English in pool: what side spin actually does
English is what pool players call side spin — hitting the white to the left or right of its middle so it spins like a top while it travels.
Two warnings before anything else. It does far less to the ball you’re potting than people think, and far more to everything that happens afterwards. And it will make you miss pots you were making fine without it.
(In Britain, “English pool” means something completely different — the pub game with red and yellow balls. That’s English pool rules. This page is about spin.)
The three places you can hit the white
The tip can land anywhere on the white, and where it lands decides everything.
- Middle — no spin. The white just goes where you sent it.
- Above or below middle — follow and draw. The white runs on through the contact, or comes back toward you. This is the useful spin, and it’s not english.
- Left or right of middle — english. This is the one everybody wants to learn first, and the one that should come last.
What english actually does
Here is the honest list, in order of how much it matters.
1. It changes the angle off a cushion. This is the real reason to use it, and it’s a big effect. When the spinning white hits a rail, the rubber grips the spin. With running side (spinning the same way the ball is already turning off the rail) it comes off wider and faster. With check side (the other way) it comes off narrower and slower, sometimes almost stopping dead.
So english is a steering wheel for the white after the shot. That’s what it’s for.
2. It bends your aim before the shot — deflection. Hitting off-centre pushes the white slightly sideways as it leaves the tip, away from where you aimed. The harder you hit and the further from centre you go, the more it pushes. This is why your pots start missing the moment you add side.
3. It bends the path a little — swerve. Because the cue is slightly raised, side spin makes the white curve gently as it rolls. Over a short distance you’ll never see it. Over the length of the table it’s real.
4. It does almost nothing to the ball you pot. People expect side to “carry” into the object ball. It barely does. Your ball goes where the contact sends it, near enough.
When to use it
Three situations, and outside them you’re just making the shot harder.
- You need the white somewhere specific after a cushion. You’ve potted the ball, and now the white has to end up behind a ball on the other side of the table. English is how it gets there.
- You need to come off a rail steeper or flatter than natural. Check side to kill the angle, running side to open it up.
- You’re playing a safety. Where the white finishes is the whole point of the shot, so spending accuracy on getting it there is a fair trade.
When not to
- While you’re learning to pot. Two errors at once and no way to tell them apart. Read how to aim in pool and hit the middle of the ball until pots are boring.
- On a long pot. Deflection and swerve both get worse with distance. On a long shot the pot is hard enough already.
- When you don’t have a plan for the white. If you can’t say out loud where you want it to end up, you don’t need side.
- On a shot you can play with follow or draw instead. Hitting above or below the middle steers the white too, and it doesn’t push your aim off. Always your first choice.
How to add it without ruining your aim
Start small. Move the tip half a tip off centre, not two. Half a tip does most of what you want.
Then learn your own deflection: set up a straight pot, add a little right-hand side, and watch which way it misses. It’ll miss the same way every time, by about the same amount. Once you know that, you just aim that much the other way. Nobody calculates this. Everybody learns it by missing.
And keep the cue as level as you can. A raised cue turns side spin into swerve, and swerve is much harder to predict than a straight push.
Where to feel it working
Reading about spin is useless. You need to see a ball do it.
Chalkwick is free pool in your browser with a spin dial — a little white ball you drag to say where the tip strikes. Drag it left or right and you’ve got english.
What makes it worth using for this: the balls carry real spin, and the cushions rub against it. The white bends off a rail because of what the spin is doing at the contact, not because somebody wrote a rule saying “if spin then curve”. So running side and check side behave the way they do on a real table, and you can watch the difference on the same shot twice.
Turn the rules off, put one ball near a rail, and hit it ten times with the dial in ten places. Ten minutes of that teaches you more than this page can.
Next
- Pool trick shots: seven you can actually learn — follow, draw and side spin, plus four more.
- Bank shot pool — cushion angles without spin, which you should learn first.