Visit Forum

"Three Balls in Line"

ball high and freely and put on plenty of left-hand side to help it into the pocket. You must play almost dead full on the white to send your ball through to the pocket, but there is a little margin allowable in ball-to-ball contact which will send the white somewhat to the right of the red and kiss that ball out of the way. The margin is so very slight, however, that you can scarcely play for it. Your primary object is to send your ball through to make the losing hazard, and the exact contact with the red to kiss that ball away must be regarded as the next thing to an accident. If you think about trying for it, the odds are that you will miss the pocket. But if you do not think about it, there is always a big chance of it happening because you do not strike the object-ball absolutely dead full. If you do hit the object-ball truly in its centre, it will travel straight to the red, your ball will come sprinting after the two others, and "anything may happen," you may cannon, you may pot the red. From the foregoing you will see that the position shown in Fig. 78, is by no means so hopeless as it appears at first sight, and the stroke is worth practicing because slight variations of it are frequently playable. Oddly enough, many players never think of anything except some kind of cannon when the balls are left in these positions. They forget how easy it may be to use the first object-ball to knock an intervening ball out of the way to allow the cue-ball to enter a pocket. The same sort of thing can be done when the balls are not near a cushion. It is only a matter of using your judgment as to whether or not the first object-ball can be directed to clear the path for the cue-ball, and I advise you to keep your eyes open for opportunities of the kind in actual play.