Various Bridges on the Game of Pool: Online Billiards Lessons for Beginners

Video Transcript

"This is Richard on behalf of expertvillage.com, I'm going to show you continuation on two basic bridges that you will encounter during your pool playing games. We cover the close bridge on the last one, this one we will show the open bridge. Open bridge is basically you are setting up the same way as you do for the close bridge. You are going to start off with your hand flat on the table, supporting yourself, form a V with your thumb sticking up a little bit and you get the little V and your are setting your cue ball in there and all we are doing is cuing the ball from there, you are just sliding across the thumb area. The thing about this bridge is a lot of people prefer this bridge especially on longer shots, it seems to give you a better aiming lining. You have the close bridge the knuckle a lot of times because a lot of people will cue down and they will get very low on their cue and you are looking over and you are seeing your knuckle and this other way you are seeing nothing but ball as you are making another shot. The other bridge that I want to cover is where you are shotting close to along the rail. Your cue ball is sitting back close the rail, you are shooting across, you are approaching the ball, if you go into a close bridge you are actually going to be shooting way up on top of the ball, if you are shooting off the open bridge you are going to still be shooting over across the ball, if you want to try to hit the center you are going to have to raise up. Raising up is not a good idea, you always want to try to keep your cue level as possible. What you do in this situation is you set your ball, you set your cue right on the rail, you come in, you form you tuck your thumb underneath and you just kind of wrap your two fingers right over the ball your shaft goes up right up against your finger and your other finger and you just set yourself and you are shotting right off the rail. The rail itself is your bridge and all your bridge hand is doing in this case is supporting your cue. "