What is the technique to hitting right or left hand english?

Question

How do you spin the ball right or left as opposed to topspin or backspin? If you hit the ball above or below center, the ball spins forward or back, and the ball still travels in line with your cue. If you hit the ball off-center to the right or left, the ball path does not follow your cue. When shooting this type of shot, do you just have to compensate for this? What are some pointers on how to do this?

Answer 1

You are correct that when shooting on the vertical axis (topspin, backspin, center ball, etc.) you do not need to adjust your aim.  The main thing that you need to keep in mind when shooting sidespin is that two main factors affect the path that the cue ball will follow: tip position and speed.  Whenever you contact the cue ball left or right of center, the cue ball gets deflected in the opposite direction.  Some people refer to this as "squirt".  Here's a good drill to work on compensating for English.  Place a penny on the edge of the cushion in the center of the foot rail so that the edge it just hanging into the playing surface.  First place your cue ball on the head spot and shoot with no sidespin, straight down the long string attempting to knock the penny off the table.  Practice this at various speeds until you can knock the penny off consistently.  Now, perform the same shot but instead of shooting on the vertical axis, shoot with one tip of left English.  If you're aiming at the penny, you'll notice that your cue ball hits the cushion just to the right of the penny.  That's how much you need to compensate for in your aiming when using that particular combination of speed and one tip of left English.  Remember that you always compensate in the direction of the English.  This means that for left spin, you need to aim left of your target to compensate for the cue ball being deflected to the right.  Practice this penny drill using different combinations of tip position and speed until you can cleanly knock off the penny consistently.  It should be noted that during all of this, keep your cue as level as possible.  When you elevate the butt of the cue and shoot with sidespin, your cue ball will have a tendency to curve back in the direction of the English.  Don't worry about that right now.  Just focus on keeping your cue level and making notes of what the cue ball does as various speeds and tip positions.  M.D.-BCA Instructor/Referee.

Answer 2

you have to offset your angle in accordance to your english ...say 8 ball is going in right corner pocket (up in front of you) and it is at an angle....set your line...now if you want to play left english (top bottom or center it doesnt matter) make sure you adjust your line for this ( little to the right )....remember on a short shot with english....your cue will travel most all of its distance and strike the object ball before your english kicks in

Answer 3

One method a lot of people use successfully is called "back hand" english. Basically what you do is line up the shot as if you're not going to use english, then rotate the cue with your back hand (grip hand) to apply english. The hard part about this technique is that you must find the "pivot point" of your cue, which is the point at which you must bridge your cue to correctly compensate for the english most of the time. This point is different on every cue, but generally around 8-10 inches from the cue ball. You can find it by trial and error, or you can get an idea where it's at by looking at the deflection chart at platinumbilliards.com.

Some people do not like this method, but many have had success so you might want to give it a try.  Good luck and have fun.

Answer 4

Alright, nobody knows me...so I dont care :)

If you put English on your ball YOU CAN make it go in a straight line...you have to stroke the ball very well....and while doing this you're stroking it at what you're looking at...thus perfecting what you can do...if you miss you didn't see it correctly so try it again... The harder you shoot, the straighter your stroke at the contact point...

-Aric

Answer 5

Right or left spin-english- hit R-L of center of cue ball

For control R-top-bottom

                   L-top Bottom

Just practice diffrent hits and light -hard strokes

You will get it down then you can control the pos of your cue. Cue spin does not effect the object ball .If frozen it looks like it does but it really throws the object ball off line.