Snookered Practice Snooker Escapes | Lasers and Mirrors

When you're snookered you're always taught to imagine the cushion reflecting the white back as though it's a mirror image. But what actually happens if you try to use lasers and mirrors to help you line up your snooker escapes? This is Break From Life. Welcome back and if it's your first time watching one of our videos then it's fantastic to have you here. If you play snooker for long enough then eventually you're going to have a shot where you can't see the object ball and you'll have to find the right angle to hit the ball indirectly off a cushion. So how do you escape from a snooker? What we need to find is the angle the cue ball will come off the side cushion at which in theory should be exactly the same angle as it went on. Just exactly the same as if it was a ray of light striking a mirror. So in theory if we want to pop the pink here we're going to have to strike the cushion about there. And this got me thinking. Does a ball bounce off a cushion in exactly the same way as a ray of light reflects off a mirror? And can I use it to my advantage if I just struck the cue ball at the mirror image of this red? Would it bounce back and hit it off the cushion? So what I've got here is just a cheap plastic mirror and a laser level and this fires a nice vertical dull red line that isn't too bright but you can use to make a very accurate target for any ball you're aiming for on the table. I've used it to help me line up difficult shots and although you've still got to get the cue ball there at least you know you're lining it up right. If you want to give it a go there's a link to somewhere you can buy it in the card right now as well as direct links to this and the mirrors in the description. So can this really help you with snooker escapes? Well to start off with if you put any side spin on the ball then it's simply not going to work and this may include small amounts of side that you may not even realise you're playing the shot with. And that's before we even consider backspin. You see if I just try to escape from this snooker and hit that red over the pocket there just playing it normally about there I won't get anywhere near it. However if I just play exactly the same shot again with backspin no side whatsoever just backspin this again alters the angle it comes off a cushion at. Good position. In the same way as with sidespin the mirrors won't be able to predict how it comes off the cushion if it's played with backspin at all. So for all these shots I've got to make sure the cue ball's rolling evenly along the table and I'm striking it as close to the centre as I possibly can otherwise I'm going to have no chance of successfully following the path of the laser beam and reacting off the cushion in the way that I expect. It'll just be too confusing. Something else that's a little confusing is where Sean's from in the Orkney Isles but since he's also known as Wild Bill I'm assuming he lives as far from civilization as possible. So here's how I'm going to try to escape from snookers using the laser level. Obviously I can't strike the cue ball straight through the laser level or at the mirror otherwise it simply won't work. So I need a way to line it up and play it accurately without the laser level or mirror being there. So what I'm going to do is get the laser aligned with a red in a straight line between the cue ball and the cushion, remove the mirror, place the edge of this chalk where the laser beam is meeting the cushion and then in theory all I've got to do is play the cue ball towards the edge of this chalk without any backspin or sidespin and this seemed to work so I decided to give it a go on a slightly harder shot. I found this fairly straightforward to do so long as I got the mirror at the right height. If it was leaned up or down too much it was very difficult to see if you were striking the red or not. To keep it stood up exactly straight I just stuck two bits of blu-tack to the back of the mirror which happily didn't cause any damage to the cushions whatsoever. Even playing one cushion escape from the greatest distance as possible to play them from I was still able to make contact with the object ball every single time so it's just the perfect way to escape from snookers. Well no it's not perfect you probably remember the shot from the start where I pondered the black of two cushions and you're probably assuming that wasn't my first attempt but it was my second attempt and whereas this system isn't by no means perfect because if you just play it with a trace of side you'll miss by quite a long way or if you play it with a small amount of backspin so the ball isn't rolling it's sliding it will alter the angle so I thought I'd have a quick test just to see if it's actually better than my own ability for getting out of snookers so I'm gonna have a go at this and see how many times it takes me to hit this relatively tricky one cushion escape. Okay I'm gonna need a harder one cushion escape so I decided to play off a cushion that I'm very close to when the cue ball's closer to a cushion it's very difficult to see exactly the right place you need to strike the cushion so it makes it a lot more difficult to get the shot right and it took me two attempts so can I do any better with the laser level and the mirror now as I lined this up it didn't look anywhere near right and in fact I missed it by further than my first attempt without the laser or mirrors and there's a reason for this because I'm so close to the cushion the cue ball is doing what we usually describe as sliding you probably won't see this off this first shot but let's look at it again if I play the shot slightly harder watch what the cue ball does here it seems to be on line and arcs and if we do it in slow motion watch as the cue ball initially starts off to the left of the red and the spin on the cue ball brings it back missing to the right if I'd hit it harder I could have potted it or missed it to the other side this reaction is actually different table to table but on the steel block cushions you see used on tv it actually slides quite a lot which makes playing on these tables completely different to playing on club tables so I decided to try this shot a shot where the cue ball really shouldn't slide at all on and it was in fact difficult enough that I missed it with my first attempt I eventually got it with my second so just as before I got it in two attempts so can I do it any better with a laser level and the mirrors to start off with this shot was very difficult to line up as you're trying to get a little tiny faint laser beam to show up on an object ball that's in fact 30 feet of table and if you look through the mirrors you can't actually see very well the second mirror from the camera let alone be able to see the reflection of the red in it so eventually I managed to get both the mirrors at the right angle so the beam of light would travel between both of them and strike the red that's about as I said 30 feet away after giving this a go a number of times what I found is the most inaccurate part of this is how accurately you strike the cue ball at the as well as trying to play the cue ball with absolutely no spin whatsoever if you manage to do these things it seems to be very very accurate so does the mirror principle for escaping from snookers really work well now I found that genuinely fascinating because I didn't expect it to work perfectly and it didn't when the cue ball slid off the cushion it slid at different speeds in an unpredictable way meaning mirrors were actually completely useless but what I found surprising was it was only my own lack of ability to play the cue ball in a straight line that was stopping this system from being perfect on the rest of the shots because in this shot for example I don't actually hit the chalk in the right place and if you put any side spin on the ball at all of course it's not going to work but you have this problem on a regular snooker escape I think what I found most surprising is this method for aiming your snooker escape is very very fractionally more accurate and consistent than I am and if you want to use the laser level to make you more accurate and consistent and potting the ball then try our video snooker laser engineered break it's in the card right now and on the break from life channel page along with a load of other videos to help you dominate the game and make the commitment to becoming a better player by subscribing to the channel which is exactly what I'm hoping Kevin H from Luxembourg Luxembourg has done so here's a simple way of practicing escaping from snookers simply place blue pink and black on the spots and start with a white on the d in this game you're not allowed to hit any ball direct you have to play every shot cushion first and the fouls are exactly the same as they are in snooker as well as hitting a ball direct when you're not allowed to after you foul though your opponent is then allowed to play a direct shot of the object ball and for the rest of their break you start with a cue ball in the d and for your first visit you are allowed to play your shots directly at the object ball the balls have the value of one one and two and if it's a draw at the end of the game then the result is decided by what is essentially a re-spotted black with the person who potted the black getting first go the only other rule is you're not allowed to play directly at the black when it's on its own spot just to stop the game from being a very simple way to pot three colors for the vast majority of this game you're just trying to escape from a snooker and hoping that in doing so you're knocking it somewhere towards or in a pocket or possibly that you're trapping your opponent into playing a foul shot that gives you a chance to clear the table but it's great practice for learning your angles and escaping from snookers from a variety of positions some of which may be unusual and come up in games and if you want to know more about how to practice snooker then try our video snooker cueing practice exercises or if you want to know more about how to escape from snookers then try our video hit a ball from a snooker 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