Applying sidespin for position: Things to think about.

Robin Hamlet has been working hard at improveing her alignment, stance and stroke. She has excellent fundamentals now and has moved up a rank in APA (American Poolplayers Association). She is good a pocketing balls, but to move up further in the ranks position play and tactics are her next major hurdles. Getting better at pool requires, at some point, that you add sidespin into your skill set, because you simply cannot achieve good position play without spinning the cue ball. Here is a prelude to Robin's journey to learn how to apply sidespin. She asks all the right questions required for an analytical person to improve in pool. There are two main categories of learners in pool. One is to just repeatedly hit balls for hours at a time and simply train your body to make a variety of shots and get a variety of positions. Robin is not that type of player. Like me, she is going to have to understand the peculiarities introduced when spin is applied to the cue ball. Spin on the cue ball introduces a change in the trajectory of the ball, called deflection, which is paramount when the cue ball is struck firmly, and then swerve, which predominates when the cue ball is struck softly. Deflection occurs on every shot but is offset by swerve on slow shots. Another feature of sidespin is that the spinning cue ball transfers spin to the object ball, and alters the path of the object ball. Finally, when a spinning cue ball contracts the rail, the trajectory off the rail is substantially changes, which is of fundamental importance for controlling the direction of the cue ball after contact. Because the rail is much rougher than the surface of the object ball, the impact of contact with the rail is far greater than that achieved when contacting the object ball. In this video, Jim Brauker, PBIA pool instructor, explains the complexities introduced when sidespin is used, and recommends drills for Robin to do on her home table.