Eye Dominance, Sighting and the Cue

[nrage]

Stop worrying about how much change you have in one pocket or if your shows are tied properly and you have ten lashes few for one eye than the other. The reason you're improving is because you're playing more.

Many a true word is spoken in jest.

[pottr]

This all sounds ridiculous to me.

It's a bit convoluted, but it does work.

If you genuinely think that complex equations of thought and the flickering of one eye to the other is helping you push the cue through the white ball straight, then you really are half way down the rabbit hole my friend.

You are telling yourself what you want to believe based on your efforts. Very specious reasoning.

Look at the table,
pick your shot,
walk into the shot,
keep still,
push the cue through straight,

rinse and repeat...

I am yet to see my eyeball leap from my orbit and grip the cue for me and play a shot.

Terry's in the twilight of his snooker days and can still make centuries with one pissing eye!

Stop worrying about how much change you have in one pocket or if your shoes are tied properly and you have ten lashes few for one eye than the other. The reason you're improving is because you're playing more.

[nrage]

anyway back to the original point, i have changed the cue position under my chin quite a bit in recent months. originally i use to have it under my left eye which is my dominant eye, however its moved accross to the right side of my chin, i'm not sure why however it feels more comfortable there.

Stance has a lot to do with comfort where cue position is concerned. A squarer stance favours the right eye (if right handed) and a more side on stance allows left eye favour with comfort. I use a slightly side on stance to allow me to comfortably get the cue just left of my nose (right hander). The stance changes the chest position, and if you try to get the cue somewhere without looking at stance you can end up with the chest pushing the cue offline, or cueing across it.

[Particle Physics]

Terry, you are showing a test here to confirm which eye sights the correct line, the straight line to the brains view, but claim the preferred or dominant eye is complete nonsense, i know griffiths, frank callan, pj nolan, to name a few disagree, even nic barrow shows the cue on table test, moving the head to find the correct position for the individual, and in any test i have tried with players this has always coincided with their dominant. Two eyes can have the same prescription but in all but a very small % one of their eyes will dominate over the other to give the info to the brain, and in anybody i have asked about this(pros included), the more dominant eye is more over the line of aim. Even watch nic barrow using his own dartfish clips, when standing straight up before dropping down the visual line dissecting his body has one of his eyes closer to the line of shot than the other(small but still noticeable) .

Interesting stuff. I think I've found a way to cue centrally and sight properly, even with a dominant eye, at least on a pool table. Look at the angle standing up, get down with you cue under your chin and stare at the angle with your left eye (the wrong eye) for a second or two (with the dominant eye closed), then set the angle with both eyes open by resetting the cue the tiny fraction you need to according to what you now see with both eyes (you got down into position using the wrong angle with you dominant eye). It's a bit convoluted, but it does work. I'm guessing that by staring with your 'wrong' eye, the brain switches this eye on, and for a few seconds once you open your 'right' eye, you have true stereo vision, balanced. Looking at the shot after the 'right' eye has opened leads to a tiny bit of brain dizzyness, and that's down to your brain looking at something with both eyes for a change, and being slightly confused from the norm of predominantly one eye only. It seems to work. There is a second advantage; one is forced to do a pre-shot pause; which coaches advocate.

A variation is to stare at the potting angle with your wrong eye (dominant eye closed) before getting down for a few seconds, so the wrong eye switches on. You should line up the correct angle to walk into/get down on simply because your brain knows the angles whichever eye you choose. Just before you get down, you open the right eye, and you have true stereo, balanced vision. Once down, you may have to wait a second or so for your vision to reset. This can be speeded up by looking at the nearest chevron one can see on the cue. This doesn't involve resetting on the table surface, so may be less convoluted. There is still that slight feeling of fuzziness in the brain about what you see but this may dissipate once the brain gets used to this activity. I think that one could simply stare at anything before getting down, it's all about switching the wrong eye on, to sight the angle.

* I've just redone the finger test (which is valid for me). By staring at a cupboard handle in the distance with my wrong eye (non-dominant), then opening up the dominant eye, I can put my finger up and see two fingers either side of the handle. This suggests balanced sighting but with a lack of convergence. Not completely sure what this means.

I'll test it on the snooker table later and report.

[Manu147]

Usually, one very simple way to tell which eye you are using for sighting (and it might not be the dominant eye by the way) is to line up a straight blue and then close first one eye and then the other. From one of the eyes the cue will look perfectly aligned on the line of aim and from the other it will look to be to the side.

For me (right-handed, cue on centre-chin, but head turned slightly right) I know I sight with the left eye as it's the only one I can see clearly out of although before my eye surgery my sighting eye was always my right eye. If I close the right eye and look along the cue to cueball, object ball and pocket it looks perfectly aligned. If I close the left eye I am looking from the side of the cue and I can't tell where it's aimed at all.

I've never been even-eyed so I don't know what those lucky people would see but I assume one of their eyes will look perfectly aligned as I think the brain does select it's view from one eye only, with the other contributing for binocular vision for depth perception and spatial recognition.

Terry

Terry, you are showing a test here to confirm which eye sights the correct line, the straight line to the brains view, but claim the preferred or dominant eye is complete nonsense, i know griffiths, frank callan, pj nolan, to name a few disagree, even nic barrow shows the cue on table test, moving the head to find the correct position for the individual, and in any test i have tried with players this has always coincided with their dominant. Two eyes can have the same prescription but in all but a very small % one of their eyes will dominate over the other to give the info to the brain, and in anybody i have asked about this(pros included), the more dominant eye is more over the line of aim. Even watch nic barrow using his own dartfish clips, when standing straight up before dropping down the visual line dissecting his body has one of his eyes closer to the line of shot than the other(small but still noticeable) .

[Terry Davidson]

Usually, one very simple way to tell which eye you are using for sighting (and it might not be the dominant eye by the way) is to line up a straight blue and then close first one eye and then the other. From one of the eyes the cue will look perfectly aligned on the line of aim and from the other it will look to be to the side.

For me (right-handed, cue on centre-chin, but head turned slightly right) I know I sight with the left eye as it's the only one I can see clearly out of although before my eye surgery my sighting eye was always my right eye. If I close the right eye and look along the cue to cueball, object ball and pocket it looks perfectly aligned. If I close the left eye I am looking from the side of the cue and I can't tell where it's aimed at all.

I've never been even-eyed so I don't know what those lucky people would see but I assume one of their eyes will look perfectly aligned as I think the brain does select it's view from one eye only, with the other contributing for binocular vision for depth perception and spatial recognition.

Terry

[DandyA]

I think that the suggestion by DandyA is a good idea, and one that i will definatelly try, ill have to wait till i get home though, i'm on holiday in Egypt, havent found a snooker hall in Cairo yet, i'm really missing playing its been a week now.
Alabbadi

yeah, I think so too ... I was genuinely surprised, in the setup I described, how clearly I could see that depending where my head was, the line of aim looked left, right or dead centre ...

to save peeps having to check back thru the thread, here's my earlier posting we're talking about ...

I tried the following on the pub pool table tonight ...

cue butt resting on rail ... cue tip resting on a chalk ... cue pointing down the centre of the table ... cue ball nearly touching the cue tip ... object ball on the far cushion lined up perfectly straight ... I stood back and checked from both cue end and object ball end that everything was dead straight and the cue tip was dead centre of the cue ball ...

then I put my head above the cue as if I was holding the cue (I wasn't) and moved my head left and right to see what happens ... it's interesting - the shot doesn't look lined up dead straight apart from one position - in my case, with the cue just slightly right of centre chin ...

I know others have suggested this method by aiming a cue ball at the edge of a pocket leather but that's not what we ever play - I think my way is better because I'm looking at cueball onto object ball which is what the game is all about ...

thinking afterwards, it might be worth putting the cue butt on a chalk on the rail to give a more realistic height but I wouldn't think that would change the result ... and I could also try the object ball at different distances to the cue ball although I doubt that will make any difference - if it looks straight at the 15 inches or so I could get on a pool table, surely it will look straight at longer distances ...

so, as far as I am concerned, that proves where my sighting is best ... the bad news is that's where I normally sight anyway so it must be poor and inaccurate delivery causing me to miss sitters having said that, with my new found sighting confidence, I wasn't half potting some crackers tonight

[Particle Physics]

[QUOTE=alabadi;657915]I think that the suggestion by DandyA is a good idea, and one that i will definatelly try, ill have to wait till i get home though, i'm on holiday in Egypt, havent found a snooker hall in Cairo yet, i'm really missing playing its been a week now.

Happy hols mate, hope you're having a good one! Told you this would happen. lol

[alabadi]

I think that the suggestion by DandyA is a good idea, and one that i will definatelly try, ill have to wait till i get home though, i'm on holiday in Egypt, havent found a snooker hall in Cairo yet, i'm really missing playing its been a week now.

anyway back to the original point, i have changed the cue position under my chin quite a bit in recent months. originally i use to have it under my left eye which is my dominant eye, however its moved accross to the right side of my chin, i'm not sure why however it feels more comfortable there.

i'll have to do the test and check if this is the optimum position for me, because i think it is important for me to know once and for all which is the best position for me.

then i can concentrate on my technique rather than worrying about cue position

Alabbadi

[Manu147]

20/40 is widely accepted as the requirement for driving, 20/20 is what most opticians are trying to correct ur eyesight too, as this is regarded as what the average person has, but 20/40 vision means u can still read a no plate from twenty metres which ur instructor asks before a test.

[alabadi]

20/20 is very rare. Vmax, what do you think of the Dennis Taylor glasses, have you tried them?

i had bad vision in my right eye, however after lens corrective surgey i now have 20/20 vision or better , i asked my opthomologist what does 20/20 mean and he says these are the recommendations used for driving by the government.

then he said i have better vision than that, so i guess 20/20 is just a guideline for the eccepted vision for driving.

Alabbadi

[Manu147]

I think the point is being missed here, even players who are standing directly behind the shot are still subconciously choosing the line in which they see the shot best, this in 95% of cases is not in the middle of their two eyes, they may be using their two eyes while standing up aiming but when the head is dropped down it tends to favour sighting subconciously with the dominant eye, in a test on 15 of my local club players all who favoured one side of the chin or another to some extent, the side they favoured coinincided in all 15 cases with a simple eye dominance test i did with them all, in most cases they were unaware that they were favouring one side or another. From this it also explains why nearly all top players are favouring one side or another to some extent, and the reason most top coaches go along wuth this principle, so trying to play centre of the chin just for the sake of it, can lead to all sorts of sighting issues.

[Particle Physics]

I thought this might happen

Just make sure to only change one thing at a time: Your mind can only really concentrate on one thing at any moment, and also if you're trying to change several things at once, it won't be clear which change is actually causing the improvement/regression.

Lol. Your website and business looks quite interesting. Engineers are ok I guess.

[cantpotforshíte]

However, and Terry will do his nut in, I think I've found another change that may help my game. Eeeek!

I thought this might happen

Just make sure to only change one thing at a time: Your mind can only really concentrate on one thing at any moment, and also if you're trying to change several things at once, it won't be clear which change is actually causing the improvement/regression.

[Particle Physics]

[QUOTE=Particle Physics;657824]

Cheers buddy. It did feel like a release I must admit. I knew I could pot balls, especially after changing my sighting, so I was over the moon to do it in a match. It is easy to overanalyse things and didn't folk need different levels of analysis I guess. There's also the issue of using effective analysis, that leads to results, as opposed to just thinking about everything and making things worse on the table. That analysis can destroy confidence and enjoyment. One has to be careful to think about changes, where there's a belief that change could make things better. If not, leave alone.

You're right about not thinking about breaks and we all have this thing where the other player counts the break in our heads, so there's no pressure and expectation coming into play.

However, and Terry will do his nut in, I think I've found another change that may help. Eeeek!