Snooker Straight Cueing Tips Improve Cue Action

The straighter you can push the cue through the cue ball, the easier it is to play every type of snooker shot, no matter what the angle. That's why I've come up with the seven best ways to improve your accuracy and help you cue straighter without you having to make any changes at all to your technique. This is because the best way to improve your accuracy is to help you see and feel exactly what's going to happen when you strike the cue ball. And there's an easy way to understand how this works. If you place the object ball and the cue ball tight against the cushion like this and attempt to play the pot and run through in off, then the only way you're going to get it is if you hit it absolutely dead straight. And what you'll find is if you line up the object ball dead straight, you'll probably end up missing it. The problem is it's very difficult to see why you missed it. I mean, did this shot miss to the left or the right? It's almost impossible to tell. So a better way of practicing this shot is to place the ball on the green spot and line up an absolutely dead straight shot from close range into the opposite corner. This is exactly the same shot, but it does show you this time it goes wrong. The idea is to pot the red and run through in off, and if you can get this first practice routine right, it will really improve your cue action. And as you go from missing the red to potting it, to consistently potting the red and getting the cue ball to follow through in off, this will dramatically improve your cue action without you ever having to change anything. And then you want to have a go from the opposite side of the table, because you'll find it's slightly different this way. And if you're managing to pot the ball and run through in off quite consistently, then you'll already be cueing a lot better. However, if you're struggling to play this shot absolutely dead straight, then the chances are you're putting a small amount of unwanted sidespin on the cue ball. I'm using a swerve shot with a large amount of sidespin to show its effect on the cue ball, but even a small amount aside can prevent you playing a shot completely straight. And this leads in perfectly to the second thing you can practice if you want to cue straighter, which is simply placing the cue ball on the brown spot and hitting it through the spots and trying to get it back exactly to your tip. This is a really old and simple practice routine, where obviously if you put sidespin on the cue ball, it's not going to come back straight. So the only thing I would say about it is think about where the reflection of your hand is in the cue ball, because you will be able to see that. So if you're looking at where your tip's hitting in relation to the reflection of your hand, that will be quite a good guide to where the centre of the cue ball is. If you can play the cue ball through the spots accurately, you're going to make the first practice routine a lot easier, because it's very difficult to make the cue ball run through perfectly straight with unwanted sidespin. And any unwanted side makes it almost impossible to play this shot from earlier, like if I'm putting left-hand side on here, I'm going to push the cue ball into the cushion, and then it's definitely not going to pop the red. But that's not the only reason why a shot won't go completely straight, and the next practice routine shows that perfectly, as well as how to play a straight stun shot. With this one, you want to set up a dead straight shot into the middle pocket of the pink spot, so the cue ball isn't too far away. And what you do is you stun it in and then move slightly over for the next shot, so you make it slightly more difficult. And every time you pop the ball, you simply set up another straight shot from a similar position with a slightly harder potting angle, until eventually you reach a position where it becomes very difficult to consistently pop the ball from, which might be about here from me. Once you've found this position, which for me on this table is just about cueing across the black spot, you've found the perfect shot to practice, because if I hit it absolutely perfect with it, I'm going to pot it, but if I'm just a little bit out, it'll jump out the pocket. This practice routine alone will naturally improve your cue action without you ever having to change anything. But as I was explaining earlier, your ability to cue straight depends mostly on what you're able to see. So if you're struggling to pop around three quarters of these shots, then you're going to have the second problem that was stopping me potting along the cushion earlier. This is exactly the same problem as when you put unwanted side spin on the cue ball, because you can't tell exactly where the centre is, except this time we're talking about the other side of the cue ball, because here on a dead straight shot, I can actually see the reflection of the cue ball in the object ball. So in theory, if I play the cue ball directly towards that point, it should go perfectly straight, but I just played it slightly offline. I played what I thought was the centre of the cue ball directly towards the centre of the red, but as we can see, when it gets to the red, I got this wrong, and that's going to mean I'm going to play the red very slightly to the right, purely for this reason alone. The way I can fix this is by realising that the part of the cue ball striking the object ball is actually slightly further to the left than where I think it is, and even if it looks wrong, if I play this point to the centre of the cue ball, then I'm actually going to play the shot a lot straighter. And that's why this practice routine helps so much, because you can see the reflection of the cue ball in the object ball from this distance, so if you hit it, it should go absolutely dead straight, that means if it goes very slightly to the left-hand side, then the centre of the cue ball is slightly further to the right than where you think it is. And once again, if you're aiming for that reflection of the cue ball with the centre of the cue ball, and it goes slightly to the right-hand side, then that means the centre of the cue ball is a little bit further to the left than where you thought. And if you can then remember exactly where the middle of the cue ball is, you're going to be able to play all shots, including this one, a lot more accurately. But what's the best way to practice this? Again, you'll find it improves your game the most to play six or seven shots into different sides of the table, because it is slightly different, and it has a different feel on each side. The next routine is very similar, in fact it's the same as playing long straight blues from behind the bulk line, except with this you don't get the horrible wear marks of playing shots from the same position over and over again. Just like the previous routine, the idea is to try and stun the object ball in, and just like the previous routine, once you pot this shot, you move over. Obviously when you miss you stay in the same place, but you should keep going over until you reach a point where the shot becomes a little bit difficult. Once again you end up with a shot that's a little bit challenging, which for me I think's here, because if I don't play this perfectly it simply won't go in. But why is this shot different than the last one? From this far away you can't see the reflection of the cue ball, so it's a little bit harder to see where straight is on a shot like this, which means it helps you line up distant shots straighter, as long as you practice them enough. You're looking to pot about six or seven shots on each side of the table. That was pretty good. We've looked at running the cue ball through straight and playing a straight stun shot, but we haven't looked at screwing the cue ball back straight yet, and there's a reason for that. You could practice it by pulling the red over there and screwing the cue ball back into this pocket here, but that does mean you're going to jump out of the way and you are going to wear out the table again. Instead of making these shots as easy as possible and trying to play them absolutely dead straight, we're going to do the complete opposite, because it's difficult to play a shot with a lot of backspin when it's at an angle, and not only that, we're going to make it even harder by playing it along the cushion. So put a ball tight against the cushion and then play it at about a half ball angle and try and pot the shot with some backspin. It's actually a lot more challenging than you might think. Ideally you want to practice this until you pot about six or seven shots into each side of the table. The fact that it's on the cushion makes it a really difficult shot to judge with backspin, so it can really improve your game if you start getting this right. And the next time you've got to put a lot of backspin on an angle shot, or any shot in fact, you'll find it a lot easier to line it up accurately. It's not too bad. Before we look at the next way to improve your cue action, let's just find Sharq here from Kandy, Sri Lanka, which is exactly there. It can be really helpful to practice playing a stun shot like that when you're close to the cushion by digging down on it. So what I would say once again, every time you pop the ball, move fractionally further up the table until you find a nice place where it's a challenging pot for you. And you want the cue ball close enough to the cushion that it means you have to dig down quite a bit. And if you can pot around three shots from each side of the table, then you're doing good with this type of shot. And we end where we began, by trying to pop the ball along the cushion and run through in off after it. As I already explained, not the most helpful thing to practice because you're never too sure what goes wrong on the shot. For doing that, you're probably far better off with the first three practice routines. However, this is a good guide to showing you that the centre of the cue ball isn't necessarily where you think it is. Although it's a great way of proving to yourself that you're actually cuing straight. And if you want to know more about finding the centre of the cue ball when you line straight shots up, then have a look at the top video. Or if you want to know more about screwing back, then click on the bottom video. 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.