The most important ball-to-ball contact in a billiards game is the half-ball stroke, and is made by aiming through the center of your ball to the extreme edge of the object-ball. If you do this and strike your ball truly in its center, the angle your ball will take after contact with the object-ball is known as the natural angle.
It never varies unless you use side, screw, or forcing strength, and is in such constant request that I suppose I must score more than half my points in match play by the half-ball stroke, or very slight departures from it. Apart from its scoring value, however, the half-ball stroke serves as a standard of comparison for countless other shots.
We speak of a shot being "wider" than a half-ball, or "narrower" than a half-ball, and although it is correct to say that the angle of departure after contact is more obtuse or more acute than the true half-ball, yet I prefer the "wider" and "narrower" familiar to generations of cue-men.
Value of Half-Ball Play
Another material point connected with the half-ball stroke is that the part of the object-ball you wish to hit is always clearly defined. It is a curious fact that there are only two strokes in the whole of the game of billiards where you cannot make a mistake as regards the part of the object-ball you ought to hit.
One of these is the "full-ball," where you have the unmistakable center of the object-ball to aim at. The other is the half-ball, where you have the edge of the object-ball standing out clear and sharp as your invariable target.
In every other case, you have to estimate your target in the billiard game to judge for yourself what part of the object-ball must be struck to produce a desired effect. As the "full-ball" shot is rather infrequently met with, you may say that the half-ball stroke is the only one in constant request which automatically offers its own target on the object-ball.
This is a very great advantage, and explains why you can never learn too much about the scope of the half-ball shot. There is so much in this that if you show me a man who seldom misses a half-ball stroke, I will show you an uncommonly good player. On the other hand, those who know little or nothing of half-ball play, will always consider a twenty break something of a performance for them, and this will be true if they play billiards for a lifetime.
The Value of Practice
In order to play a billiard game well you need to know how to stand at the table, to hold and swing your cue and to strike your ball truly, how to impart top, screw, and side. All this should be considered as general knowledge to be applied to particular strokes, and the more thoroughly you study and practice the general principles of the game the better you will play it.
One of my greatest troubles with pupils is that they want to know how to make certain "strokes" long before they have mastered the elements of cue-man ship. They want to know something about the masse stroke or nursery cannon play before they can make three consecutive half-ball losers. Do be careful not to fall into this very common error - if you will only take plenty of pains with the fundamentals of your billiard game you can almost leave your stroke play to take care of itself.
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