Learn to Play Pool in Ten Minutes -- billiards instruction

Can a person learn to play pool in 10 minutes? Well, let's see. Pool, also known as pocket billiards, is played on a table like this that is twice as long as it is wide and has six pockets. Four of them are corner pockets and two of them are side pockets. There are 15 colorful balls with numbers on them that we call object balls. One ball is white and has no number on it. We call that a cue ball. The basic event of the game is to take a pool cue, also known as a cue or a pool stick or a stick, and use it to strike the cue ball in such a way that it causes an object ball to go into the pocket. How do we aim the cue ball to cause the object ball to go into the pocket? How does the cue ball have to strike the object ball? Well, it's useful to draw a line from the center of the object ball to the center of the pocket where we want it to go and to actually extend that line out in the other direction a little bit. What needs to happen is that the cue ball needs to be right on that line when it contacts the object ball, like that. So the cue ball is going to need to be right there, like that. The bad news is that in aiming this shot, you actually have to aim the center of the cue ball for there, the center of what we call the ghost ball. The good news is that it doesn't matter whether the cue ball starts out here or here or here or here or here or here. All roads lead to Rome. You aim for this same spot, like that. Your front hand is known as your bridge hand. A bridge length, as shown here, of about 8 or 9 inches is reasonable. What's important about either bridge, the open bridge like this or the closed bridge like this, is that there be a reasonable footprint, footprint to your hand. Here's one way to form a closed bridge. Step 1, karate chop, pointing north. Step 2, middle finger as far east as possible with the ring finger going down halfway in between. Step 3, pointer finger going around the cue. Step 4, thumb closing up the gap. The pool cue itself is a line, but if you think of the vertical plane that includes the pool cue, there's a surprising number of things that need to be in that so-called shot plane during a proper pool shoot. The head is directly over top of the stick. That's in the shot plane. The rear foot, the backward foot, is directly below the cue. That's in the shot plane. There is the rear forearm, which is in the shot plane. The elbow, the upper arm, and the shoulder, that whole system there is in the shot plane. So here's the projection of the stick on the ground. The rear foot goes directly below the stick, like that. And the left foot goes out about 45 degrees, like that. So where do you grip the back of the cue? There's no spot on the cue that I can really point to. With the bridge being 8 or 9 inches, the left arm being more or less straight to keep a consistent distance back to your body, orienting your body like I discussed in the stance, where your rear hand goes is determined by the fact that your forearm is completely vertical when the tip is near the cue ball. There are over 230 different movable joints in the human body. If this was a video about golf or bowling, I'd be talking about a complex, carefully choreographed simultaneous motion about many of them. But this is not about golf or bowling. It's about pool. And as it turns out, pool is all about this one. That's it. It may look like I'm doing a baseball bat-type grip on the back of the cue, but I'm really not. I'm holding it loosely, and it's really about this part right here. When I'm in the back part of my stroke, the rear part of my palm is not touching the cue. When I'm in the finished position, the rear part is. So here's a shot with a ghost ball position that I'm imagining, and you can see the line of the shot. Here's the extension of that same shot line a few steps back from the table. I'm going to approach the table with my cue vertical and in the shot plane, and then I'm going to plant my foot right on this line and get down into shooting position. So I'm down in the set position. My tip is at the cue ball, my rear forearm is vertical, my cue is as level as possible, and my chin is down low on the cue. Remember, it's just a pendulum motion about the elbow like this, so I'm going to hold my arm here to kind of emphasize that. It doesn't matter if the shot is going to be soft or hard. The backstroke, the final backstroke, is going to be the same. I'm going to go back slowly, followed by a slow, smooth transition to forward motion, and then forward to the finish position. The best diagnostic as to whether you've finished the stroke correctly is that the tip finishes in the correct finish position. Where the cue ball goes after a shot is important when anticipating the next shot you're going to take. For a straight shot like this, there's three possibilities for what the cue ball is going to do. One is it's going to follow the object ball toward the pocket, or it's going to stop dead, or it's going to come back toward the shooter. So here's a follow shot. Here's a stop shot. And here's a draw shot, or a backspin shot. The difference between these is, respectively, whether the cue ball had forward spin like that, or no spin like that, or reverse spin when it struck the object ball. The stop shot is critically important, because mastering it opens up a whole range of possibilities for what the cue ball can do. A stop shot from the position shown will leave the cue ball stopped in the ghost ball location as shown, but a stop shot from any place over here, that same shot, would send the cue ball off at this 90 degree angle, like that. A follow shot sends the cue ball starting in the same direction, but then bending forward a bit. And then a draw shot sends the cue ball starting in the same direction and then bending backwards a bit. You achieve these different spins by having the tip strike the cue ball low or medium or above, any place along the vertical center of the cue ball, and you get the different heights by raising or lowering your bridge, leaving the stick level as possible for all the strokes. All right, now you're ready to learn a game. 8-ball is probably the most popular. And you probably need to forget the rules that you learn in a bar or a long-ago fraternity house or somebody's basement. If we remove the 8-ball, which is solid and black, the remaining 14 balls have 7 solid colored balls and 7 striped balls. One player is going to have solids, the other player is going to have stripes, and the object of the game is to sink or pocket all of the player's balls, which gives that player the opportunity to sink the 8-ball on a legal shot and win the game. The 8-ball gets racked in the middle here. One of these corner balls is a solid and the other one is a stripe. Nothing else matters. This is the head ball, and it gets racked onto the foot spot here. And when you rack the balls, try to make them all touching one another, which is called a tight rack. The opening shot of the game is known as the break shot. The breaking player shoots with the cue ball behind the head string, commonly known as in the kitchen. At this point in the game, it's said that the table is open, meaning it's not determined who has stripes and who has solids. The only other time this head string matters in the game of 8-ball is if the player on the break scratches the cue ball. If the cue ball goes in the pocket, then the opposing player must begin starting behind the head string and shooting a ball that's out of the kitchen. Always swipe some chalk onto the tip before every pool shot. All right, I didn't make any balls on that break shot. Had I made one or more balls, I would continue to shoot. Because I didn't make any balls, my opponent will shoot. Regardless, for this shot, immediately after the break, it is not yet determined who has stripes and who has solids. We say the table is still open. In order to claim stripes or solids, a player has to call a shot, has to designate, say, the purple 4-ball there and shoot it in. So if I call that 4-ball and shoot it in like that, I now have solids. As long as you continue to pocket call balls, that is, shots for which you designated the ball in the pocket, you continue to shoot. If you miss, your opponent shoots. If you do not execute a legal shot, that is, if you foul, then your opponent gets ball in hand, can pick up the cue ball and put it any place on the table and shoot in any direction. The three common ways to foul are, one, scratching the cue ball when the cue ball goes into a pocket, two, failure to hit one of your own balls first, or three, after hitting one of your own balls first, failure for something to make contact with a cushion or go in a pocket. All right, now you've scratched the surface learning some of the fundamentals of this great game. Many billiard parlors have leagues that actually encourage new players. So check it out. Maybe get some friends, co-workers, or family and form a team yourself. There's a lot more to learn about this game. Talk to people at your local billiard parlor or look at bca-pool.com for a list of qualified instructors in your area. I hope you enjoyed this little 10-minute introduction to pool.