Snooker Cue Action Straight Line

Pushing the cue through straight is one of the most challenging parts of any cue sport. Even when you've got everything lined up perfectly, things can still go wrong, and it's always difficult to know why your cue action failed. You can only really see this when you look at a shot in slow motion. Even though they look very similar, I get the delivery of the cue slightly wrong with shot B, causing it to miss. Fortunately, there are very few ways of delivering the cue off straight, which means we can look at all of them and how to fix every serious problem. I'll explain how to fix that problem later, but first we've got to look at some issues that might not really be worth worrying about. So the good news is there's only really three ways your cue action can let you down, and it might not be what you're expecting, because you might expect me to talk about the right place to hold the cue. Because when your cue is touching the cue ball, ideally you want your arm pointing straight down towards the floor, and this gives you maximum room to pull the cue back and then push it through again. But as long as you get this close, you're still going to be able to cue straight, even if your arm's a little too far back or a little too far forward. It also seems obvious that you want your cue arm to be perfectly vertical, so it's not leant over one way or the other. But in fact, if it's only a tiny bit, it doesn't matter too much. This only becomes a problem when your elbow moves sideways as you strike the cue ball. This is either by tucking into your body or coming out a bit wider. Obviously, if your cue arm's moving sideways as you play the shot, it's going to make it very difficult to pop the ball. You just need to make sure you're keeping your cue arm still, and like I said, not worry too much about its position. As long as your arm is able to pivot smoothly backwards and forwards again, then this isn't actually that crucial. And in fact, your grip and wrist action are far more vital to your technique. Because if your elbow's slightly to one side and you're holding the cue in the wrong place, you're still going to be able to push it through perfectly straight. It's your wrist action that really starts to cause problems. Watch what happens to my arm here if I rotate my cue around 90 degrees on this shot. Just by turning the cue a little bit as I push it through, it throws my whole arm out of position, and this results in me cueing across the ball. And notice it's possible for this to happen in two different directions. So you can see what happens here. If I rotate my wrist clockwise, I actually cue across the ball from left to right. And if I rotate my wrist anti-clockwise, I actually cue across the ball from right to left. So one of the best ways to make sure your cue goes through straighter is to prevent your grip from rotating. A good way of doing this is to check the grain of your cue as you pull it back and push it through. You should be able to keep it straight and prevent it from rotating by controlling your fingers. The trick is to get your hand in exactly the same position when you've pulled it right back that it'll be in when you push it right through. When thinking about rotation, because other parts of it'll be different, but your cue should be on exactly the same line. If you can do this, you will find it easier to cue straight. Consistently getting your hand to finish at the same angle actually makes the game a lot easier to play, and it makes the shots you're playing a lot more predictable. Another problem you may encounter, though, comes from side-to-side movement that could easily cause you to miss a shot. However, there's a simple fix for this. When the majority of players go to the table, they'll rest the cue gently against the side of their body, and this makes the game a lot easier to play because it prevents large lateral movements of the cue. But even though my body gets in the way, I can still pull my cue around it in a sort of semicircle. I've overlaid two separate clips here, and you can see one I'm pulling my cue back into the right position, and the other where I've very slightly pulled it around my body. And as you'd expect, this is the one that misses because I cued across the ball. If I pull my cue back around my body, it then means it has to come through at an angle. So I'm automatically going to be cueing across the ball, and it's likely that my cue arm is going to slightly crash into my body on the way through. And this might be another reason why my hand doesn't quite end up in the right place again. This can cause another similar problem where your cue hand doesn't end up where it should be, and actually goes a bit wide of your body. So how do you prevent your hand from coming out of position during the shot, which could cause you to miss in a number of different ways? And the way to solve this is, once again, your grip. Now, this might happen because you're out of position slightly on the shot and having to correct it, but it could also be because of how you're squeezing the cue. You need your forefinger and thumb to have a relatively firm grip. If this grip's too loose, you might see what was happening earlier, where the cue was coming around my body, and if it's slightly too tight, it might actually force your cue wide, as I was just showing you a second ago. The way this works is, gripping it slightly too loose with these two fingers gives these three fingers slightly more influence, and that encourages your cue around your body as you pull it back. But slightly too much pressure from these two fingers can interfere with the way you push the cue through, so when it comes through in a minute, my arm comes out a little bit too wide. The good news is, you actually have a relatively wide margin of error for this, and you'll be able to tell when you're on the shot if you're holding it tight enough to stop it moving around your body as you pull it back, but not too tight that your arm doesn't come around your body. You can even test this. If you hold the cue with your thumb and forefinger slightly too tight for you, you may even see it goes very slightly either to the left or the right of where you're aiming, but if you hold it very slightly too loose in a similar way, it actually goes in the opposite direction. It's only going to be by a fraction, but that might make a difference on a long pot. This is something that definitely needs a lot of practice because it can very easily go wrong if you're under a lot of pressure, and you may find it's very easy to tense up on the shot and grab the cue too tight. We're going to be looking at another problem after we find TE5150 from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in Great Britain, which is there, because the final thing to look at is the angle you deliver your cue at, because this can make a big difference, and if you get it wrong, it can even cause you to miss. You can see on the bottom shot here my hand dropping a little bit too low and not meeting the right place on my body, and in fact not really stopping at all. Because the side of your body isn't straight, finishing higher or lower with your cue hand can make a big difference on what angle the shot's at. If I strike this shot too low, for example, that could result in me cueing across the white. You can see this for yourself by cueing across the bulk line. If you push your cue through a little bit lower or a little bit higher, it actually changes the direction very slightly your cue goes through at. In fact, this is why I missed the shot from the beginning, because my hand dropped down a little bit too low and this caused me to miss. But it's OK if your hand does dip down a long way on the shot, so long as it does this consistently every single time. There will be an optimum point for you to push through to, but you need to do this no matter how much spin you're putting on the cue ball or how high or low you're striking it. So if you're striking down on the cue ball, striking low on it, then your hand should finish in exactly the same place as if you're striking right at the very top. See, my hand ended up in the same position. It wasn't higher or lower. Again, the key to most of this is to get your hand to finish in a consistent position after you've played the shot. We're just going to quickly find Mayad from Faisalabad, Pakistan, which is there. It goes in. So if you're looking to push the cue through straighter, the three things that are going to help you the most is preventing the cue from rotating in between the back of your swing and once you've pushed it all the way through, to keep even pressure on the cue all the way through the shot and to keep this pressure consistent between your thumb and forefinger, and to keep the height you cue the shot at the same. So it's OK if you dip the cue on the way through the shot a little bit, but as long as you keep this consistent. Now we've dealt with the problems, there are of course other ways of improving your cue action that I explain in 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.