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"The "Six Shot""

This simple six shot will give you an invaluable insight into the action of "top," as it is called in billiard parlance. It possesses the peculiar power of giving your ball a fresh start after a thick contact with an object ball, and for this reason is indispensable when you have to play a long follow-through cannon. If the object-ball is fairly close, and your ball has to travel a long way to make a cannon by means of a follow-through, you cannot make your shot without the help of "top" and plenty of it. But it is so very difficult to control "top" with any approach to precision, that I advise you never to use it indiscriminately. If you can "get through" an object-ball by free cueing, and a central cue-contact with the cue-ball, by all means do so, especially when playing for a pocket. The six shot we are now dealing with for practice purposes is a little misleading in this respect. The pocket is as "open" as it can be, the balls are in true line, and it is easy to follow through into the pocket by striking

your ball high. But if the cue-ball were a little out of the straight line, and the red were closer to the pocket, you would be able to run through with much more certainty by using free cueing and central ball striking, a method which you should always adopt in such cases.