Carom Billiards: MORE Riddles & Puzzles: Full-Table Quagmires and Quandaries to Improve Your Thinking and Shooting Intelligence

The layouts are designed to allow experimentation to try various cue ball speeds, spins, and angles. This provides significant personal competitive benefits:

• Intellectual training – Evaluate the layouts and consider how many pathway options are available. Make sketches of paths and cue ball speeds & spins for the practice table. This increases your analytic and tactical skills.

• Skills confirmation – As you attempt each path, your experimentation helps to determine whether it is viable (within your skills) or useless (too difficult or fantastic). This comparison between mental imagery and physical attempts helps determine the width and breadth of your abilities.

• Skills advancement – If a path looks promising, but execution fails, work with various speeds/spins to discover what works. Several consecutive successes will add this to your personal library of competencies.

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HOW TO STUDY

Start with armchair analysis. Look at each table layout and consider possible playing options. Imagine shooting your ideas, concentrating on the appropriate speed and spin. Make sketches and notes, as needed.

Alternately, take this book to your practice table, put the donuts down, and (without shooting anything), mentally figure out how many different ways you can play the shot.

Make notes of your ideas. If this is a printed book, use a pencil and sketch out pathways. Make sketches, and when you get to the practice table, give them a shot.

At the practice table, apply the paper reinforcement rings for the three ball positions. Think through the shot before you get down and stroke the cue ball.

When shots get close, experiment with different speeds/spins and angles until you can consistently score (3 of 4 attempts). This is how you become a tougher and more dangerous player.