Snooker Side Spin How To Aim

This is sidespin, a more demanding shot to line up accurately, as striking a curved surface causes the cueball to be deflected offline, in the opposite direction to which it's struck. Compare this to a centre ball strike, where the cueball follows the direction of the cue. This means if the tip of the cue heads towards the object ball in this direction, and it moves through the centre of the cueball, the shot can be aimed by pushing the tip directly towards the target. Watch what happens now if I start striking the cueball with sidespin. I'm aiming to push the tip of my cue through to the yellow dot on the object ball, but as you can see the cueball's not going to move in a straight line if I play it at a medium pace, it'll deflect wide. To allow for this deflection, I have to aim the shot to the left, and the more sidespin I apply to the cueball, the more deflection I have to allow for, and therefore the further to the left of straight I have to aim. But, where do you look? Even though my cue's pointing in this direction, I don't want to be looking where my cue's going, I want to be looking at where the cueball's going to strike the object ball, allowing for the deflection. So I'm looking to get the cueball to deflect into this position, and that's what I'm concentrating on. But this deflection is affected by more than just the amount of sidespin. Striking higher up on the cueball at the same time reduces the amount of deflection the sidespin creates, so of course striking lower on the cueball increases the amount of deflection, making these shots harder to judge. Power can have an even bigger effect on deflection, as a slow shot won't be pushed off line all that much, and only requires a slight adjustment in aim to allow for it. And of course, the firmer the cueball is struck, the more it will skid away from straight, making power shots the hardest to judge accurately. All of this means you need to know the position you want the cueball to finish in before you can play an accurate shot with sidespin, like on this black where I need to use right hand side to make the cueball come further back over here, so I'm in position on this red. I won't be able to play this accurately as we've seen, and judge and allow for the right hand side, unless I know how hard I'm going to play the shot, and how high I'm going to strike the cueball. Because if you change your mind on a shot like this, about the amount of sidespin you're putting on the cueball, how high you're striking the cueball, or the power you're playing the shot with, it'll almost certainly throw all those calculations out, and cause you to miss. So before you go to play it, you need to work out that you want the cueball, in this case, to finish here on the blue, so I need to work out the power, how high I'm going to strike the cueball, and how much sidespin I'm going to put on the cueball, and once I get all three of those things right, I should be able to play the shot accurately. Of course, the point of sidespin is spin. So after it's deflected away from your tip a little bit, it'll then start moving in the opposite direction, as the spin grips the cloth. And this means if you line it up correctly, and judge it right, you can make it spin round obstacles like this red. You can see the cueball moving to the left here, as it heads all the way down the table towards the pocket. You can see when it's played at speed, this spin does very little. The cueball hardly moves round the blue at all here, but if I play the shot slightly slower, it just about grips the cloth enough to pot the yellow. If you're ever making the cueball swerve, you don't want to be looking at the obstacle. You want to be looking around the obstacle to the object ball, and looking at the path the cueball is going to take. Even when the shot is played very slowly, striking the cueball about halfway down doesn't make it swerve that much. To swerve the cueball more, you need to strike it lower, as the backspin creates a drag effect, which both slows the cueball down, and causes it to spin more violently. So a side spin shot played at a slow pace, with a small amount of backspin, will make the cueball swerve a little bit. But if you want to it to swerve a lot more, just add a little bit of height. The more height you add, the more violently, and the sooner the cueball will swerve, the lower your cue is, the longer the swerve will take. So that would be good for a shot like this, where I don't want too much, but I do want it to swerve fairly soon. So let's see if I can get this right. Yep, got it, and went off. However, when you're playing a pot with side spin, you want to try and eliminate swerve altogether. So you've only got to judge for the deflection, like on the shot like this with this blue. By the time the cueball gets to the blue, it'll still be pushing wide, and won't be spinning at all on the cloth. So I don't have to allow for that, and it makes the pot a lot easier. Therefore, on a longer pot like this one, it's vital to get the pace right, because you don't want to be playing the shot any harder than necessary, because as we've already seen, that makes the shot harder to judge. You also don't want to be allowing the cueball to swerve. So ideally, the cueball will stop deflecting wide at the moment it hits the object ball here, and that'll mean I'll only have to allow for the deflection, like that, and not the spin. But at the same time, I'm not increasing the power to the point where it makes the shot missable. Before we look at more spin, let's just find Dark Corner Studios from Ottawa, Canada, which is there. Contact and throw. You might think that all the spin on the cueball will have a significant effect on the object ball when it makes contact, and you'd be right. You can see the difference when this pool ball is struck without any spin. It just runs along straight, and you can see the center band moving straight towards the pocket. When it is struck with side, the center band wobbles, and if you watch where the cueball strikes the object ball, you can clearly see it's to the right of straight, which without any spin would normally knock the object ball towards the left-hand jaw. But all the side spin on the cueball changes the path of the object ball, forcing it to the right, so it doesn't just enter the pocket, it enters the right side of the pocket. This can be useful in two separate ways. The first of these is with those shots where you can't quite see enough of the object ball in order to pot it, like this yellow. If I strike as much of it as possible without risking contact with the red, that's about as close as I can get. But watch what happens when I put left-hand side on the cueball. It grabs enough of the yellow to force it towards the pocket. The second way this can be helpful is when you strike an object ball at an angle. If I play the cueball into this position, you would think it would head towards the pocket, but it doesn't. It forces the object ball very slightly wide, because at the time of impact, the object ball and cueball move together for a fraction of a second. And this gets fractionally worse when the cueball isn't spinning as much, like when you play a stun shot. Normally, you will just allow for this by cutting the ball a tiny and almost unnoticeable fraction more. However, if you get the opposite spin on the cueball, so here we're striking the object ball to the right, so if we get left-hand side on the cueball and get it to finish in the same position in line with the pocket, the spin and the throw cancel each other out, so the object ball will head straight towards the pocket. So here's how it works. You line up the shot with side spin, and in theory, all you need to do is allow for the deflection that the side spin's going to create, and you won't have to allow for the throw at all, because the side spin will cancel it out on a shot like this. Although for the vast majority of cut shots, it's far easier to avoid side spin altogether and just play the shot the tiniest bit thinner. As I explained before, it's such a small amount, you're probably not even going to notice it. That's how you aim with side spin, and in the next video, I'm going to be showing you how to use it as well as every other type of spin. And if you want to see how to line up regular shots and want more advice on your technique, then 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!