dominant eye what is the best way to test it????

[vmax4steve]

I myself have no trouble finding the centre of the cue ball, I simply look at it and see where the centre is. I cannot therefore give advice on how this is done.

[swestlife]

I myself have no trouble finding the centre of the cue ball, I simply look at it and see where the centre is. I cannot therefore give advice on how this is done.

thanks vmaxsteve,,its hard to learn or improve quickly when you have no coach to help boost yout game to the next level..i hope i can learn more from this furom as a new learning snooker,its hard to find a snooker coach here in phillippines hope you can help me more like proper grip and pause at the back swing

[j6uk]

hi swestlife, i find the baulkline helps with overall alignment,and its also really good for training your cue-action
here i demonstrate:

for more checkout this thread: http://www.thesnookerforum.co.uk/boa...ghlight=cueing

[Nic Barrow]

hello snooker forumers i want to ask what is the most and effective way to test a dominant eye..i do some test like pointing my thumb/index finger to and object about 6feet away and i notice that i cannot block the small object in my right or left thumb/index finger i use but when i close my left eye the object is totally block with my right or left thumb.....i would like ask what is the best way to check my cue if it is straight when i down in the shot..my cue is in the middle of my chin sometimes slighlty to my right chin just slight it could be the reason why im not so consistent in my potting..im right handed and i change may boxer stance since im playing pool i change it in square stance coz i want to try the snooker stance style..please help me thanks

The first question to ask is:
WHY do you want to find your dominant eye.
Whenever someone asks me this I always feel very nervous they are about to follow the worst coaching advice it is possible to give, namely:
Find your dominant eye and place your cue directly beneath it.
People / coaches who suggest that dont understand that 10% of the time, the 'dominant' eye is actually the WEAKER eye of the two.
If the brain wants to favour an eye when sighting, it will almost always select the STRONGER rather than the DOMINANT one.
Have a look at this video which has prevented a lot of clients making the 'cue 100% under the dominant eye' mistake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXEzWmhm5z0

[itsnoteasy]

Nic, do you think if you place your cue on the line then let your eyes place your head naturally on the line, you should be ok? Or is there more to it, I don't understand your choice of term vision centre, unless it means what looks correct to you, by moving slightly side to side then settling on what looks right.
Do you think not picking the right line is a big part of missing shots for the average player ,or is it more down to cueing technique.

[Nic Barrow]

I DO NOT say middle chin

what is the right way is the cue under the dominant eye or like nic barrow says cue must be middle chin?

I most certainly DO NOT say you must be middle chin with the cue.
Read any of my posts in the last two weeks and you will see that ;-)

Every player has their own optimum vision centre which suits them to see the ball the best.
There is a simple test to find this out in the Aim Frame online videos.

But 80% of players get it right naturally.

[Nic Barrow]

Nic, do you think if you place your cue on the line then let your eyes place your head naturally on the line, you should be ok? Or is there more to it, I don't understand your choice of term vision centre, unless it means what looks correct to you, by moving slightly side to side then settling on what looks right.
Do you think not picking the right line is a big part of missing shots for the average player ,or is it more down to cueing technique.

Yes it is a bit part - especially on angled pots and recognising the correct angle.
Yes move side to side until it looks correct as long as you are sure that the cue is staying on the line of aim of a STRAIGHT POT while you do so
Maybe anchor the cue in position on the line and dont touch it while you move side to side - that is the basic method but how to do this with complete accuracy in four steps is explained in further detail in the Aim Frame online video

[itsnoteasy]

Bit part or big part? Just checking.

[bricktip]

Using traditional "dominant" eye tests, my left eye is stronger. However, I am not a believer in forcing myself to sight under one eye just because a test says one eye, by itself, is stronger. I think the brain compensates somehow and it should be a natural position when down on the shot. However, an interesting test is to get down on the shot as normal and close each eye while looking at the white or object ball. It's really hard to figure out which eye is the stronger this way - the slightest movement changes everything.

Thoughts?

[tetricky]

There is a lot of confusion around. Dominant eye does not mean it's stronger. Your dominant eye is the one that your brain uses as reference for framing any view. It is the eye that your brain is using to pick the line of sight to an object. the other eye follows it.

It is nothing to do with the strength of vision in the eye.

If you identify your dominant eye in a certain situation, over a certain range then that's it. There is no debate. Your brain picks the line with the dominant eye and your stereoscopic vision provides other information like peripheral and distance perception views. Nothing to do with snooker. That's how your eyes work.

[Nic Barrow]

Eye strength

Using traditional "dominant" eye tests, my left eye is stronger. However, I am not a believer in forcing myself to sight under one eye just because a test says one eye, by itself, is stronger. I think the brain compensates somehow and it should be a natural position when down on the shot. However, an interesting test is to get down on the shot as normal and close each eye while looking at the white or object ball. It's really hard to figure out which eye is the stronger this way - the slightest movement changes everything.

Thoughts?

The brain will not always be able to compensate for cueing under the wrong vision centre.
Easier and quicker and better will be to compensate the head to the correct position where the eyes can see a straight shot for a straight shot.

That test of closing both eyes independently reveals nothing about your preferred / dominant eye or eye strength, so serve no purpose.
To test eye strength you have to read text of different sizes from the same distance, one eye at a time.
Knowing which eye is stronger, or dominant (one does not equal the other and you can have one eye stronger and the other dominant) is also irrelevant to knowing your vision centre.
When you are on a straight shot, and have your head in the position that it looks like a straight shot, then you have your vision centre.
Nic

[Nic Barrow]

Eyes

There is a lot of confusion around. Dominant eye does not mean it's stronger. Your dominant eye is the one that your brain uses as reference for framing any view. It is the eye that your brain is using to pick the line of sight to an object. the other eye follows it.

It is nothing to do with the strength of vision in the eye.

If you identify your dominant eye in a certain situation, over a certain range then that's it. There is no debate. Your brain picks the line with the dominant eye and your stereoscopic vision provides other information like peripheral and distance perception views. Nothing to do with snooker. That's how your eyes work.

Are you saying that you have to cue under the dominant eye - even if that is the weaker eye of the two?

[tetricky]

Are you saying that you have to cue under the dominant eye - even if that is the weaker eye of the two?

No, I was saying very clearly that is how your eyes work, nothing to do with snooker. There are many variables in the sighting process, and many things that can affect what one person sees as being different from another. When you "sight" a snooker shot, it seems to me that you are doing a number of things. You are using stereoscopic vision to judge depth of view for when to time hitting the ball. You are using your peripheral vision to help your brain calculate the contact point based on the destination of the object ball (otherwise why would hitting into a blind pocket be a more tricky shot?). For these things the dominant eye is a moot point. You are not drawing a line of sight, your brain is constructing the space for you, and using experience to interpret the visual cues. This is where practice makes perfect.

Where your dominant eye does come strongly into play is when it is mentally drawing the line of aim. Think of an archer, or a sniper. They draw the line of aim by being as close to the line of delivery (cue, in the case of snooker) as possible with their 'sighting' eye. They may even close the other one. This is to avoid a parallax error, and to look as closely down the line of delivery as possible. The closer to the line of delivery, the more accurate.

Now in snooker we know that we use these other characteristics. Depth perception, peripheral vision, spacial awareness/mapping. Two points of vision (eyes) are extremely beneficial to help the brain provide this spacial mapping. The distances involved (compared to a sniper) and the inconsistencies of delivery (compared to an archer launching into different environmental conditions) are small in snooker, and generally snooker players do their utmost to minimise them. This may be such that a parallax error may not be the defining factor in shot success (or failure).

Experience (practice) may teach your brain to compensate, in a variety of situations, for the parallax error such that you can make the shot. The peripheral and depth perception/vision may become more of a loss than the parallax error. Much practice, and a rock steady technique, may eliminate the need to aim 'perfectly' because with the spacial mapping your brain learns what to do.

There may be circumstances where perfect (or perfectly corrected) vision, good peripheral vision, and minimised parallax error, is the ideal condition. For me that's vision corrected contact lenses, good peripheral vision and spatial awareness, and I find that dominant eye over the cue works best for me. Bear in mind that even over the cue there is a parrallax error with your line of aim, and the cues line of delivery. This might contribute to not hitting the middle of the ball, amongst other things. I have astigmatisms that make the pockets, out on the side of my view, actually appear to be in a slightly different position than they actually are, but you learn to correct that with practice (a complication is that it changes for me between prescriptions, so i don't bother with astigmatism correcting contact lenses).

You can practice hard, and learn to make pretty much any setup work. What you can't do is change how your eyes work. If you have a dominant eye in those circumstances, then the line of aim will be determined by the dominant eye. That's what a dominant eye does.

[vmax4steve]

Where your dominant eye does come strongly into play is when it is mentally drawing the line of aim.

You can practice hard, and learn to make pretty much any setup work. What you can't do is change how your eyes work. If you have a dominant eye in those circumstances, then the line of aim will be determined by the dominant eye. That's what a dominant eye does.

I agree with this, I have a dominant left eye, I cue under it, this is natural to me, I don't have to think about it at all.
I play wearing specs, when my eyes are tested the optician does two things, test both eyes independently and both eyes together. What I end up with is two eyes that are equal, two eyes that work together but still my left is dominant in every aspect.

What Nic calls the vision centre is the place between the eyes where the brain sees only one cue, as we have two eyes we have two sources of vision and our brains decipher the images recieved to make only one.
In snooker sighting we need not only both eyes open for depth and spatial but also only one as there is only one cue to place on the line of aim.

The brain chooses one eye for this, but needs both for everything else so even though both eyes are open only one is used for sighting along the line of aim. When the chalk test is done to determine eye dominance, you can clearly see two fingers, only one of which is pointing at the chalk, the other is outside of the chalk and there is a clear space between the two fingers you can see, and there are also two cues seen when playing snooker though you are only aware of one as the brain shuts the other one out.

What is evident to me is that you cannot aim along the space between as there is no cue there, you can cue along the line as seen by your dominant eye or you can cue along the line as seen by your submissive eye, if this is the line chosen by your brain when playing snooker. One eye or the other looking along and placing the cue on only one line while the other does the depth and spatial stuff.

I was watching Liang quite closely this weekend, he moves his head when getting down into the stance so that his left eye looks to be finding the centre of the cue ball, but then gets his right eye right over the cue when looking along the line to the object ball, his eyes do not go back to the cue ball at all once his right eye is over the cue.
Does he find the cue ball with his left eye and the line with his right ? could very well be, or simply a quirk that he has when getting down into his stance, but that movement of his head happens every time so it's of significance and worth a thought to others who have trouble with finding the centre of the cue ball.

[Nic Barrow]

Good post

No, I was saying very clearly that is how your eyes work, nothing to do with snooker. There are many variables in the sighting process, and many things that can affect what one person sees as being different from another. When you "sight" a snooker shot, it seems to me that you are doing a number of things. You are using stereoscopic vision to judge depth of view for when to time hitting the ball. You are using your peripheral vision to help your brain calculate the contact point based on the destination of the object ball (otherwise why would hitting into a blind pocket be a more tricky shot?). For these things the dominant eye is a moot point. You are not drawing a line of sight, your brain is constructing the space for you, and using experience to interpret the visual cues. This is where practice makes perfect.

Where your dominant eye does come strongly into play is when it is mentally drawing the line of aim. Think of an archer, or a sniper. They draw the line of aim by being as close to the line of delivery (cue, in the case of snooker) as possible with their 'sighting' eye. They may even close the other one. This is to avoid a parallax error, and to look as closely down the line of delivery as possible. The closer to the line of delivery, the more accurate.

Now in snooker we know that we use these other characteristics. Depth perception, peripheral vision, spacial awareness/mapping. Two points of vision (eyes) are extremely beneficial to help the brain provide this spacial mapping. The distances involved (compared to a sniper) and the inconsistencies of delivery (compared to an archer launching into different environmental conditions) are small in snooker, and generally snooker players do their utmost to minimise them. This may be such that a parallax error may not be the defining factor in shot success (or failure).

Experience (practice) may teach your brain to compensate, in a variety of situations, for the parallax error such that you can make the shot. The peripheral and depth perception/vision may become more of a loss than the parallax error. Much practice, and a rock steady technique, may eliminate the need to aim 'perfectly' because with the spacial mapping your brain learns what to do.

There may be circumstances where perfect (or perfectly corrected) vision, good peripheral vision, and minimised parallax error, is the ideal condition. For me that's vision corrected contact lenses, good peripheral vision and spatial awareness, and I find that dominant eye over the cue works best for me. Bear in mind that even over the cue there is a parrallax error with your line of aim, and the cues line of delivery. This might contribute to not hitting the middle of the ball, amongst other things. I have astigmatisms that make the pockets, out on the side of my view, actually appear to be in a slightly different position than they actually are, but you learn to correct that with practice (a complication is that it changes for me between prescriptions, so i don't bother with astigmatism correcting contact lenses).

You can practice hard, and learn to make pretty much any setup work. What you can't do is change how your eyes work. If you have a dominant eye in those circumstances, then the line of aim will be determined by the dominant eye. That's what a dominant eye does.

I agreed with everything you said until the last paragraph.
I have found that if a player favours one eye after having confirmed their vision centre (which depends on a number of factors that only the brain knows how to amalgamate), it is usually because one eye is stronger than the other. If both eyes are of equal strength, then I have found it very unusual for a player's vision centre to be under one eye.
Players misinterpreting the meaning of 'dominant eye' is one of the biggest reasons for frustration that I see and helping people sort out that mess has paid for my car I would say! Usually players who are in knots in this regard have listed to the 'cue under your dominant eye dogma' and paid the price for it.
What they dont realise is that in 10% of players, the dominant eye is WEAKER.
Conversely I have seen great players with very poor vision in one eye who still cue centrally in the chin.
It is fascinating seeing the variation.
I dont know how anyone's brain favours either eye if at all, and i have no dogma around this - it is just about letting the player's brain find the vision centre, and then 'set and forget' it so that they can then work on and concentrate on angle recognition.