Snooker Straight Cueing Why Can't I Cue Straight?

To start off with, it could be that I'm not aiming for the same place that my cue is pointing. I'm aiming for the middle of this red here, but what if my cue is actually pointing in this direction? When I strike the cue ball, it knocks the red to the left. But this can be easily fixed by setting up a simple straight shot like this one, where you can see the reflection of the cue ball in the object ball. Then if you go to play the shot and push your cue through the center of the cue ball, aiming for the reflection on the object ball, you'll be able to see how straight you're aiming. You can see there the red went to the left hand side of the pocket. This means my cue is pointing to the right of where I'm aiming, and you can easily fix this by continuing to play the same shot over and over again, pointing your tip at where you think the reflection in the object ball is, and then playing the shot and seeing how straight it went. After a number of attempts, you'll eventually play one where you aim for the center of the object ball and that reflection, and the cue ball hits exactly where you're aiming. Once you've done this, you can then try harder shots and see if you're aiming in the same place as your cue is pointing on these. I know I'm getting this right the majority of the time, because I'm not struggling to pop the most basic shots. So what else could be going wrong? This is something else that can make a big difference, because from here it looks like we might have a chance of bonding the ball, but the further back we go, we realize that the back of the cue is on completely the wrong line, and we're actually hitting across the ball here. The angle of the cue is mostly dictated by the position of the stance. Move the feet to the left here, and my cue comes with it, and now I'm pointing in completely the wrong direction. So if you can find the perfect place to stand in that gets your cue in exactly the right place, you're a lot more likely to pop the ball. Once again, it's relatively straightforward to work out where to stand. Just position your cue in line with the shot, with the cue touching the outside of your leg. Then look down to see what part of your foot is directly underneath the cue. As long as you've kept your leg straight, this should be roughly the right place to put this foot, and if you get into position like this, you can see how straight you're hitting the shot. Now that went slightly to the right, so I'm just going to adjust it a little bit by moving my stance a fraction to the left of where it was the previous time. So I'm just a fraction over to the left here, and I've hit that a lot straighter. So I can now look down and see what part of my foot is directly underneath my cue. I reckon it's that part right there, and I just need to remember this for when I go to play the next shot, because if I can get that bit of my foot directly in line with the shot, then that means my cue should be directly over the top of it, and it means that the easiest thing that can happen is I pot the ball. It doesn't mean it's guaranteed, it just means it's the easiest thing that can happen. So now when I go to the table to play a shot, I can start from a couple of steps behind the shot. So I walk towards the table, and I can get my foot in exactly the right position. So I'm lining everything up exactly straight, and then I know that I should hit it in exactly the same direction as I did the previous one. But if there's a little bit more distance involved, and the shot gets harder, I still have trouble potting it, even though I know I'm getting my feet in exactly the right place. So what else is going wrong here? It's the specific problem I've been struggling with, and this is the mechanics of pushing the cue through straight, which basically means the technique, but here we're mostly focusing on the wrist action. To benefit from the final part of this video, you're going to need a basic technique that's already at a good standard, and as there isn't room in this video to explain all of it, I'll link a video at the end that goes through the basic technique in detail. The part of that technique you need to get right in order to cue the ball straight, is the grip and wrist position. The position of your grip is mostly affected by the wrist angle, so there it's more in a central position. I can rotate it out to the right hand side, or rotate it back round to the left hand side. What matters is where it is at the end of your backswing, because as you can see here, I can rotate it all the way outwards like that, or rotate it and tuck it in like this, and doing that makes a big difference to how straight you can push the cue through, and how the shot goes. I noticed I was ever so slightly rotating my cue to the right on the way through the shot, and as you can see the effect that has, is the cue dips slightly to the left and then goes right. This results the majority of the time in putting a small trace of left hand side on the cue ball, but once again it's inconsistent, because I could just as easily put a small trace of right hand side on the cue ball, making the shot almost impossible to predict. So here's how to push the cue through more consistently. What you need to do is go to play an imaginary shot, so one without there being any balls there, but imagine you're hitting through an imaginary cue ball, and just end up with your cue in the same position as it would be after you finish playing the shot, and just stay there, and from this position look down at your cue, and just pull it back without rotating your cue at all, so you can see the grain there staying completely straight. Now that position feels a little bit weird to me, like I've got it twisted round to the right a lot more than I normally would have, but if I can just push through then again, I'll get it back into the same position without rotating the cue, and that should help me strike the cue ball straighter, and more consistently. This means you're pulling the cue back into this new position where you haven't rotated the cue, and then just pushing it through to the same place you had it before. After this all you really need to do is keep practicing it, until you can do this consistently every single time. Before we go, let's just find out I am Sooj from Sappen, Belgium, which is there. Just make sure you're not gripping the cue any tighter, or putting any extra tension into your wrist because of this, as it could stop you pushing the cue through smoothly, and cause problems in other areas of your technique. As it turns out, this might be the reason I was struggling to cue straight, and by stopping the rotation of my cue, as a lot of you pointed out actually in the past before, it seems to be making everything a little bit better, at least most of the time. I'll report back in a few months to let you know how it's going, and if it's actually made an improvement at all, but if you want to know more about the technique, then have a look at these two videos that will help you out with a lot of specifics in different areas, 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. Stop recording.