Stance

As long as you are well balanced, stance is not as important, in my view, as it has often been made out to be. We are human beings, not automatons, we are all different and, as in golf, everyone does not develop the same stance.

I don't believe any two players in professional snooker adopt the same stance but they can achieve the same objective, which is to cue straight and true. It is not essential to put your front foot here and your back foot there. You don't have to have your elbow behind the shot and you don't have to grip your cue in a certain manner.

With regard to stance I would go along with the old traditional line only as far as bracing your back leg, leaning forward and bending the front leg in order to move into the shot.

A player's weight needs to be distributed so that his body does not move as he swings his cue arm but other than that I forget about stance and concentrate on getting the cue through along a straight line.

The stance should be so firm that if anyone tries to push the player off balance, he would waver not to the left or right or backwards but only forwards.

What you need to do is to put the cue on line and then, whichever eye you are going to favour, right, left or even sighted, you will adopt a stance which is natural to either left, right or both eyes to drop naturally over the cue.

When you get down to play put your cue on a straight line to your intended shot and place your body to the cue rather than putting your body in place and then your cue to the body. Even player who do not do this now will find no difficulty in changing.

I would say that 99% of players operating this method get down until their cue is just brushing their body so they feel the cue is in a familiar place. It is reassuring to feel that you are using the same set-up every time. This is what we are after: consistency, the hallmark of class.

In his book Understanding Billiards and Snooker, Jack Karnehm says: "It is important that, when approaching your shot to find the line of aim, you place your feet correctly in the standing position before getting down on the stroke. If you face the shot front on with feet astride, you will either be off the line when you get down or off balance, allowing unwanted movement or sway to upset delivery of the stroke."

This theory has been disproved by the current generation of leading players.
There is no need to struggle for some `text book' position, standing at right angles to the shot and twisting the top half of the body to line up the shot.

The artist's impressions here are of Steve Davis. He won world titles using both feet positions.

Remember also that the further the cue-ball lies into the middle of the table, the more a player has to lean over to reach it. This inevitably brings the body face on to the line of the shot. If a player can play face on when he has to, he surely can when he has the choice, when he does not have to reach over.

Players should not be bound by principles generally laid down in previous books. If need be, they should experiment and find out if they can achieve their objectives in other ways. What suits one player will not automatically suit another.