Tips for 8-Ball Pool - Getting Out of a Tough Defensive Position

Andy Segal: Hi! I am Andy Segal.

Bruce Barthelette: And I am Bruce Barthelette with some tips on 8-ball.

Andy Segal: Today, we are going to show you how to get out of a defensive shot that your opponent may have played. In this situation, we've run the table, and miss the 8-ball and our opponent played safety, hiding us behind the stripes. What we are going to do, is we are going to try and hit the Cue ball in to the 8-ball, at least hitting it maybe making it, if we don't hit it, our opponent will then get ball in hand, and be able to run the table. So we want to at least make sure we hit it. Now how do you figure out, how to hit the 8-ball? Well, in this situation the simplest way is to shoot the cue ball into this rail, kicking it into the 8-ball. What you want to do is you want to take the distance between the Cue ball and the 8-ball, take the midpoint, go into the rail, not at the nose of the cushion but back further where the diamonds are, and that's the point where you want to aim. Bruce will demonstrate. Now, in this situation Bruce did not make the 8-ball, but he made a good hit on the 8-ball. Now our opponent does have a few shots but it's always better to have the opponent shoot from where we leave the cue ball and to given the options of taking ball in hand. Now in another situation, we'll set this up again, but now the natural line, the natural angle that the cue ball has to take is going to be blocked by another ball. Now what do you do? Well, in this situation you would use backspin, what backspin does, is it causes the cue ball to spin this way. And it keep spinning this way even after we hit the rails, it's still spinning this way, after we hits the rail, it's traveling along this angle, spinning this way, causing the cue ball to curve away. So Bruce will now instead of lining up this shot, he will line up this shot which naturally will take the cue ball here, but because of the spin, it's going to cause it to curve, and flatten out the angle and hit the 8. Now Bruce didn't make the 8-ball. When you execute a good shot like that, sometimes the 8-ball goes in and you win the game. Bruce Barthelette: We hope these steps improve your 8-ball game. Andy Segal: Remember, it's all about practicing and having fun, thanks for watching.