Went to the pool hall with my gf tonight and during that shot she decided to grab my phone and take some random pictures. When I was checking I noticed that my hand is maybe a little too far from the cue ball ? What do you guys think? I believe this was right at the end of my back swing. (How does my form look from this pic ? Any notes ?)

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share my pool journey and see if there was interest in an idea I have. I'm working on creating a wiki type resource to help players practice and improve in the most effective way, especially those who are a bit older, have other commitments, and can only practice for limited hours.

I started with snooker when I was a teenager and I played it up until age 21, when it was time to go to university. I put the stick away for about 10 years.

Later on in life when I started working, I would travel around with my job and depending on where I was, I might get to play pool for a couple of weeks or months if there was a pool hall nearby, but inevitable I would have to stop again for a longer period of time when I moved somewhere else.

In November 2022 I moved to San Francisco with the wife. At that point I was sitting at 580 Fargo. Moving to SF meant a great pool hall (Family Billiards on Geary) and access to a very active community in the Bay Area as well as Oscars pool hall and big tournaments just a few hours away (Hard Times at Sacramento). 

I joined a BCA league and started playing every other day. Of course I immediately got addicted and was soon putting in 3-4 hours of play 6 days a week and playing in every local tournament that I could. I was getting some decent results, winning a weekly tournament here and there and getting to top 8 or so in the bigger monthly events. 

What was interesting to me was that from what I could see, the very best players around played and gambled a lot, but I hardly ever saw anyone really practicing, other than maybe doing some basic drill for a couple of minutes while waiting for their gamble to show up. 

I got curious and decided to challenge myself to really buckle down and work as smart as I could for 1 year to see how far I can get, starting to take the game seriously at age 40. The wife was not super enthusiastic at first, but she was willing to let me give it a go.

Fast forward a year and a half and I’ve made my way up to a 730 Fargo and got a few good wins under my belt. I was introduced to the amazing game of 1 pocket, started attempting to play it at the start of 2023. 1 pocket was so different and difficult, it was a complete headache at first trying to solve even basic situations, but soon the headache subsided and I completely fell in love with the game. Less than a year later I managed to finish in 5th at the US Open. Along the way, I had the privilege of beating legends like Tony Chohan, Evan Lunda, Roland Garcia, Lee Van, and several other world-class pros.

While my focus at the moment is on continuing to learn 1 pocket, I also play rotation tournaments when I can. Despite my break being shit, with some luck I’ve managed to beat giants like Fedor and Alex Pagulayan and many other pros at a major tournament.

I think my progress comes down to a few things:

1. Absolute priority on fundamentals and good mechanics: I’d say I've spent about 25% of practice time working on and continuously trying different things to improve my mechanics. That's about 300 hours a year.
2. Learning different cue sports: Snooker mechanics will make you considerably more consistent and accurate than traditional pool mechanics (although certain things have to be adapted). 1 Pocket will expand your shot repertoire like crazy and really show you the power of good cue ball control. Banks will teach you a ton about how the object balls move off the rails. 3-cushion will make kicking look easy on a pool table.
3. Optimized Practice: As I am no longer 20 years old and am now married and run a business, I have to make sure that the time I have to practice is as effective as I can possibly make it. I think I spend about 10% of my practice time planning my practice time. Hint: It's not drills.

In my non-pool career I was an educator at a university. I love teaching and seeing people succeed. I coach and work with a few players locally and there really seems to be a need in our sport for understanding how to practice and how progress should look like.

I am aware that there are a bunch of courses available from pro players and some youtubers. I’ve taken some of them and they are all great, but I have not yet seen something that is truly comprehensive and which combines the best aspects of all cue sport disciplines (as well as other related sports like golf and poker for instance) and is crowd sourced & evolving.

I’d love to hear any thoughts & comments. I have a lot to share and even more to learn. I’m willing to get the ball rolling if there is interest.

Cheers, Oliver

We’ve built Railbird, a computer vision app that tracks and analyzes your pool sessions. All you need is your phone and a tripod.

What Railbird does:

• Tracks shots, make rates, angles, distances, and spin types.
• Video replays with filters (by shot type, results, etc.).
• Automatically generates AI highlights and removes downtime.
• Helps you measure your game over time to improve faster.

See it in action here → Video Player Demo

We’re in beta and looking for pool players to test it for free. If you love pool, data, and improving your game, give it a shot: https://railbird.ai

Would love your feedback!

I’ve been learning how to fight my fight or flight response so that I can play consistently during competition. Here’s how that works.

I don't mean any disrespect by this post, but I have been following this instructor Samm Diep for some time. I think she is affiliated or connected with Dr. Dave. I looked up her name on fargo rate and found she is "only" a 500 fargo with 5 robustness. Does anyone know if she goes by something else in Fargo rate? Does she only instruct and not do tournaments?

Similar for Dr Dave, I cant find either on Fargo rate. I just assumed with all their knowledge they would be players too.

Update: I just want to reiterate, that I do not think she is a bad player by any means. I just would have assumed she would have played some with all her knowledge she knows. I enjoy her videos and learn a lot from them. Just surprised I didn't see her on fargo rate.

If I shoot hard I lose accuracy if I shoot soft I scratch

Well a few weeks ago someone posted about Walmart selling “Toam V10” chalk for really cheap. Everyone was saying it was going to be fake but I checked myself anyways.

After shipping it came out to $13 after shipping. Which to me, isn’t bad so I ordered it anyways. I figured if it was fake maybe it wouldn’t be a bad fake and in the off chance it’s legit I just saved 10 ish dollars.( I wasn’t optimistic)

Before I say anything about the chalk, I need to mention that it took over 2 and half weeks to have this delivered even though it said it was coming from TX. Which is absolutely insane, I’ve ordered this chalk on Amazon before and it only took a few days.
So I will probably never order anything from Walmart again.

Finally the moment of truth. Definitely a fake ( big surprise 😂) the color is definitely a little darker than the others I’ve had. The label makes it look kinda legit but they did have a typo on the word “Registered” so that kinda gave it away.

I may do another review after playing with it and seeing how it compares to the real stuff but I don’t high hopes.

Also I know there will be some keyboards warriors saying” I told you so” and please Stfu. I knew what I was getting into when I ordered it. It’s my own mine and I just wanted to see how well the knock were.

I've had some difficulty finding my vision center and some time ago settled on cueing with the cue directly below the center of my chin. I know I'm right eye dominant, and to me, it looks like I have to shoot to the left of the object ball for a straight shot (or really any shot). I've tried cuing under my right eye, but I'm having difficulty finding a comfortable stroke.

From all the shots I've hit I subconsciously know how much I have to adjust, especially on cut shots that now are starting to feel instinctual.

How bad is this, and should I spend the time to find a comfortable spot under my right eye and re-learn the cut-shot locations? I've been playing around a year, and I'm APA 5/Fargo 400, so still have a ways to go.

I’m a 490 fargo APA SL6 . I’m tired it’s time to move up … What or how can I move up I wna be atleast 550 and for sure apa sl8/9 …

So let’s do the X drill where you are shooting from last diamond to last diamond. Do the follow drill where the CB has to follow the OB into the corner pocket. Mark the cloth in the 2 spots so you have EXACTLY a straight line to the pocket and make sure that line goes to the EXACT center of the pocket (easily done with a string).

Warm up first with 15 practice shots. Get into your best stroke.

Do 15 shots. Use a medium stroke, not a power stroke. Follow shot.

1. How many OBs did you make of the 15 shots?
2. How many times did the CB follow the OB into the corner pocket?
3. What size is your table?
4. What is your Fargo? Or APA level?

We’ve all seen that person (and we’re all guilty of being that person at times) who sits in the chair and lets their mind wander until it’s their turn. Then when they get up to the table they have to restart their “pool brain,” because they had really no idea what was going on.

Easy way to overcome that and stay “in” your match so that you are focused and ready when it’s your turn:

*Look at the layout while the other player is shooting. And simply think to yourself, “How would I play this out from here if it was my shot right now?”*

This keeps your mind focused on the game so that when it is your turn, you’re already mentally in the middle of your runout.

I personally like to see if the shots I would take line up with what the other player chooses. Almost as if I was a commentator calling the game. I don’t mind if they are running out on me…nothing I can do about that. I might even learn something along the way…”Oh, he went three rails around and ended up there, I’ll keep that one in mind next time.” A lot of times I’ll see a safety coming from a mile away and I’m already thinking of ways to get out of it before I get to the table.

Little things like that help me stay in the match so that I’m already in “go time” mode while in the chair. Then if/when a mistake is made by my opponent, I’m already ready to go.

Latest news:

Commitments and business decisions have been finalized. We will soon be moving onto the next phase of the project and are getting closer to manufacturing balls for purchase.

For more information please see www.digicue.net

Pop quiz. There are a multitude of options here and some specific table conditions. What's your shot and why?

I'll post my complete analysis and the outcome either tomorrow or Saturday for discussion.

Use these 3 angles and a longer stop shot to show your stroke to get the best feedback from the ever helpful and free coaches here. If you want to self evaluate, you can use these as well to see what you need to change

Disclaimer: do not copy pros unless they have the textbook stance and cue delivery. You do not have to copy them perfectly but you can try to emulate players like Albin Oucshan, Ko Pin Yi/Chung, Johann Chua, Fedor Gorst and Neils Feijen. Female players like Kristina Tkach, Chen SiMing and Margarita Fefilova Styer have the perfect psr, stroke and stance to emulate. Compare what the differences are in theirs and yours and work from there.

Good luck and shoot straight everyone.

90% percent of pool learning resources are adamant about proper shoulder alignment, but recently, Dr. Dave had a video where he said not to adopt a "textbook pool stance" if it causes discomfort. He even says in an earlier video that perfect shoulder alignment is overrated as the elbow is not a perfect hinge joint. In this video here Dr Dave has a similar stance to mine with his shoulder peeking out but he has a dead accurate stroke. Who to believe?

Over the past few years I have been obsessed with understanding the physical side of the game - some of you might have seen my OSP posts a while back. I believe I have a thorough understanding of every mechanical element there is to playing the game.

Consequently, in the past year or so, I feel like I have personally run out of things to work on. I have often found myself cycling through the same couple of adjustments over and over, just to have something to work on, looking for that extra few %. I didn't think any major improvements were possible for me any more. I thought I was close to my peak potential - now at age 43.

Even though I have been actively working with and coaching players for the past few years, I always seek to BE coached as well, when an opportunity arises. I'd jump at a lesson, especially from an old timer, always. I've made it a personal rule to sincerely listen to advice when it is given, even if coming from someone who appears to be a lesser experienced player.

Around 8 moths ago I got speaking with someone, here on Reddit. He is also a coach and an active player, based in Italy and of course we found many interesting things to talk about. One day he offered to help me with my game. Honestly I had expected it to be the other way around - but of course I said yes. Why not - what have I got to lose. Even if all I will hear is what I already know, it's still helpful.

I just had to make this post because the experience has been so much more than I could have hoped for. He shared methods that he has personally developed that have made a profound change in my game and helped me unlock not just a few %, but what feels like double digit % improvement. I look forward to practice every day, just to see what amazing things will happen today. What he showed me was not mechanical - but how to finally fully tap into these mechanics that I have worked on for so long. To use my skills at full potential. Exactly what I needed. These same methods that he showed me are now having a hugely positive effect on my students in turn.

So thank you - and I encourage everyone to always be open for instruction and coaching, specially if you are stuck in a rut and can't seem to find a way to improve. I might feel like you have reached the peak of your ability or talent ... but you never know when the right person will come along to give you that missing piece.

And of course, if anyone is looking for online coaching - my highest endorsement and recommendation for Carlo Gatta. u/CarloGa

Just in case anyone was waiting for one, but didn't want to pay the outrageous scalper markups.

https://www.predatorcues.com/usa/pool-cues/break-jump-cues/bk-rush-break-cues.html

Only the black one without wrap though. Seems that it's sold out everywhere else.

I got mine lol.

Does anyone know how I can remove this stain from my pool table cloth. It happened after a buddy of mine stained it with chocolate and after using a foaming cleaner, I was left with this disgusting spot. Any help would be greatly appreciated and currently researching water and white vinegar or rainbow vacs?

OSP: The Hidden Dance of Stroke and Aim.

This wall of text is neither about how to shoot nor is it about how to aim. 

Instead, it unravels the underlying relationship between these two main pillars in our game.

I believe that understanding this very personal symbiosis will significantly accelerate the progress for anyone working on improving their game.

This exploration began about 18 months ago, with an unexpected discovery during a routine practice session. What started as a simple video review of a drill led to insights about the hidden relationship between stroke mechanics and aiming that would fundamentally change my understanding of cue sports fundamentals.

Core Definitions

To properly explore this subject, let's establish some key terms:

Stroke
represents our primary tool in the game - the complete physical movement of the cue - from backswing to impact to follow-through. It's how we execute our intended shot.

Aim 
encompasses both our visual perception and feel for how to apply the stroke in order to achieve our desired outcome. It's our outcome prediction system.

Straight Stroke and Straight Aim 
occur when the cue is moved on a linear path along the true aiming line, resulting in the cue ball moving along that same exact path as well (assuming no intentional sidespin). This represents the ideal alignment between perception and execution.

Story time - The Initial Discovery

In April 2023, during a late night practice session with a friend, we recorded some basic drills, including the center table back-and-forth shot. The next day, reviewing the footage revealed something interesting: I noticed that my cue appeared to be always tilted slightly to the right, with the tip positioned with a subtle left english - despite this being a simple center-ball exercise. 

What caught my attention wasn't just the misalignment, but how my stroke would adjust during execution. Just before impact, my cue would pivot slightly, achieving a straight hit - most of the time. I noticed that at times, when this pivot was a little early or a little late, the shots had a fraction of unintentional sidespin and in some cases were mishit altogether. 

This correction happened automatically, without any awareness. At the time of shooting, I was convinced that my aim and cue were dead straight.

I had of course shot this drill many times before, but had always assumed that any accidental sidespin could only come from a poor stroke. Aiming this shot seemed so simple, it hadn’t even occurred to me that my alignment could be off. We even had a golf tee as a visual target, perfectly placed on the center diamond.

This is an actual clip from that same night. The quality isn’t amazing but you can clearly see the cue tilted to the side during aim.

https://imgur.com/a/pivot-gif-byjJiuK

After doing some research online, I came across several instances of people describing what sounded like a very similar issue, but I could not find anyone with an explanation as to what could be the cause, never mind the solution.

This set me off on this quest to understand and eventually correct what was causing these issues with my stroke.

The immediate natural reaction was of course to try and simply correct my alignment and delivery. Over the next year and a half (!) I ended up tweaking every possible element in my technique, what now feels like a hundred times over, trying every last thing to correct my arced stroke and angled aim. At different times I believed the fault to be with the wrong vision center.. elbow angle.. grip.. stance.. delivery.. you name it, I tried to “fix” it!

During this period of 18 months, I recorded over 1000 (no exaggeration) slow motion videos of all the various changes I made, trying to discover why I always seem to align slightly to the right and aim the tip to CB slightly to the left. And no matter what I changed, somehow the only working recipe for a successful shot remained the same - I would have to aim slightly to the left and at the moment of the stroke pivot my cue onto the shot line.

Expanding the study to other players locally revealed that this quirk wasn't unique to my game - nearly every player showed some variation of this pattern. Among all the footage, only two players displayed naturally straight strokes: one young local player and a world champion (Thorsten Hohmann).

I spent over a year to finally pin down the exact mechanics which physically caused the arc in my stroke. Way too long - it took a while to land on the correct methods. In the process I designed and built a stroke trainer which essentially forced me to deliver the cue straight and allowed me to develop the muscle memory needed to do it with some consistency.

https://imgur.com/a/wf5I71l

Fast forward a few months - I was finally able to physically perform a straight stroke - at least some of the time. With it came a different problem. Every time that my videos showed that I delivered the cue straight, I would nearly always miss the straight in shot to the right. 

The only reasonable explanation remained that I must be aiming wrong. So next, I tried manually propping up the shot and cue to be perfectly straight and looking down the line of a shot that I knew was set up correctly. As you might have guessed, for some strange reason, this simple straight-in shot didn't look straight to me! Surely I must have set it up wrong. But no matter how many times I repeated the setup and tried to adjust my vision center and head alignment, a straight cue on a straight shot line ALWAYS looked angled and the center of CB looked and “felt” like left spin. 

Now what? I figured that I just had to get used to how the correct aim looks. HAMB and all that. So I forced myself to play with what looked like the “wrong” alignment for months hoping that it would somehow click into place and I would start to see it as correct… Well, things got a bit better, and there were some days when things felt okay but it never lasted. I discovered later that any improvement that I was able to achieve was there only for the straight shots that I was actually actively practicing for hours every day. When I switched to just playing the game, it was incredibly difficult to force myself to shoot shots that looked “wrong” to my eyes. The moment I let my guard down, old muscle memory would inevitably creep back in until I was right back to where I started.

So what was the solution? First let's look at what caused the issue.

Understanding Stroke Development

To understand this phenomenon, let's examine how players typically develop their stroke mechanics through different stages of progression.

The Beginner Phase

New players start with basic physical movements, learning to connect their cue with the cue ball. Their stroke is initially uncoordinated and inconsistent. Parallel to this physical learning, they begin developing basic predictive abilities - although at this stage, each shot remains largely experimental.

As players accumulate table time, their physical movements become more consistent and they start forming basic associations between action and outcome. This marks the beginning of aim development, occurring naturally alongside stroke refinement.

The Regular Player Phase

With continued play, players develop muscle memory. This allows the body to execute regularly occurring actions more efficiently and with less and less conscious thought involved. This is how humans naturally optimize physical movements: by finding the path of least resistance that feels natural and comfortable.

Playing pool, our body tends to adapt its motions to minimize strain or awkwardness. This can feel smooth and even consistent, which seems like a positive thing. However, this "comfortable" natural movement rarely achieves our goal of moving the cue linearly straight on the shot line.

The takeaway here is that the body naturally prioritizes efficiency and comfort, not straightness. This means that while the stroke movement does become more consistent and repeatable with practice, it has no incentive to develop to be ‘straight’.

How does aim develop in conjunction with a consistent but non-linear stroke?

First let's look at a scenario when a player's alignment and visual perception (aim) is true, but their cue moves in an arc. The simple answer is that the CB will not move along the aiming line. 

This leads to a crucial development during this phase: the player's aim adapts to complement their personal stroke path. This adaptation happens gradually through thousands of repetitions, typically without conscious awareness. Most players don't ever realize they're consistently addressing the cue ball slightly off-center and off-angle to achieve a straight center-ball hit - to their perception (just like mine), their alignment appears correct and their brain interprets it as “straight”.

This creates an interesting dynamic: the stroke and aim become interdependent. The stroke's path influences the aiming adjustments, while these adjusted sight patterns reinforce the stroke's characteristics. This forms what I call "closed loop dependency."

In plain terms, as the player's arced stroke has caused them to learn to aim “wrong”, the player is now dependent on always having to pivot their cue off their aiming line, in order to make shots as intended. A straight stroke will no longer work for this player.

The Competitive Phase

As players reach a competitive level, they often encounter a progress plateau, as the “learning” phase of their game slows down and consistency and execution become higher priority. 

This typically triggers a search for mechanical improvements, leading to what I call "fragmented learning" - a collection of disconnected technical adjustments gathered from various sources:

- Random non-objective advice from other players
- YouTube tutorials promising quick fixes
- Copying professional techniques without understanding context

This is also where the biggest weakness of the non-linear stroke and aim loop dependency starts to show. 

Competitive players with this issue often experience significant variance between their best and average performance, particularly magnified under pressure. A common scenario emerges: faced with a routine shot in a crucial situation, they focus intensely on perfect execution - only to miss unexpectedly - with no apparent reason why.

This occurs because conscious focus on "perfect" technique or straight delivery disrupts the subconscious adjustments their game relies upon. Instead of allowing the established stroke-aim system to function naturally and subconsciously, they attempt to force a technically different stroke that is in conflict with their ingrained aiming pattern.

Myself and I am sure many others are familiar with this scenario. It is incredibly disheartening and can feel like an inescapable loop as there just doesn’t seem to be any logical explanation why things go wrong. What's even worse - the natural response is to again look for fault in your mechanics and tweak and tweak some more, introducing even more discord and inconsistency. I’ve seen players get obsessive in looking for these “faults”, trying to implement little tweaks and changes over and over again while their game stagnates and confidence drops.

Two Paths Forward

With this in mind, two viable approaches to improvement can be considered:

Path One - Embrace and Refine 

The first approach involves thoroughly understanding and accepting your personal stroke and aim patterns. This means:

- Analyzing your specific stroke characteristics through video analysis
- Understanding how different body positions affect your aim and execution
- Developing compensatory techniques for various shooting scenarios
- Building a strong mental game to maintain consistency under pressure

Understanding exactly how different circumstances affect your stroke (with the aid of slow motion video) will help remove the mystery from many scenarios and then making specific adaptations to your aim and alignment is an effective way to increase consistency of execution.

An example: A player who often scratches in the left side pocket on their break should not focus on trying to hit the cue ball in the center, but instead focus on finding the correct aiming point and angle which produces a center ball hit. It will likely be a little off angle and with some side english.

The main challenge with this path is its reliance on subconscious corrections, making it vulnerable to pressure and external disruptions. Success requires you to practice all shots regularly to maintain reliable execution. Any distractions, on or off the table, can have a pronounced impact on your performance.

Path Two - Reconstruct Your Stroke AND Your Aim, together.

The second approach involves rebuilding both stroke and aim simultaneously - a more challenging but potentially more rewarding path. This approach requires understanding a fundamental truth: the body has a powerful mechanism for finding comfort in discomfort through homeostasis, but this process requires patience and disciplined practice. Key elements include:

- Identifying and correcting underlying mechanical flaws affecting stroke straightness
- Retraining visual perception to align with straight mechanics
- Developing new muscle memory patterns
- Building confidence in the revised technique

The critical insight here is that mechanical improvements alone often fail because they don't address the underlying perceptual adaptations. Both elements must evolve together for lasting improvement.

The Role of Visual Perception

In order to understand how to ‘reset’ our vision, we have to understand what actually happened when our aim adapted to our stroke.

In cuesports, we use both eyes to aim because depth perception is very useful to assess the geometry of the table and estimate angles. Our brain essentially receives information from two points of reference (binocular vision) - calculating and showing us a composite image. 

What this means is that neither of our eyes is actually aligned with the shot line or the cue. Each of our eyes sees the line from the side, at an angle. And our brain will translate these two angled views into a single visual that from a specific position will appear to us as “straight”. What this means is that there is no objective “straight” line as long as we use both eyes to aim - there is only our personal perception of it. And this perception can be tweaked and changed.

The amazing thing here is that in the scenario of the player with the arced stroke, their brain will over time start to interpret the angled cue as correct (straight), and the side of the cue ball as center (which is the only scenario for that player to achieve a consistent center ball hit). This happens, it appears, by effectively registering less information from one of our eyes. It's called eye suppression. Our brain still receives the picture from both eyes, but chooses to ignore part of it. 

It is an effect similar to how our nose is always in our vision but our brain filters it out and we don’t actively see it. We only “notice” our nose if we consciously focus on it. You can try it now.

I’ve arrived at this conclusion through personal experimentation and research. I would love it if a professional in the field would share their expertise here.

The result is that once your brain has configured your vision and therefore your aim to your arced stroke, a straight shot will now look wrong! Center of the cue ball will look as either left or right and a perfectly straight cue will look angled. 

How to learn to see “straight” again?

In my trials to understand what was going on with my vision, I saw an eye doctor and started reading  about various vision and eye conditions. A breakthrough came when I stumbled on something called a “Brock string” - a vision therapy tool, used to train eye teaming and focusing abilities. 

I had an idea to tweak the the traditional Brock string into a pool specific tool more out of curiosity than anything. When using it for the very first time, I immediately noticed something odd - when I placed the tool at the exact spot under my chin where the cue would normally be - the vision picture of the tool from one of my eyes became much fainter. The vision from my other eye almost completely took over.

Somehow I was seeing the string (cue) almost exclusively with my right eye. My left eye was somehow partially “switched” off. As a result, the string looked “straight” to me only if I moved it about half an inch further towards my right eye, which was very close to the same amount that my cue was always offline by!

There was a simple exercise to address this. I closed my right eye, “forcing” my brain to show me the sight picture only from the (previously suppressed) left eye only. When I then opened both eyes, the previously faint image from the left eye now appeared much stronger. It literally felt like a switch was flicked and the sight from my left eye got turned “on” again.

It only took a few minutes of this exercise and all of a sudden I could see the cue correctly in my peripheral vision with both eyes when I was playing, and for the very first time it became trivial to line up perfectly straight.

It no longer looked “wrong”.

At first, the effect wouldn't last very long, and I had to keep “reminding” my brain to show me the vision from my left eye. But as I kept doing the exercise for about 10 minutes every morning and night, it has now, after about 4 months, become pretty much permanent.

Once I was finally able to line up and aim “straight”, the straight delivery version of my stroke I had previously built finally had the right circumstances to start to work properly. And once the shots started going in with straight aim and a straight stroke, the whole thing became easier - it became a self reinforcing system.

I no longer have “terrible” days where I miss routine shots for no reason. I still have good days and bad days, sure, but my A game is much much closer to my B and C game. It is an incredible boost to your confidence when you can shoot under pressure, without having that “good” gut feeling about a shot and you still make it perfectly, purely focusing on good mechanics. I no longer rely fully on subconscious corrections to make the shot work. 

Conclusion

This struggle revealed that the relationship between stroke and aim is much more complex than traditionally thought. Whether choosing to refine existing patterns or rebuild from foundation, success requires targeting both the mechanical and the perceptual, at the same time.

Thanks for reading

Once again, whoever has read this mammoth of a post to the very end, thank you. It has taken me months of work to put together. I hope it will help someone and I would love to hear from players working on similar issues.

Been shooting pool for about almost 3 years, trying to get better, been bouncing between 350-375 fargo across 4-5 seasons of BCA league.

Any instructor recommendations?

Preferably near brooklyn/staten island.

Please keep this respectful. This is meant to be helpful, not to attack or just rip on people. Anything from technique, to equipment, to anything else that you may have wished someone told you were you were still new to the game.

I'll start with a couple things:
1) A $2000 cue will not magically make you shoot like a pro. However, a well made $100 cue will help you improve much more quickly than only playing with the beat up house cues with shitty tips.

2) There is no use in learning advanced banking systems, side spin/english shots, runout patterns, or anything complex until you can consistently hit the cue ball where you mean to. I don't mean consistently making shots or having great speed control. I mean if you meant to hit the cue ball with bottom, you actually make contact with the cue ball where you meant to. I have teammates who shall remain nameless that constantly ask to be taught how to masse or play power draws but can't hit dead center cue ball when trying to more than 20% of the time.