- Work on your stroke by trying to get your cue tip consistently into a coke bottle. This can be done at home without a pool table.
- Try hitting balls for an hour or two with a mud ball. If you can control a mudball cueball, imagine how much better you will be with a regular cueball!
- Use dumbbells regularly to build your arm muscles. This helps your stroke be more solid.
- Practice "Carom Nine" (see rules at bottom of this page). Helps you learn carom shots in a fun yet frustrating way, lol. (basically, the object ball must make first contact with the cue ball to count as a legal shot, the goal being to carom the object ball into a pocket or into another ball.)
- Don't shy away from the "non perfect" tables. Also, it's okay to practice on slow tables and fast tables every once in a way - after all, the conditions are different at different tournaments.
- While this isn't out of the box, this is a good time to remind people to work on your break. Practice it. Get it down pat. It's the opening shot - it's an important part of the game a lot of us don't give enough attention to.
- Speaking of breaks, practice your break using different racks - magic rack, accu-rack, and also regular wooden/plastic racks from the pool room. Especially pick a certain one when your next upcoming big tournament uses a special rack.
- Play snooker on a 10 foot table. Talk about a test! And then when you get back on an 8 foot table, you'll see just how small that platform is and you'll be at smiling the whole time.
- Play opposite handed. That's fun!
- Play one-handed. Even tougher!
Enjoy!
