Damn! I missed the shot! How it happened? Oh Gosh, why it’s always the same wrong right turn cut by me. Do I need to get my eyes checked? Do I have to practice more in order to cut the ball to the right? Now that is what I call a smart billiards strategy. And guys it’s not an easy stuff to play your cuts on the billiards table.
When you play billiards, you need an acute foresight and an eye of a professional. Many wrong things happen while you have a weak billiards strategy or you don’t have a dominant eye on the stick. And I tell you, that in such a condition, you often mislead to hit the center ball for no reason of doing so. There is a popular adage, which goes like this… “Does your eyes play tricks?" It becomes extremely important while you play billiards that you know which is your dominant eye. As you plan a strategy when you fight a war, so, you make a strong billiards strategy before you actually play the game. Therefore, in this context the dominant eye is really dominating and knowing it before hand gives you more probability to play an improved game.
You begin by taking your arm in front of your body with thumb kept in the air and with your fingers folded in the manner that they face the palm. Next, you select any one object placed before you from a distance of 15 feet and then try to cover the object with your thumb, with both eyes open. Because of parallax, you should be able to see two thumbs. Subsequently, you alternately close left and the right eye. In this practice, you will clearly see that in one position of eye, your thumb covered the object, whereas in the next eye position, it moved a little. It might look awkward to you in the very first instance, but I tell you, it works, really works! Be sure… If you are right handed then your left eye will be the dominant one and vice versa.
Once you become confident about your dominant eye, your next step in billiards strategy is to simply practice a few shots with your dominant eye over the stick. I am a left handier, and my right eye is dominant one, therefore, when I play the game, my right eye holds on to the object ball and straight into the pocket.
There is another way to test your dominant eye, wherein, you place the chalk over the diamond, with your cue ball at the other end with a matching diamond, lying at an appreciable distance from the rail. Next, shoot the cue ball at the chalk at lags speed, up the table, with no movement in the stick after you shoot. Wait to see the ball movement. Does it come back straight to tip of stick or does it drift here and there? The billiards strategy in this case would be that if the ball drifts, it is English and if it doesn’t then, you have hit center cue ball. Keep practicing the shots and when done, move the chalk to another diamond and catch hold if you are confident with center cue ball in this position as well.
Next cut the ball into the corner pocket, and if it moves circling out, then, undoubtedly you have moved an English on the shot. Buddy Hall had written one great article on the billiards strategy in Billiards Digest in June 2001. Keep dominant eye you friend, and the game will be yours, the next time you play billiards.