How to Hit the Cue Ball

Video Transcript

Hi! I'm Michael Lamendola with expertvillage.com, and today we're going to shoot some pool. Okay, you've got you stick, you know how to hold it, and now you've picked out your bridge. Finally, let's hit the cue ball. By the way, this is the cue ball. It's the white one. I'll talk about the rest of the balls in a second, but right now this is how you hit it. Now, there are many different ways to hit the cue ball. The most direct is right in the center. Now, many balls will have a little dot on them for reference. This one doesn't so just pretend with me. When you're going to hit the ball, most times it's going to be right in the center. You'll know that you've hit it in the center if it comes back to you the same way that you aimed it. Not bad. That's hitting it in the center. Sometimes you've got to use English for different reasons. English is when you hit the ball anywhere but in the center. There's low English, there's high English, there's left English, there's right English, and there's any combination of those. Let me give you a little example of what each one of them does. Let me grab one of these. This is Mr.one ball; he's the yellow one. First, I want to show you low English. Low English is going to draw the ball back. So when I hit it I use low English aiming low at center and the ball is going to come back to me, or it's going to stop. Let me try that again. That is low English. Now, what I did before, on accident, it's kind of called stop, which it doesn't really have quite a name. It's not quite low and its not quite center. When you hit the ball this way, the ball's going to stop. That's important when you're lining up your next shot and it's somewhere close. Now, the opposite of low English is high English, and it does the exact opposite. This time when I hit the ball, I'm going to use high English, which is above center, and the ball is going to follow. That's when I'm going to chase the ball to another shot. Now, similarly there's left and there's right English, and that does the same thing. Left English the ball is going to go to the left, and right English the ball is going to the right. I'll explain later why these are important, but for right now that's English. One more thing. When you're shooting the cue ball always make sure you keep your form all the way through. It's kind of like golf. You don't want to shoot and raise up and see what happens. That's not good. If it'll help you, think about striking and imaginary ball that's right in front of that ball. That means that really I'm pretending that I'm shooting right here. What that does is it forces me to shoot through the ball. After I shoot, I'm keeping my head down and keeping my body down that way I'm not affecting by making any sudden movements. Again, when you shoot, shoot through the ball.

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