Breaking in pool in not as simple as “’one method fits all”. There are too many variations on the game of pool to lay out one simple answer for the “best pool break” and call it done. So what I’ve decided to do is give you an overview of the basic pool break shot for the games 8 ball, 9 ball, and straight pool.

This information will be coming from my own personal experience, which means some people might disagree with me, but that’s OK. It is hard to define the best way to break in pool, but I will do my best to lay out some good pool breaking tips for these three games. At the very least you will have one more voice in the croud to take ideas from, and at best I hope to help you improve your pool skills as you learn a bit more of how to play pool for beginners.

8 Ball Break Shot

8 ball is one of the most popular amateur pool games in the U.S. Yet there is great variety in how people prefer to go about it. There are three kinds of breaks I have seen used over the years, each with different goals: chances to run out; chances to play safe; chances to sink the 8 on the break for an instant Win.

Generally in an 8 ball pool break, even and widely spread object balls is the main objective, plus the sinking of at least one ball. These results will give the breaking player the best chance to win the game because a) sinking a ball allows him or her to stay at the table, and b) a wide and even distribution will offer a great selection of easy shots. To achieve this, a powerful head-on break that strikes the lead ball of the rack fully is required.

Let’s start with breaking for power and distribution, with the desire to run out the table right from the break. There are many factors that go into creating a powerful break, and many risks…

What I am trying to do:

• Ideally, I have found that it’s best to address the rack with the cue ball resting no further left or right from the head spot than half a diamond. This directs all the engery of your swing into the center of the rack.
• I like a compact stance, with a lot of my weight shifted forward onto my front foot and bridge hand, and my bridge arm will be severly bent bringing everything closer to the cue ball. My back hand should be hanging right under my elbow in this position.
• I keep my bridge hand 8-12 inches away from the cue ball, which allows for a longer stroke to generate the power I want.
• On the final stroke, preparing to strike the cue ball, I will dig my fingers tightly into the pool felt, rock my weight backwards to my rear foot (allowing my bridge arm to extend to compensate), before lunging forward into my stroke and follow-through. I will also try to twist my hips into the swing, sort of like a golf-swing or batter’s swing. Ideally, all of this becomes a whip-like motion, where speed and energy are multiplied exponentially as they travel from your rear foot, up through your body, down along your arm, and finally released through the tip of the cue stick.
• Finally, I make sure to grasp the butt of the cue stick very tightly, as if I’ve made a fist and am trying to actually punch the cue ball instead of hit it with the cue stick. This tight grip will help add some of my own mass to the mass of the moving stick, traferring massive energy.

When done properly, at its most extreme, the stick strikes the cue ball dead center and level, at a very high velocity. The added mass from a tight grip + the high velocity whip that is created should feel like striking a boulder, and whitey will have no choice but to rocket off towards the rack at an incredible speed.

Reckless use of this technique will do many things… The dangers:

• Miscueing and missing the rack.
• Miscueing and chipping the cue ball into the air and across the room.
• Driving down on the cue ball, jumping it into the rack and then off the table.
• Hitting the cue ball off center, or out of alignment, and thus hitting the lead ball thin, or hitting some other part of the rack instead of the lead ball.
• Busting up your back hand when you apply this advice poorly and actually wind up punching the table for real instead of the cue ball metaphorically.

This is a style designed for maximum power at maximum risk of failure, and requires a lot of control of your own body. You can, and should, take aspects of this and ‘downgrade’ them so that you maintain more control – at the loss of some power. You will still have great results from your breaks.

A great way to begin practicing it is to just rack and break over and over again, starting sort-of slow motion at first. Then as you begin to get comfortable, ramp up your speed a little bit each time. Find you maximum comfort threshold and try not to cross it come game time.

Second on the list is breaking 8 ball in such a way as to generate good safety play. Here, running out is not desired, probably because a player is aware that he is not skilled enough to run out from the break, and does not wish to give his opponent the opportunity to do either.

This is an unusual approach, not frequently adopted. Yet I can say that I have personally known one individual to whom this became the favored approach. He was an above average player in my pool league who had more confidence in his ability to duck-and-cover than to run out any given table. Since he had already decided that he was never going to be able to break and run a table, he also decided that he was not going to ever give his opponent the chance to do so either. He was a crafty middle aged fellow I’ll call Bobby G., and you’d be surprised how successfully he utilized this strategy.

Now, the 8 ball break rules for our league (and this is pretty standard wherever you may go) required that at least four balls from the rack must get to a rail in order for it to be considered a legal break. If this didn’t happen, a mis-break was declared, and the opposing player had the choice of whether to claim the break for himself or let the first player break again.

Nobody thought much about this rule as anything but a fail-safe for a loose rack or a mis-hit… until Bobby G. began his routine of soft-breaking. When people realized what he was up to, they began to make darn sure he really got four balls to a rail. And when he didn’t they made extra-sure to take the break for themselves instead letting him re-break it himself (which was often the case in a friendly league: “Aw, just break again Bobby, s’all good.”).

There seems to be three favored ways for soft breaking pool games in 8 ball:

• The first is to shoot straight on at the lead ball with a gentle stroke an a lot of topspin. Shoot with enough force to drive four balls to the rail, and use enough topspin to force the cue ball to keep nudging forward into the front of the rack. When done right, the cue ball become stuck at the front of the rack and hopefully frozen to a ball or two. Also, only four or five balls have popped out and to the rail, and nothing had enough energy to actually advance past the foot string, so an incoming player has nothing to shoot at, and no easy way to play a lock-down safety either.
• A second method is to break from a side rail, and shoot towards the middle of the foot rail with a draw stroke. If done properly, the cue ball’s spin will allow it keep nudging into the back of the rack after it makes contact – similar to the first example, but applied to the back of the rack. Also, again, only four or five balls have popped out of the rack and reached a rail, and anything else that does break loose remains above the cue ball near the middle of the table such that the incoming player has nothing to shoot at save an awkward safety shot.
• The third method is something similar to a straight-pool break, except the rack has to be hit in such a way as to drive four balls to the rail, instead of 14.1′s required two balls to a rail. This break is a little riskier in terms of getting a legal break plus landing a safe position with the cue ball because of the difficulty of controlling the speed of the cue ball. Ideally, the cue ball travels via one or two rails back up to the head of the table and comes to rest on or near the head rail, or very near one of the corner pockets. Also, the four required balls have reached a rail, and hopefully there are no easy shots available from a full table-length away.

Bobby G. pretty well mastered the first two kinds of soft-breaks listed here. And he rarely worried about getting precisely 4 balls to a rail and no more, or even about the occasional times his opponent found a shot, because the soft break, overall, still limited a strong player’s chances to run out the entire table. What these breaks did for Bobby, was give him the opportunity to return to the table two or three times with regularity.

With no quick run outs available, opponents would have to settle for snapping in only a ball or two before running out of easy choices. More often than not, they’d try some risky break-out attempts or extremely low-percentage shots instead of spending the energy needed to approach the table methodically. And when someone did try to play back at Bobby with their own safeties, they were always at a disadvantage. Their impatience and frustration would often get the better of them, and their lack of experience with safety play would give Bobby G. plenty of advantages to work with.

Bobby G.’s style of breaking, and methodical style of defensive play worked out great for him because he got to control the pace of the game. Remember this was an amateur 8 ball league. Even the best sharp-shooting players were still somewhat undisciplined, and often lacked a good knowledge of how to play solid safeties, and how to get out of them. Even though he still lost plenty of his games, it was always due more to just being unable to capitalize on the advantages he had created for himself (and less about losing because his opponent never gave him the chance to shoot). He knew he was playing the best he could, and the smartest he could, giving his skill level.

The final style of 8 ball pool breaking involves attacking the pool table rack at one of the two balls in the second row, behind the lead ball. This is done in an attempt to pocket the 8 ball in a side pocket during the break. There are many league systems out there that reward a pocketed 8-ball-on-break with a victory for the breaking player. Such a victory is very valued to some players, who either enjoy the high-risk, high-reward thrill of breaking like this, or who believe that breaking in this manner will give them the best possible chances to beat a greater-skilled opponent.

I’ll have more on this discussion later, and continue into breaking 9 ball and straight pool breaks as well…

How People Are Finding Us

• best way to break in pool
• how to break in pool
• best way to break pool
• best way to break at pool
• best way to break in 8 ball pool
• the best way to break in pool
• pool best way to break
• how to break pool
• play pool
• straight pool break shots