Snooker trick shots: doubles, trebles and cuts

The straight pot, and screw back

The black sits on its spot and the white is straight behind it, in line with the corner pocket. Hit the black full in the face and it goes straight in: there’s nothing to work out but the line.

What the white does next is up to you. Strike it in the middle (stun) and it stops dead. Strike it high (follow) and it runs on after the black, towards the same pocket: if it follows the black in, that’s an in-off, and a foul. Strike it low (screw) and it spins backwards, so it comes back towards you, as it does here. In the game, tap the little white ball beside the table, then tap low on the big one.

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The cut

Most pots aren’t straight. The black goes off along the line between the two balls’ centres at the moment they touch, so to send it into a pocket you aim the white at the spot just behind the black, one ball’s width back along the line from the pocket. The circle on the diagram is where the white is when they meet: players call it the ghost ball.

The thinner the cut, the less of the black you hit, the more speed the white keeps, and the less there is to spare: here it’s close to a half-ball cut, the black going off about 26° from the white’s line. In the game, the dotted line shows the ghost ball for you, and the wheel beside the table turns the cue a fraction of a degree at a time.

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The double

A double is a pot off a cushion: the black goes into the cushion and comes back out into a pocket. This one is a cross double, the commonest kind: the black crosses the table, comes off the side cushion and drops in the corner on the other side. In Trick Shot Snooker it scores 2: 1 for the pot and 1 for the cushion.

The rough rule is that a ball comes off a cushion at the angle it went in, like light off a mirror, so the black should hit the cushion halfway between where it is and where the pocket is. Real cushions, and the game’s, aren’t quite mirrors: the ball comes off a little wider, more so when it’s hit hard. That’s why the game draws the black’s line off the first two cushions the way the physics will really bounce it.

Doubles need a firm hit (here 80% of the power bar) and very little room for error: the window that scores is a fraction of a degree. Use the close-up in the corner, which shows exactly where the black meets the cushion.

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The treble

A treble is a pot off two cushions, and scores 3. Two cushions means two bounces to get right, and each one sends the black a little wider than a mirror would, so the error adds up: a treble is far harder to make than a double, and is mostly a trick shot. Coaches have a name for the classic two-cushion double into a middle pocket: the cocked hat.

Line up the first cushion as you would a double, then follow the guide line off the second. The game shows the black’s path off both, so the job is to find the aim where the second line runs into the pocket’s mouth, not its jaw.

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