POTTING ANGLES: Why You Can't Memorise Them / Snooker Tutorial for Beginners

Memorising the potting angles is the basic key for your longer breaks. The trouble is that most players can’t build their angle recognition. This is because they make one significant mistake – they play with side spin.

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Even some experienced players don’t realise they are not striking the cue-ball in the middle. The side spin can produce unpredictable results and slow down your improvement. Bad aim is the reason for most missed shots, but this can be sorted with the right snooker coaching.

In this video you would find answers for:
The first step towards memorising the potting angles
How to build up your accuracy
How to recognise side spin

Are you making the mistakes I mention in the video? Let me know in the comments down below.

I am Brando - the EBSA Assistant Head Coach and WPBSA World Snooker Coach, a Eurosport commentator and a snooker player myself.

I cover topics like snooker coaching, snooker tutorials for beginners, best practices, pro tips, and practice routines. What other topics would you like to learn more about?

Let me take your snooker skills to the next level!

[kendalltroy]

Hi Snooker Coach Brando, thank you for the advice. I will try this routine around the black spot area on my next snooker practice day. My current break building level is about 16 points.I am hoping to get my own full sized billiard table later this year. No doubt, I will be able to learn lots of excellent ideas from your website when it appears online soon. In which country are you located, please? -- Kind regards, Kendall!

[shakeelmuzaffar]

Good I'm try to apply this method,

[vnrbwentworth]

Coach Brando, I believe that cue tip is most important to maintain and manage as its first contact point between cue ball and object ball. This contact has to be so accurate. Can you plz advise us on few best tips around the world? Ideal tip size? Hardness? Brand name? Tip management tools like sandpaper tip softener etc? Also Coach kindly advise me on the new one piece cue which I plan to order from JP. I am 45-50 break player and I just started hitting these breaks. I currently use JP challenger cue. 18oz. 58cm. 30mm Butt size. 10mm Farrel. Now I want to upgrade to one piece cue. I really really need your good advise.

[vxrdrummer]

My spotty cueball changed my game. Everyone should have one if they can.

[stuartchapman]

Brando the message you put across here is a Very Important one for any aspiring Snooker Players out there, in fact I would even say it is of Crucial Importance for delivering Success on the table as opposed to Failure for new or novice players who are busily learning the game and need to know the basic building blocks and fundamentals of good technique . . .

However, with all that being acknowledged and accepted, when you demonstrated the adverse effect caused by applying Left Hand Side Spin to the cueball on a pot attempt, you applied this 'Side Spin' to the shot using an incorrect technique.

The use of Side Spin is an advanced and often extremely useful skill to master in any cue sport but metaphorically speaking it also represents a double-edged sword, . . . for if a player attempts to use 'Side Spin' without first fully understanding and mastering how it should be correctly applied onto the cueball then unfortunately the probability of missing pots becomes vastly amplified as the immediate consequence of bad technique.

Considering whether or not to apply any Side Spin to a pot or shot is a decision that must be made back from the table prior to walking in to the address position, contrary to what many coaches believe and teach though, the correct use of Side Spin is very helpful in breakbuilding for achieving fine control of the cue ball and thus for keeping every consecutive pot of a break within comfortable range of the cue ball to continually pot simple ball after simple ball and quickly create as high a scoring break as possible.

The correct application of Side Spin can be achieved with very little loss of potting accuracy if that Side Spin is transferred onto the cue ball using the essentials of 1, proper technique, 2, proper cue delivery and 3, excellent timing.

For example, once Left Hand Side Spin has been deemed by a player as helpful or desirable on a particular shot or pot to achieve and maintain 'good position' then on the walk in the whole cue must be moved over parallel but to the left of the standard centre line striking position of the cue (i.e. if we viewed the shot from above the new cue position would be left of the original cue position all the way along and an equal distance away from the original cue position from Cue Butt to Cue Tip), failure to do this will lead to a player striking 'across' the cue ball which leads to further potting inaccuracies and errors arising so the application of Side Spin using this technique (which you demonstrated) is therefore both 'incorrect' and 'undesirable' . . . but for the purposes of the video I appreciate you are attempting to remove the added confusion and complication which the mysterious skill of 'Side Spin' inevitably causes for beginner players.

In reality, to reach the very top standard in Snooker today, fully understanding and being capable of utilising Left or Right Hand Side Spin effectively when necessary is probably essential now in the modern game, developing and applying this skill correctly in matches can make all the difference between winning and losing.

If I was coaching the application of Side Spin on pots to a novice player I would advise the player to first imagine that the cue ball itself is made from a thin sphere of fragile glass and that if the cue is initially delivered too fast into the cue ball then the cue ball will be smashed and the shot ruined.

The ideal application of Side Spin in order to retain the correct potting angle and sighting line with no loss of accuracy absolutely demands that a player engages the shot with perfect timing on their cue delivery.

Moving very slowly into the cue ball at first and then smoothly accelerating increasingly throughout the delivery until final completion of the follow through will ensure that the desired Side Spin is efficiently and correctly applied onto the cue ball whilst crucially maintaining the object ball potting line accuracy and simultaneously avoiding the unwanted effect of pushing the cue ball off line (the cue ball can easily be 'pushed' off line at the beginning of any Side Spin shot if the cue is initially delivered too fast or too sharply on first contact with the cue ball).

For Beginner Players, the message and advice contained in your video is otherwise very sound and will lead to more successful and consistent shot accuracy and in turn more successful pot attempts being completed which helps to both prevent unwanted errors and promote effective scoring which is the very essence of the game . . . so there is definitely an initial benefit and value to be gained from the advice you have given here.

Ultimately though, Experimentation helps to provide any player with valuable practical experience of the additional skills and advanced aspects required if one has ambition to compete at a higher level so with this fact in mind I would coach the most important basics first but equally would encourage novice players to experiment with the use of side etc on the practice table and this is where it should stay until the art and skill of applying and using the Side Spin correctly has been mastered.

[wasimwahab]

I do not understand. If u play left side, the cue ball should be thrown to the right, correct ? So it should have caught the pink ball more thick

[eckateckat]

hi, if the line of the shot is not the potting line how do you achieve the potting line (point) on the red. I dont use the line of the shot I use ghost ball method which I stand behind the potting contact line on the red and walk into it. correct? regards

[academy]

i think i have difficulty finding my vision centre, here is an example.

when i lineup with no chin things are perfect but as soon as i touch my centre chin after few features the butt of the cue goes offline and i pause at that moment the butt of the cue is offline towards my right which poins the cue tip to the left.

i tried with right chin and it brings the butt even more, i tried with my left chin and its less offline than when i cue under right chin. however i cannot decide if left chin holds the cue online of aim perfect of centre chin. bcaz i am so used to playing with centre chin for years and its hard to know which position is best to hold the cue online even after featuring...

another example is that if i put the cue on baulk line and touch my centre chin, i can see the baulk line from left side of the cue, so the cue is not covering the baulk line, this is why i am quite sure it has to do something with my vision centre, but as i said i am so used to playing with centre chin that if i use my right chin and left chin the object still looks online however in reality the butt of the cue is offline, but i cannot tell which chin position holds the cue online of aim

thank you

[kendalltroy]

Hi Brando, from Australia. I would like to improve my ability at potting the black off its spot . What are the best practice routines for doing this? -- Thank you!

[paulriggall]

I have trouble finding the centre of the cue ball. I play best when I'm most attentive to where I'm striking.

I think most people can find potting angles quite easily, but hitting the middle of the white is one of the hardest things to do in snooker.