This article is from my regular column in WorldPool – The magazine of the UK and International Pool Associations. The magazine is packed with all the latest tournament news from the pool world.
You can download a copy at www.propool.org

Many of the coaching materials on offer in the UK have their origins in the game of Snooker.  Not surprising really – as the more ‘high profile’ sport, there have been lots of books & video throughout the years.   A lot of this knowledge gets passed into the game of pool at grass roots level.  Every player who starts playing at league level, will no doubt have had a more experienced team player, bursting with sage advice, dishing out hints and tips to try to help new players along.  In the USA, much has been written about American Pool, and some of this has filtered over here too.  (for example: you can’t play up the table following a foul)

Of course, any advice is welcome, and many things in other cue sports transfer quite readily to pool.  However, there are some real differences too.  If the way you play is based on snooker knowledge, you will only get so far before those differences catch up with you.  Pool is unlike Snooker at a very basic level, and so you require new skills to get consistent results.

So lets look at a few of the differences, and more importantly, what they mean for you the pool player.

The Cue Ball

Ask any pool player what makes pool different from snooker and they will tell you that the cue ball is smaller than the object ball.  The question is, how many know what that actually means to the way the ball behaves on the pool table?

This smaller cue ball arrangement really is unique in cue sports, the standard size cue ball is 1 7/8”, which makes it a full 1/8” smaller than the object ball it makes contact with.  The reason it is smaller is to allow the ball to be able to pass through a coin operated table while the object balls are retained.  This became such a part of the game, that even when top level matches are played on tables with no ball mechanism, we still use the smaller cue ball.  It is something that defines our sport.

What it means is that the cue ball is the lightest in cue sports, it is very easy for the cue ball to leave the bed of the table.  By that, I don’t mean fly over the side and on to the floor, I mean jump a few millimetres while it works it’s way to the object ball.  Most of the time you would not even see it happening.  The jump is very small, the ball probably bounces a few times as well on it’s way.  This creates some problems. 

Firstly, if you have applied any spin to the cue ball, it will spin at a different rate in the air, as it does on the bed of the table.  Second, if you wanted that spin to do something you probably anticipated that the cue ball would be on the bed of the table all the way to the object ball so you will get a slightly different reaction than you had hoped for.  Finally, if the cue ball is in the air when it strikes the object ball it could cut the ball in the wrong direction (even if it stays on the shot line) or worse, could fly off the table.

So the light cue ball is one problem.  The other problem is the cue ball’s small size.  Spin occurs on the cue ball when you strike it off centre.  The further out from the middle you hit, the more spin gets applied to the cue ball.  Having a smaller cue ball means that you can’t apply as much spin as you can to the larger cue ball used in Snooker or the massive cue ball used in American Pool.   On top of that, it is the rotation of the balls surface against the baize that is responsible for the spin having an affect on the path of the cue ball, and the balls size means a single rotation is much less than the other cue balls, so it has to rotate more to get where it’s going.

Table Size

There is much more to playing on a smaller table than just the balls are closer to the pockets!   It also means that the overall shot length is going to be less too.  The cue ball is closer to the object ball which is closer to the pocket.  To the laymen, this makes the game of pool look easier, but the pockets are tighter than on a snooker table, and the crowded table means that players often have to be more accurate with positional play.  So while some pots may well be a little easier, there are plenty of other considerations making things harder.

In the game of snooker, most of the time you can get your bridge hand on the bed of the table.  In pool, that is an infrequent occurrence.  If the cue ball is away from the cushion, then there could well be object balls in the way preventing a standard bridge.  More likely, the cue ball is at a distance to a cushion where it is not comfortable, or possible, to make a bridge without cueing off of the side of the table.  Bridging off of the side of the table means that you are cueing down into the cue ball, which means it is going to jump, even slightly, and that creates all the problems with spin and direction we have already discussed.

So those are just some of the problems which are unique to pool, next time I will be looking at the strategies you need to adopt so that you don’t get tripped up by the very things that make our game unique.