The stroke is the absolute heart of the game and is where the game is most usually won or lost. It seems so simple. Just propel the cuestick through the plane of the cue ball in a constantly accelerating motion and watch the balls fall victim to gravity.

And yet no two players stroke the same way. Strokes are as individual as fingerprints and more are flawed than are perfect. Players are constantly refining their stroke. Allison Fisher has won more tournaments than any other player of the last decade and she is constantly practicing the stroke. She has worked hard to perfect her arm motion and is a great player to study for proper basics. And yet she works on it still.

It is the stroke that you see begin to break down even in champions during big matches. When the nerves kick in the normally relaxed arm can become clumsy from tension and the stroke begins to fall apart once that fundamental requirement of relaxation goes missing. The importance of the stroke in pool is just the same as the stroke in golf. In both games you must deliver your stick properly and go through the plane of the ball aligned with the shot and with a smooth follow-through.

Let us describe the feeling of the perfect stroke. Imagine that you have a beanbag tucked in your hand and resting on your fingers as a cue would be. If you just toss that bag under-handed across a room of 10 feet you have felt what the proper stroke should feel like.

The bag was loose in your hand and your arm accelerated all the way to the end. Your arm and all of its’ components were relaxed. Now stand in a billiard stance, bend over as if you were shooting and imagine tossing that bag again. Begin with the hand hanging loose and falling in a straight drop towards the floor.

Bring the back swing back about 6-8 inches, pause at the end of the back swing to allow the biceps to take over from the triceps, then ‘toss the bag’ and accelerate until your hand is stopped by running into your chest. If you can do that with a cue in your hand you may be the next world-beater!

We are going to take you through this one step at a time. But consider all these steps only when practicing. When you are playing you should assume that you are doing just what you do in practice and trust your arm to do the right thing. If it does not, go back to the practice room where you can work on the various segments of the stroke. Concentrating on them while playing will only steal your attention from aiming.

Prior to the actual shot stroke you will take a series of warm-up strokes. It is important that you understand the purpose of these warm-ups. By the time that you begin these strokes you will have already decided exactly what you must do on the shot. You know precisely where the object ball is going and you know where the cue ball is going. All that is left is to carry out the plan.

The warm-ups are your opportunity to practice the speed of the shot that you are undertaking, to get the arm moving back and forth exactly as you imagine that it will on the shot itself. But they are much more than that. They are your chance to relax as much as possible and to focus. Once you have bent to the shot your world should only exist within the rails. While the arm swings back and forth reassure yourself of the certainty of making this shot and getting shape on the next one. Reinforce your resolve to be successful. Once you have focused entirely on the task at hand and have relaxed you are ready to begin the actual shot stroke.

The first position of the stroke is called the ‘set’ position. This is the position of your cue that you relax into after you have taken your warm-up strokes and immediately prior to taking the shot stroke. In this position the top of the arm and the cue stick are parallel to the floor while the forearm is precisely perpendicular to them. This 90-degree angle of the elbow allows the stroke to flow from the elbow with only the lower arm executing the shot.

The most common description is that the lower arm acts like a pendulum. On most shots there should be no movement of the arm or the body above the elbow. Movement in the body is a basic flaw and is yet another example of ‘doing too much’. Again, relax and enjoy feeling the lower arm do all the work. The lower arm is also relaxed, but controlled to move in a straight line and to accelerate through the follow-through of the shot.

The second position is the ‘pause’ position. This is the point in the stroke where the hand is furthest to the rear. As in golf, you do the back swing slowly, being careful to keep the cue in line with the shot. At the end of the back swing there is a tiny pause, almost imperceptible in most players, that allows the stroke to transfer from going back to going forward. This is where the biceps take over control of the cue from the triceps that execute the backstroke.

Now is where the discipline of relaxing really kicks in. Do not move the body toward the shot! Just stay still and let the arm deliver the cue. It is best to practice this at first with no cue ball on the table, just stroke through the air. Imagine you are tossing that beanbag and just let the arm carry the cue through until your thumb stops at your chest and the cue tip is touching the felt. Because the arm travels in an arc, the cue tip will fall to the felt as your arm finishes the stroke. No matter. If your ‘set’ position was true, then the cue stick was on a level plane when it went through the cue ball.

Stay down! Practice ‘freezing’ in the finish position until the object ball drops into the pocket and the cue ball stops moving unless you must move to avoid being hit by a traveling ball. Staying down is a vital part of the follow-through section of the stroke. You will often hear pros telling one another “you jumped up on it” when they have missed a shot.

That’s it! Set, pause, and finish. In practice concentrate on those three components. But in game play concentrate only on the aim and on relaxing. Develop early on the habit of trusting your arm to deliver what you need. Don’t ever try to force the arm. That generates tension and tension is the giant-killer of pool. In this game you generate power by moving the cuestick more quickly, not by pushing it harder.