Using English to Reduce Throw in Pool

Series Summary

The game of pool, or billiards, was developed, like other cue sports, from outdoor stick-and-ball lawn games similar to golf or croquet. Pool was originally played on tables without pockets. Holes were added later, used first as a hazard and later as a means of scoring. The term 'pool' was derived from 'poolrooms,' which were off-track betting facilities where gamblers would 'pool' their money to determine the odds on horse races. These facilities were often equipped with a few billiards tables, and the words 'pool' and 'billiards' soon became interchangeable.

In this free video series, our expert Roger Long will teach you how to do advanced shots in billiards. He'll tell you how to reduce throw, how to do multi-ball combination shots, and how to shoot a ball on the rail. He'll also tell you how to do several bank shots with both throw and english, along with how to do several kick shots. He'll even tell you how to do several corner and side pocket kick drills.

Video Transcript

"Last segment we introduced you to throw. And, throw we defined as that action between the cue ball and the object ball, where the cue ball grabs the object ball and just throws it off line. So, like this set up right here, what happened to us was, cutting it to the right, coming from the right with the cue ball. We hit our contact point but they clung together for a split second and the ball got thrown off line over to the left. Well, in an earlier segment I told you what the best use of English is for. The best use of English is for redirecting the cue ball off of cushions by opening up or lessening the angle through the right and left hand spin that you would use on the cue ball. But here's another use for English. In this case, here, we can cut down the throw action by using English. One way to compensate for this now, just to back up for a second, would be to over cut the ball and aim it towards this part of the cushion so that when the throw took effect it would throw it into the pocket. But, say we don't want to do that for position purposes. Once again, say we don't want to over compensate, we want to cut down on the throw effect but we want to do it with English, we would use outside English. Okay. So now we're going to see if we can pocket this ball with the use of outside English and we want to use that so, again, we don't have to over cut it to compensate for the throw effect. We want to hit this, in this case, with left hand English that would be our outside English. (Demo)"