Pool Bank Shot Around a Wall of Balls

Andy Segal: Hey, I am Andy Segal. This is our third masse pool shot in this series. It's a bank masse shot around a wall of balls. I guess it could come up in a game of eight ball, we have the wall of balls, one through six right along the first time in. The cue ball is about even with the mid point, between the one and the two about half-an-inch away and the eight balls hanging by the pocket. Now it's too close to the wall of balls to masse out and around, so what we are going to do is we going into the cushion, the cue ball is going to go into the rail, bank out and then right here with the masse it's going to take effect and come back into the eight. Now this cue ball has the red spots on it and it's perfect with this kind of a shot because you can see the spin that is going to happen. I am going to hit down on the cue ball, it is going to be spinning this way, it is going to hit the rail, it is going to come out here, but it is still going to be spinning this way and once it gets to here, friction is going to take over and it is going to bibe and it is going to curve right into the eight.

Now, for this trick pool shot, I am going to sit up here and I am going to aim with straight Bottom English, if you remember the last shot, we aimed with Bottom and a little bit of left, but this time we are going to go Straight Bottom. So, we are going to go straight down on the cue ball and come back a little bit for the Bottom and we are going to be aiming between this spot and the half away point. To start out, I am going to aim at the half way point and we may have to adjust. Right now, I am going to aim right between the first and second diamond. Perfect, of course, scratches don't count in tick shots. Anyway how do you adjust on that shot? Well, let's see. Masse shot is difficult enough but if you miss it let us see how we can adjust. Now if I shoot the cue ball and it comes out like this and bangs around this way, okay, like this, like that. What that means is I did not put enough masse or draw on the cue ball so what I need to do is I need to aim with the little bit more back spin and I also need to be more vertical. The less vertical I am, the more the cue ball is going to shoot out. The more vertical I am, the less the cue ball is going to shoot out. Now if the cue ball comes back like this, that means that I was too vertical, so I need to angle my cue stick more like this, instead of being too vertical, I need to angle it a little bit more so the cue ball will have enough energy to come out and around the balls before the friction kicks in and curves it back towards the eight and do not forget, we have one more masse pool trick shot where we combine two skills; jump and masse so we should check it out