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Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby randam05

I am a regular 30 break player and get fustrated of finding it hard to make regular 50s and find mid to long range shots tricky, main reason why 50s arent regular and no matter how hard I practice and get some rythm going..it comes to a game and I cannot pot a long one. Why is this?

Also I would love to pracitce 2-4 hours a day as I have a table at home but struggle to get an hour or two without losing my temper and focus. Have you any tips on how to stay focused on that practice table for hours on end? (I admire the players that practice a lot, especially mark williams doing 12-13 hours practice at one point! that is seriously amazing..I cant imagine being able to do 5 hours let alone 10,12,13 hours..genius)

Practicing is my main problem. Being able to get my head down and practice for ages. Before I got the table I couldnt imagine how fun it would be to practice alone hours on end. But now it is a chore. I wouldnt mind if I was a lot better, but cause im borderline of being consistently quite good (50 break maker) it can be fustrating only putting 30s together and even that isnt as regular as id like. I would like to step up another gear, my highest break is 68 and I do make 50s sometimes, rarely, but I would like to make 60s and 70s as often as I do 50s.

Cheers and any help appreciated,

randam05

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby Witz78

the best way i find is to play against yourself.

Adopt one of your players as a negative type who plays safety, this will help you improve this side of your game.

Your other player can be a very aggressive attacking type, i find this aproach almost makes it feel like your playing a proper game, except your playing 2 games instead of 1 technically.

The old favourites of lining up the reds between the brown to blue, blue to pink and pink to black are always good at improving confidence and positional play.

As for long potting, well i tend to move the pink slightly across the table from its spot then stick the cueball in the D and practice different angled long pots, i like to keep the black on the table too so i can play for position too rather than just going all out for the pot.

Long blues off the spot playing the cueball from the yellow and green spot also are favourites off mine.

Practicising clearing the colours off the spot is also a good, if basic challenge to improve your potting success.

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby randam05

Thanks very much witz. I agree about playing games against yourself..that possibly is the best way of practice. Also to take it as a serious match helps. I do similar to you with long potting but wondering around a 12ft table catching balls after every time you miss I find a bit tedious and I miss a lot of them I can assure you. But the reason for this is focus..I get very inpatient expecting to pot every ball and I dont know how to control my mind to keep focussed on the task rather than thinking 'hmm theres a nice sofa, cup of tea, internet and ps3 in the room next door..that sounds relaxing' I would much rather be practicing but cant with the lack of focus I have.

Anyway thanks for the reply, I will probably try clearing the colours a lot more as I find it more fun than the boring line up.

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby Sickpotter

Thanks for opening the new topic randam.

Sounds like you've tapped on some of the issues I have myself. At the height of my playing I was at my local hall at least 12 hrs a day with 7-10 hrs of playing/practice time. Nothing matter more to me than potting the next ball, making my next ton.

At some point my desire/love of the game deserted me and in retrospect I feel that happened because I stopped seeing noticable improvement in my game and didn't have anyone to challenge me.

You've said you're a consistent 30 break player but have struggled in practice to improve on that. That alone makes it tough to practice, you really need to be able to see/document improvement or match success to keep the desire to improve alive.

Having a table at home is both blessing and curse. Even though the game is only between two players there is a social aspect of the game that you don't find at practicing at home. Encouragement is also missing. If you make a particularly nice shot or clearence there is no one around to say so and provide you that encouragement. Finally, you don't have an opponent to push you.

One possible option might be to take a video of your practice and put it out on YouTube or some similar site for someone to provide input on. I'm sure if you want to post videos of your sessions on here members will be happy to comment on it.

Do you have any people you regularly play with and do they challenge you? It's extremely important to feel challenged in order to improve your game. How can you motivate yourself to practice if you have no difficulty beating your opponents now? Try to find a regular practice partner who is at least as good or better yet, a bit better than you. As a regular 30 break player you should try to play someone who's a regular 40 break player. Very few like losing so when this person gets the better of you regularly you'll likely find the desire for more focused practice.

Now, long potting troubles. It's tough to say where someone is going wrong with long potting without seeing some video so if possible try to get some and post it here for me to check out.

In the meantime I'd suggest examining your basics.

Do you approach long shots differently from short shots? Your pre-shot routine should not vary no matter the length of the shot. Often people take longer on long pots which throws their stroke out of rythm. Timing is key for all potting, long and short so you should approach every shot with the same routine as if you were approaching the hardest shot you're willing to take on. If it takes you 5 feathers for your hardest shot you should strive to keep that rythm for all shots regardless of length or difficulty.

Are you cueing straight? Minor deviations in your cueing are magnified over distance. I'd check to make sure I'm striking the ball pure by hitting the cueball up and down the brown/blue/pink/black spots. If you're cueing straight you should be able to get the cue ball to return right to the tip of your cue.

Alignment/sighting is a very possible cause as well. What you see as straight might not be. Try putting the blue on it's spot, cue ball in a corner pocket and pot the blue into the far corner. You'll see pretty quick if you're lining up straight to the shot or a little left or right.

Hope this gives you a start point, feel free to use this thread to respond or provide updates.

Regards,
Rob (aka Sickpotter)

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby randam05

Wow thanks very much for the reply sickpotter has been of help just reading through it.

In terms of practicing with someone I do have some players in my local league who I play with friday nights and some other occassions but these are of less standard than me to be honest, so I am going to try and get practice in with the much better players in the league this year(there are some ton makers but I dont want to be picking balls out all day long).

I do video myself quite regularly and it does put added pressure and help me to produce the goods its true. I have posted my 68 break on here which was luckily caught on camera..here is youtube link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlTRMuamZbg ...So I will carry on filming as it pushes me further to make a higher break to show on here or to friends n family. Any comments on my cue action/stance and so on from that video would be appreciated a lot.

Long potting..I will take a video of me playing some long pot stun shots from baulk (misses aswell as pots) from behind and side on to give you a view and post on this thread sometime in the next week.probs weekend. I feel more determined already its just keeping my mind on it for hours which is painful at times..possibly music playing? I think the main long potting problem and power shots problem is my elbow starts off straight and bends to my back, like joe swail, therefore putting side on, however when I try to keep it straight throughout the shot it feels uncomfortable and cue seems to wobble a little applying side.

Any further advice on this once I post a long shots video of my cue action on here would be appreciated.

Thanks,

randam05

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby gallantrabbit

Randam - just one point. A snooker apprenticeship includes picking a lot of balls out. Even Ronnie did it and admits it in his book. It might be hell at the beginning but you get to the stage where you grit your teeth and make the other b@gger sit down and jump up all the time. Trust me it really helps. I've done plenty of it <laugh>

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby JohnFromLondonTown

Feel blessed that you can play the game, enjoy playing, & when your on your next 30 break, remind yourself that this is why you play, feel determined, that this is what you have to go through, to improve & also remind yourself how good it feels that after you do hit a good break, how good a feeling it is.

Its a good motivator too. <ok>

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby Sickpotter

I just had a peek at your video and I have to say you've got a great cue action :clap:

Perhaps it's the way it's filmed but the table appears to be 5x10, is that the case?

Anyway, not terribly important, your stroke is good. Nice pause, good cue delivery hitting right through the ball and you stay down on the shot. The fundamentals look strong from what I can tell from this video but there are some aspect of your shot that aren't apparent. I'll need to wait for another installment of you potting long straight balls to further break down where the issue might be. If possible, please capture your shots from beginning to end. I'd like to see your entire pre-shot routine as well as the actual shot if possible. The video skipped over a lot of the pre-shot aspect of your shot and that's fairly critical.

It's hard to see exactly where you've got your cue....do you cue right down the middle of your chin or off to one side? I'm thinking there's a chance your issues with long potting could be related to a dominant eye. If you've got a dominant eye and it's only mildy dominant you can play to a fairly decent standard without ever being aware of it. What one tends to first notice is that long potting is off, particularly long straight pots. Angled pots it's easy to assume you just aimed wrong and chalk it up to a simple miss. With long straight pots you notice that even though it looks lined up straight to you, every shot makes contact a hair left or right of where you believe you're aiming.

Anyway, awaiting your next video. Cheers.

Rob

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby Roland

Perhaps it's the way it's filmed but the table appears to be 5x10, is that the case?


Haha that's exactly what I said when I saw it.

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby randam05

Cheers John.Haha it is certainly a 12 ft table, can send a pic with measurements if you really want it to be proved, but I can assure you its 12x6ft.

Right thanks again Rob for advice, I will do a video like I said from lots of different angles closer up with pre shot routines. I was playing around with dominant eyes andstuff yesterday, but felt most comfortable with cue under the middle of my chin. Got my first match of the season tonight so hope it all comes together from what Ive learnt so far. An awful lot of it is in the mind and I feel more confident with that already.

Cheers,

randam05

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby Sickpotter

Good luck with the match.

If you're most comfortable with the cue in the middle of your chin you could still have a dominant eye. What happens is that a midly dominant eye won't come into play for 1/2 table pots or less. You might only be a mm or less off center for the shorter shots and that kind of "miss" isn't enough to cause the pot to miss (a mm is enough to get the shot to miss, I just chose a random number as an example). Stretch that to full table length and your 1mm off becomes 2mm and that's enough to deviate the pot over distance.

In short you can have a dominant eye that's so minimal that virtually all shots are fine with the cue dead center chin, it's only full table shots where you might find you need a small shift left or right of center to allow for straight on contact.

It can also vary on the day. If I'm tired or have been drinking/smoking the night before, my dominant eye becomes more prevalent and I require a bigger adjustment .

Compensating for a dominant eye is very difficult once you've got it ingrained in your setup to have the cue dead center chin. For me I find I have to get my chin off the cue a bit more in order to be able to ignore the alignment discrepency when I go off center. Personally I'd have been much happier developing a dominant eye early rather than late in my career as changing my alignment for some shots is very hard to do having drilled the "correct" alignment into my subconcious for decades.

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby randam05

Thankyou, here is a video of different angles of cue action and sighting down the cue mixed up. Look forward to hearing reply on this and excited about sorting my long potting out! Could be a number of problems I think. I can see a few myself when looking closely at it, but would like an experts view.



Thanks a lot,

randam05

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby Sickpotter

Thanks for the video, makes it so much easier. <cool>

Thoughts so far....

You've got a very long backswing. If you're not playing a power shot a long backswing isn't required and just provides a bigger opportunity to introduce a flaw in your stroke. At distance, introducing even a small flaw creates big problems.

You've got quite a bit of distance between your bridge hand and the cue ball which is likely the reason for your long stroke. Perhaps shortening the distance between bridge/cue ball will help you shorten your stroke and improve your cue and cueball control. I noticed the long action sometimes skews your elbow at the end of your delivery as well which should happen less with a shorter backswing.

It seems like you've got a dominant eye. On the long straight pots you're initially lining up straight but your cue is slightly to the right of center chin (edit....not on all shots, just a couple). When you deliver your stroke you instinctively bring the cue through the middle of your chin rather than a hair right which is where you initially lined up the pot. I think that's what's causing your long potting troubles. Being aware of it can help some but I don't know of any real fix. Knowing it's there and the shots it's likely to rear it's ugly head on will allow to you compensate.

You seem to stand over the ball and then get down. I'd suggest stepping into the shot to determine your alignment/potting angle, this is the best way to get your body correctly aligned at the start. If you've mis-aligned your body you can't safely compensate by adjusting your cue path, you should get up and restart your preshot routine. Perhaps it was just the venue you were in that prevented you "walking into" the shot but I thought it would be good to mention in case it hasn't been a part of your pre-shot routine.

All in all you've got a very nice stroke and your willingness to try and address flaws in your game is admirable. :clap:

I hope this helps, please let me know.....coaching without being physically able to show what I'm talking about is new to me so there's every chance I haven't conveyed something properly :ashamed:

Keep the videos coming, the more I can look at the better my chances are of identifying possible problems. :)

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby randam05

I did think my backswing was too long, I have heard the commentators talking about mark selby becoming a top player over night cause he shortened his back swing and bought his hand closer to the white. I have tried messing around with doing this and I seem to jab the ball and its even worst than before, I appreciate the help but I dont think that tip has worked. Maybe I should try more just bringing it ever so slightly closer and testing a little more? Maybe shortening my backswing and not bring my hand closer to the ball will be alright..whatever happens I will tell you and may send video again. Once again thanks a lot for the help, its great to have someone help. I was thinking of having lessons but cant find nowhere near here.

Sighting.., thanks for noticing I align slightly right and move over, I am now aware to try keep it along that line. Its unbelievable how technically this game can get. It fustrates me a lot cause I practice and dont seem to get better. I find it hard to keep concentrated and improve my game.

I do try my best to walk on to the shot, but yes my snooker room is just too tight to have a proper pre shot routine, but when playing out I do walk on to it but its hard remember it on every shot..if its important I may try harder to do it and make it something I do without thinking about it.

Thanks very much again sickpotter and look forward to next reply. May send a video next week if I find a reason too. Is there anything you would like to see in more detail or closer up or more of to help a little further? Would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby Eirebilly

Actually, just watching your cueing action (i am no expert but got a lot of help here), you have a very similar stance to what i had, i have actually squared it up a bit and am finding that i have more sucess striking the cueball in the same place more often thus better control. I copied my new stance from Doherty. One small thing i noticed as well is when you are cueing, your hair distracts you somewhat. Try tying it back, any distraction can affect you cueing. Just my thoughts though and are probably dead wrong.

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby Sickpotter

Changing the length of your backswing is a very tough adjustment to make so I wouldn't expect immediate improvement. If it hasn't sent your game completely off the rails you should give yourself some time to adjust before deciding it's not the route for you. You may just have a very long stroke though and that's fine, it's just an aspect that leaves you open for certain issues not found in shorter strokes. Keep the length of your backswing and start with just shortening the distance between your hand and the cue ball. That should wind up shortening your backswing without an concious effort on your part.

The walking into the shot is IMO one of the most important aspects of the preshot routine. You should definitely go out of your way to make it automatic.

I agree with eirebilly, your hair might impede your line of sight so you should consider tying it back. I played with very long hair for quite a while and was able to ignore it 99% of the time but it did sometimes get in the way.

For future videos.....

Could you make one of you doing the line up drill (let me know if you need clarification on it) ensuring you follow your full pre-shot routine for each and every shot.

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby randam05

Thanks eirbelly, will probably tie back in an important match, but for time being it doesnt affect me.

Thanks again sickpotter, it helps having someone to talk to about it cause I have just got off the practice table after doing half an hour when telling myself I wanted 2 hours casuse of fustration and crap play!

I have been tinkering with backswing and still no success but will keep at it in practice. I am getting used to the pre shot routine and it proves helpful and leaves me with no stupid misses most the time. Still no luck with long pots at all though.

Line ups are probably my most common method of practice and I was thinking of videoing it, i did get 102 in it the other day but that being only my second century in one! but still pleased me a little, perhaps I can get a good break on camera for you. Look forward to posting that on here and hearing what you have to say again.

Cheers

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby Sickpotter

This game is 90% mental so if you find yourself frustrated or not in the mood for practice, forcing yourself to keep going can be detrimental to your game.

We can't always feel like playing so on those days where you feel a bit off, short on patience, etc. just take a break ;)

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby randam05

Problem is, that if I did that I would probably never practice, or just play one game and leave it for the day! so I need to learn to cope with it I suppose. Its just when I practice alone, I dont tend to try so hard therefore rushing shots, missing shots and getting annoyed. Filming helps me.

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby Eirebilly

One thing i also do is to put the white above the blue (with 15 reds on the table), try to pot the blue and split the pack. Then i try to pot as many as i can.

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby randam05

eirebilly wrote:One thing i also do is to put the white above the blue (with 15 reds on the table), try to pot the blue and split the pack. Then i try to pot as many as i can.


Good idea eriebilly..anything to make practice more fun as I find it dead boring <ok>

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby Eirebilly

randam05 wrote:
eirebilly wrote:One thing i also do is to put the white above the blue (with 15 reds on the table), try to pot the blue and split the pack. Then i try to pot as many as i can.


Good idea eriebilly..anything to make practice more fun as I find it dead boring <ok>


Just keep trying to find new ways to challenge yourself and practice will become fun. At the end of the day, its up to yourself to show the commitment but inventing little games and finding ways to better yourself at them can become interesting.

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby randam05

Right, sorry for delay sickpotter. Here is a line up. Bit of a tight room for a snooker table so walking on to shots is limited, but I try my best. Although when playing out I do walk on to shots and thats definantley helped, just have to do it all the time and concentrate, one small loss of concentration and you make a big mistake, so keeping mind focussed on task.



Still working on shortening backswing and bring hand closer to cueball, also helping a lot.

Thanks for advice.

Cheers, randam05

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby Sickpotter

Looking good randam. :ahh:

Changing your stroke is one of the hardest things to do, especially if you've been cueing the same way for years.

Once you've got the approach to the shot as an automatic action and you don't need to think so much about your cueing it will begin to feel more natural. You've just got to stick with it and the gains will come :idea:

Consistency in the number of feathers you take, your pause in the backswing, etc. are all crucial to developing your rythm. You should strive for a rythm that allows you to comfortably play the hardest shot you'd take on as this will prevent changes in your rythm when you go from a simple shot to a hard one.

Your rythm is crucial to your timing when striking the ball. Fall off rythm and you'll stab at the ball. Most obvious example of that happening is when you're striving to hit a screw shot and wind up stunning the ball. <doh>

This is a very tough part to cement into your game because the natural inclination is to take less time on simple shots and more time on the harder ones. Strive for the same number of feathers regardless of shot type and you'll find your consistency will improve.

Best of luck.

Sickpotter

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby randam05

Thanks very much sickpotter again. You have helped an awful lot and it is down to me now to get all of this together consistentley like you say.

I definantley know where to come for any other advice now..maybe a few questions on using the rest coming shortly from me, as I cant pot the simplest balls using the rest.

Thanks again,

randam05

Re: Long potting and practicing focus..

Postby Sickpotter

No problems randam, glad it's helping.

Do me a favor though, if you've got rest questions please open a seperate topic so we can try and keep the Q&A organized.

Thanks,
Rob


   

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