at the horizontal axis will drive the ball off straight and may even produce a miscue.

Let's start off by high center ball or some may call it high ball. If you hit the ball with your billiard cue stick on the vertical axis on the top side, you have made a high ball shot, the effect is that the cue ball will continue to follow the object ball a distance after hitting the object ball, so the high ball is also called follow ball. So how far will the cue ball follow? It all depends on the spin and power of the shot. If you hit the cue ball at a high vertical axis, the higher you hit the more spin it produces, So the more spins, the more distance. And not surprisingly, the more power exerted on the cue ball with your billiard cue stick the further it will follow. One more extra information, the vertical axis is also known as the “safe zone”.

Now about low center ball shot or draw shot. Draw shots are cool, because it hits the object ball and the cue ball comes back to you, how's that for control. But draw shots are not easy to achieved, it needs time to practice, if you hit too low or wrong timing, you can send the cue ball flying up and of the billiards table, embarrassing heh! And hitting the low vertical center is imminent, as a slight off center can send the cue ball coming back in the wrong direction, So perfecting your center ball shots is very important. In order to get it right you need to lower your bridge and achieve the right amount of smoothness to it on the shot. The lower the hit on the cue ball, the more it will spin. In order to know and practice the ball spin, take a striped object ball and set in horizontally on the billiards table, do a draw shot and se it for yourself. The ball slides for a moment and reverses the motion, lower = more spins, harder = further distance.

Another shot yet to mention is called a stop shot. It is shot when you hit the cue ball with you billiard cue stick, the cue ball stops immediately after hitting the object ball. Stop shot are mainly draw shots, achieve with a combination of right power and lowness of the vertical axis.

Now you are ready for a game!

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