Snooker Banned Shots Explained

I think they should ban the shot because it just doesn't look right, you're not even playing it off the main part of the tip. Ban it, ban it, ban it. I'm going to show you some unusual techniques that most players aren't even aware of and some of these work so well people are even calling for them to be banned, like this missed cue shot that Kyron Wilson's demonstrating here. So what's the point of this? To play a legal shot the tip of your cue and nothing else must strike the cue ball once and only once and that's fairly easy when there's a big gap like this between the cue ball and the object ball. However, touchy little roll-up shots like that are a completely different story because if you just feather the cue ball you give away a foul and if you strike the cue ball at the same time as the cue ball striking the object ball you essentially hit it twice and we call this a push shot and it's also a foul. And it's here that the missed cue shot can make things easier. So here's how you play it. To start off with line up at about a 70 to 80 degree angle of the direction you want the cue ball to travel in and you need to strike the cue ball with about a half to a third of your tip. So you're just going to push through to make about two thirds of your tip miss the cue ball and a third hit it and it's a pretty easy shot to play. Because I can push the cue through as far as I want knowing this will never be a push shot. In fact this makes this type of shot so easy people have even called in the past for it to be banned. I think they should ban the shot because it just doesn't look right. This is a shot that I think everybody should learn because it's easy to play, very helpful when it comes up and I don't think it can ever be banned because you can't ban somebody from miscuing otherwise you'd say well is that a miscue or was that all right and there'd be that grey area in between. The only thing you could do is say you had to hit a rail like you do in pool but that's not going to happen so this is one you definitely need to know. As far as I know the next one's fairly new and it's where you use the spider as leverage to help you bridge over other balls as being expertly demonstrated by Tepcharanu here. Now there's a few different ways to do this. To start off with you can put your hand on the end of the spider and that actually gets you a lot more height. I can bridge down on this quite easily and I should be able to pot it. Yep that worked. But alternatively you can also position the spider in this kind of sideways position and put your hand on the edge of it like that and that actually gives you a lot more height like this and that's pretty good as well. I just didn't get in the right place to start off with but yeah again that's fairly easy and fairly helpful. But once again it's something people think should be banned. I mean it's... it's legal. Wait a minute is that Neil Folds again? It's legal but my view is it shouldn't be. We'll have to keep an eye on that in case it's something he makes a habit of. Either way I think this is one you should definitely know because it's very easy to learn how to do and play although this time I think it's only slightly helpful because it rarely if ever comes up. Although I don't think it will ever be banned because again I can't see how you'd do it. On to the break off and a few years ago Mark Williams was fed up of doing the best break off he possibly could only to see his opponent knocking a long red off the bolt cushion clear up and win the frame. So he came up with a solution which was very simply rolling the cue ball into the back of the reds to prevent his opponent having any look at a potting angle and it's hard to imagine this shot ever being controversial. I think they'll ban it that's what I think. It's Neil Folds again isn't it? Why is it always Neil Folds? So here's how you play it. To start off with put the cue ball as close to the yellow as you possibly can. You can do the same thing on the other side and put it near the green but as Mark did it this way we're going to do this and use left hand side and we want to aim as close to the reds as we possibly can and get the pace right so when it comes off the cushion it's going to just jump to the left and drop into the back of the pack leaving no way back to bolt. It doesn't help you out too much and give you an advantage. It was only doing so for Mark Williams at the start because players were making tactical errors but when they learned what to do it wasn't helping anybody one way or the other. I can't see this ever being banned because... I'm going to ban a perfectly legal shot. Getting in position from here looks like it's going to be a challenging shot but that's because most people aren't aware you're allowed to do that and jump over the top of the reds. What you're not allowed to do is jump over the top of a ball before you've struck another one. That would definitely be a foul. You're not actually allowed to jump over the same ball as the one you're hitting either but once you've struck one ball it's perfectly acceptable to jump over another one or multiple in this example. To play this shot you need to strike down at the cue ball at about a 45 degree angle and hit halfway between the middle of the cue ball and the bottom. If you hit about here and then commit to the shot and play it firm it'll pop over the top of the balls easily. You're definitely allowed to play this shot and it's moderately difficult to play so long as you've got the right angle. The big question is why would you want to play a shot like this and that's why it's only slightly helpful because if I was in this position I'd be much better off screwing through the reds or screwing them open and leaving myself in a position where I've got a shot on the black and the reds open. Rarely will this come up where you'll actually want to play it. This is yet another way of playing a delicate roll-up shot where we can nominate the blue lie the cue flat on the table and if you move the tip of your cue underneath the ball all you've got to effectively do is lift the cue up in the air and the white automatically just rolls into the blue. It's a really easy way of playing a shot like this although it only works in certain situations because the cushion's in the way here I can't use it to help me roll in behind the black. It's a perfectly legal shot and it's moderately difficult to play because you do have to pick the cue up well and lift it with some force and it takes a little bit of getting used to and I'd say it's only moderately helpful because it's probably less useful than the miscue shot we looked at earlier. This next one's both incredibly simple to explain and very helpful oh hang on and it's playing with your opposite hand. Now you may not think this was ever controversial but it was once a topic of some heated debate for about five minutes after a very angry Alan Robidoux versus Ronnie O'Sullivan match. It's not controversial anymore as players are so proficient playing shots with their other hand that you don't even notice anymore and I think this is the most helpful thing we've looked at in this entire video. Sadly I can't give you any advice to help doing it because I think this is actually quite a difficult thing to learn and you just requires practice there's nothing else you can do. Whereas this next shot isn't really helpful at all as I could just get the spider here and this is just a lot harder than using we're going all over the place potted it not really on the black am I so that's definitely a lot harder and obviously there's no point doing this unless you can't be bothered to go and get the spider but the way you do it is position your hand about a foot from the end of the rest and push down on the end of it with your elbow this lifts it up in the air and if you just get your hand in the right place and keep weight on it it keeps the rest in the air and you can just play the shot like that as I said there's no real benefit to this it's definitely not illegal but it's also very difficult to do and pretty pointless as you could just get the spider you see that wouldn't have missed that with a spider before the next technique we've just got to find Alex who's in Kharkiv Ukraine which is there the final shot is jumping the object ball that looked good didn't it for this to work you need a ball to jump over the cue ball and the object ball being about the right distance from that ball and each other and enough landing area on the other side of the ball you're going to jump otherwise the white will end up just flying off the table it helps if you can put your hand on the cushion because this provides a solid base to strike down at the white with and you want to be striking about halfway between the center of the white and the bottom of the white definitely don't go too low because you risk damaging the table and you just want to make sure you're putting some backspin on it so your white doesn't jump off the table too easily and then you just want to make sure you also hit it firm otherwise you won't get it to jump at all there we go and it worked out however I've never ever seen this shot come up in an actual game so I don't think I've ever used it so although you're allowed to play it it's a very difficult shot to get right and not very helpful because it almost never comes up you need almost this perfect situation otherwise it just simply won't work but now you know exactly what to do if it ever does that is of course unless Neil Foulds finds out about it and tries to ban it if you want to actually find out more about playing snooker and how to improve your game 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