How to Achieve Consistency Every Time You Play Pool

If you are a pool player, whether amateur, pro, or leisure, you have probably realized that shooters have their good days and their bad days. The key to increasing your skill level is consistency. So, how do you achieve this consistency? Well, first you need to understand the reason why you have those good days and other times you can't make a single shot.

I am by no means a professional player that you see on ESPN. However, I have been a captain to many amateur teams and in that time I have coached dozens of shooters ranging in every skill level. Though, my coaching skills have proved better than my actual shooting skills, it has given me the opportunity to observe and understand the average shooter's tendencies as well as my own mistakes.

One important factor to playing pool is having confidence. This is really only going to come from practice. You can read articles all day, and I do encourage you continue to read, but you must apply your reading through experience and practice. Since there are so many factors to playing pool, building your knowledge will make your arms take a proper smooth stroke.

The key to having confidence is not worrying about missing shots or losing. As I said before, practice will help build your confidence since you are less likely to look at a shot and have absolutely no idea how to execute it. Do not worry about whether or not you can make a shot. If the shot is physically possible, you must be able to tell yourself that you can do it. When you take a shot that you are not confident with means that you have pretty much condemned yourself before even taking the shot. Also, even when you are miss a shot from "over-confidence" it will only help you learn shots and angles that you may not have realized were possible.

As your confidence rises, you need to use your imagination. Visualize the shot before attempting it. Bank shots are not as difficult as some will make them out to be. Look at the table; understand the different triangles you can form from the cue ball, through the object ball, and to the destination. These visuals will also come better with practice. Not only playing many matches, but also actually setting up shots and experimenting. By using your imagination you can consider shots that you wouldn't have thought of before. For instance, you can shoot a ball and deflect it in a pocket off a different ball. When you start getting more creative you do not run into nearly as many of those situations where you can't seem to find a possible shot.

Now, I have saved the most important quality that you need to secure your consistency. Patience is a virtue, as "they" always say. You will never have to know every trick and tip to become a winning player, if you can be a patient shooter. It is common to see pool players choke on the easy shots. This is because they shoot without breathing. The most important thing that I tell my students is that they need to breath. Even the lowest skilled players will begin making better shots when they breathe. Taking three full breathes while giving practice strokes is guaranteed to increase your ratio of shots made to shots missed. This is the biggest cause of inconsistency of shooting. If you can tell yourself to take the complete breaths and make slow full strokes, you will see that you may be more skilled than you thought.

You will get better as you practice, learn how to make full strokes and follow-thru, understand what is meant by the term "English", and know your speed and control. While all these things are the keys to great pool playing without patience you cannot begin to learn the rest of the skills. If you can master the patience in pool, you will defeat those "bad days" and find a good consistency. Patience will give you better performance in all situations. The atmosphere of the pool match normally would affect your shooting. Whether you are in a bar shooting strangers, playing in a tournament, or anywhere else, your accuracy will stay strong with breathing.