Snooker How To Improve For New Season 2023

If you imagine you can see through the cue ball to a target on the object ball then it makes it easier to see where you're aiming and what's going to happen when you play the shot. Rather than thinking about looking down at the shot if you concentrate instead at looking along the shot and push your cue through to the target on the object ball like the cue ball isn't there you're going to pot a lot more consistently and that's going to improve your game for the start of the new season which is exactly what this video is all about. The second thing you want to be doing even on the most straightforward shots is focus entirely on where you're aiming because it's easy to lose just a little bit of concentration and miss one of these shots. One of the problems is once you get into a rhythm with your potting you start playing shots subconsciously. For example I'm not really thinking about the angle with this black because I'm just assuming I'm going to pot it like I have the previous few shots. To avoid this from happening you want to make sure on every shot you're focusing on where you're lining the shot up to. The second way you can make this mistake is if you're worried about getting distracted either by the situation of the game or by your own technique going wrong. You can't afford to get distracted by these things because you need all your concentration on the shot and where you're lining up to and if you're not focused on your target then you're never going to pot the ball. Nextly if you're missing more shots than you'd like to this has probably got little to do with your technique and more to do with the fact that you're not quite selecting the right angle. Sometimes the same shot looks completely different on different parts of the table. For example these two shots are exactly the same but they look different so I might play one of them at a different angle and that might cause me to miss. It's vital when you get the angle wrong that you don't suddenly think to yourself oh that was because my arm was too far over here a bit and if I tuck my elbow in this way or this way that'll fix it because you're probably going to mess your entire technique up. Which takes us nicely onto the subject of technique specifically as we're really close to the start of the season you don't want to be changing too much with your technique but I do have three things that will help you out quite a bit along a similar theme. The first of is when you're on the shot you want to make sure you're taking enough time to get settled and that you're not rushing anything. It's incredibly common especially when you're just getting back into competition to just rush things a little bit so just make sure you're giving yourself enough time to line everything up properly. You also don't want to be delivering the cue too quickly. Now this may sound like the same thing but I promise you it's not because I can be down on the shot for ages making sure I've got the right line and suddenly deliver the cue before I'm really ready. What this is about is pulling the cue back before you deliver it and making sure you're not doing this too quickly. One of the biggest technical reasons for missing a shot is to start pushing the cue through before you finish pushing it back. We call this a fast delivery and it's a very common way of missing a shot but you can easily avoid this by making sure there's a significant pause at the end of your backswing or by making sure you time the shot correctly so the cue comes all the way back to where you want it to go before you start pushing it through. Something else you'll see players doing a lot is jumping up off the shot. Now it may seem obvious that this is a bad thing but most of the time players aren't really aware they're doing it. As I've explained before the best way to avoid moving is to just make sure your bridge arm, in particular your elbow, is clamped to the table because if this stays completely still it's actually pretty difficult to move significantly so keep this still and you'll probably stay down on the shot. These three things may seem incredibly simple but it's amazing how often you see a player getting at least one of them wrong and as I explained earlier you really don't want to be thinking about the rest of your technique because you need all your concentration on the shot and how you're playing it. On to practice and to start off with you want something that tests and builds confidence in your cue action and something like this will do just that. What you're aiming to do is stun the ball in across the table and then you then put another red where the object ball is so you can then walk around the table and play the shot back the other way and then you can just see how many times you can repeat and do this. It may be simplistic but that's the point of it because playing repetitive shots across the table will help you build confidence with your cue action but if like me you find this a little bit too easy you can always play diagonally between the middle pocket and corner pocket so after I pop that shot I then replace the shot here and then play this again and this just makes it a little bit more challenging. Because the balls are a little bit further apart and you haven't quite got as much pocket to go at but if you're still finding this a little bit too easy then you can always go from corner pocket to corner pocket to make the pot even harder and then do the same thing again take another red replace it and then keep playing from corner to corner trying to pop the ball each time but you want to select the one where it's possible you'll miss the pop but you're unlikely to and that's why I play the shot across the middle and the corner like this. You also want to try a basic lineup because this allows you to play a lot of shots at a lot of different angles without ever having to take the balls out of the pockets and it's fairly self-explanatory so I don't think I need to explain it much further. What you don't want to be doing is practicing with the balls in such an elaborate position it takes forever to set up but what can help is the repetitive shots that these sort of situations create. So you want to do something a little bit more simple like this where you place a red somewhere near a color on its spot and then you just simply play from the red to the color on the spot and then replace the red and try to play back again. It doesn't really matter too much where you put the red as long as it keeps going in the same place each time and you just get used to playing one shot after another because it's repetitive shots like this that will really help improve your game. Before we look at the most important thing we've just got to find Mountain Wolf from Dehradun India which is there but what by far will make the biggest difference is the way you approach the game. For example you won't be in position every time you come to the table far from it in fact you're likely only to have a really good chance once per frame which means most of the time you'll just be looking to try to steal a few points or possibly having to run away safe. The big moments happen when you're let into or get into good position and as I explained this doesn't happen very often but when it does happen there's a chance that you'll score more points here than you will for the rest of the entire frame. So it's vital when these chances come round you're focused on making the most of them and here's another couple of ways you can do that. What you want to do to start off with is make the positional shots as simple as possible. Now I can't be a lot of help with this because there's a lot of shots you've got to learn but for example if you see a shot where you can just for a stun shot and finish on the pink then the white doesn't move very far and that's crucial to try and make the white move the least distant possible because then less can go wrong and again that leaves me a fairly straightforward shot where if I just push the cube all through a little bit not moving it too much again I'm on the next red but you want to focus the hardest when you find a key shot like this. As you can probably see here the balls aren't in too good a position but there's a simple shot that'll get us in position on the blue and if I get this perfect get the blue open and leave it on for the middle pocket that's just about gone okay that gives me about three balls in the middle of the table to score more points off that probably means I'm going to get a 20 plus break and that's make a big difference in the frame and just a few shots later I've got another one because if I can pop this red and get in position on the pink in a way I can get onto these two reds down here which isn't going to be too difficult then I'm going to get the chance to score a lot more points after I pop the pink so it's just making sure I finish in good position so I've got an angle off this pink to screw in behind these reds and give myself a good chance yeah just about got away with that because I've recognized those two key shots and played them well enough that's given me a relatively straightforward chance to make a frame winning break when normally it wouldn't have looked like there was too much on hopefully you can apply most of this to your game and good luck with the season and if you want to find out more about spinning the cue ball and playing positional shots have a look at these two videos and remember don't just watch play and make the commitment to becoming a better player by subscribing to the channel and visit the website see you later