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"Effects of Side Before and After Ball-to-Ball Contact"

This is indeed an expensive mistake for any class of cue man to make, although it is not at all likely to be noticed by a man to whom a twenty-five or thirty break is something of an event.

It invariably begins to make itself most unpleasantly evident when forty or fifty breaks are made once in a way. Then the deviation of a side-laden cue-ball causes any number of critical strokes to be missed because the necessary correction in direction is not applied, and as such failures are generally ascribed to anything except their true cause, they become inexplicable to the uninformed, and for this reason alone put a stop to any further progress towards billiard proficiency.

This is part of the explanation of a problem I have had presented to me by innumerable pupils.

They come to me and say that they have been making twenty to thirty breaks for years and years, but never show better form although they play almost every day of their lives.

Then I explain to them that they must learn to swing a cue properly. That is the first and biggest part of their problem. Next, when they progress far enough to be taught something about what side really means, I have to tell them what I have already told you, which simply amounts to this-Unless you know exactly what you are doing when you put side on your ball, you are exceedingly likely to aim at one part of the object ball and hit quite another part, with break smashing results.