Pool trick shots: seven you can actually learn
Most pool trick shots you see online are set up for a camera. Twelve balls in a row, a bridge made of cues, forty attempts edited down to one.
These aren’t those. These are seven shots that look impressive, take about an hour each to get the hang of, and — this is the useful part — will actually win you frames.
1. The plant
Hit one ball into another, and pot the second one.
The white touches ball A, and A knocks ball B into a pocket. Also called a combination.
The trick is that you aim it exactly like a normal shot, just twice. Work out where A must be struck to send it at B correctly, then work out where the white must strike A to send it there.
Worth knowing because a plant is often available when a direct pot isn’t — your target is buried, but one of your other balls is sitting right in front of it.
Watch out for: errors multiply. A tiny miss on the first contact becomes a big miss on the second, so plants get hard fast as the balls separate. Keep them close.
2. The bank
Off a cushion and into a pocket.
The ball goes into a rail and comes back out the other side, into a pocket you couldn’t reach straight.
The geometry is the mirror trick: imagine the pocket reflected through the cushion, as if the rail were a mirror and there were a second table behind it. Aim at the reflection. Angle in equals angle out.
Watch out for: it isn’t a perfect mirror. A cushion takes speed off the ball and grips it a little, so real banks come back slightly shorter than the geometry says. Hit them a touch firmer than feels right, and expect to adjust after a few attempts.
3. Follow
Hit the white above centre and it runs on through the contact.
Strike the white above the middle and it’s already rolling forward faster than it’s travelling, so after it hits a ball it keeps going in the same direction.
Useful because it’s how you get the white down the table to your next ball instead of leaving it stranded where the contact happened.
4. Draw
Hit the white below centre and it comes back to you.
Strike below the middle and the white spins backwards while it travels forward. If that backspin is still on it when it hits the object ball, the white reverses.
This is the shot that makes people watching say “how did you do that”, and it is much easier than it looks. Two things matter: hit it low and hit it cleanly. Backspin dies quickly, so draw works best over short distances.
Watch out for: hitting too low. Get under the ball and the cue slips off the bottom, which is a miscue and usually a foul.
5. Side spin
Hit the white left or right of centre and it comes off cushions at a different angle.
Called “english”. Put spin on one side and the white grips the rail differently: one side comes off shallower than it went in, the other kicks wider.
Useful for getting the white round a ball that’s in the way of where you need it next.
Watch out for: side spin also pushes your aim off, because the cue is no longer striking through the centre. Learn to pot reliably without it first.
6. Two balls, one pocket
Both go down together.
Line two balls up so they’re both running at the same pocket, one behind the other. Strike the back one and the front one drops; the back one follows it in.
This one is nearly all setup — if the line is right, the shot plays itself. Which is exactly why it is worth spotting on a real table: sometimes two of your balls are already sitting like that and nobody notices.
7. The long safety
Not flashy, and the most valuable shot on this list.
When there’s nothing on, don’t hit and hope. Roll the white gently until it’s tucked behind one of your own balls, where your opponent has no clear line to anything of theirs. They foul, and you get the white in your hand.
Frames are won by people who take this shot and lost by people who don’t.
Where to practise them
You need a lot of repetitions, and you need to see where the ball went.
Chalkwick is free pool in your browser with no download and no account, and three things about it make it good for this specifically:
- A practice mode with no rules and no fouls. Set the balls up, take the shot, take it again.
- A spin dial, so follow, draw and side spin are all one drag away — and the balls carry real spin, so draw comes back because of physics rather than because somebody scripted it.
- A guide line that shows where the white will go and where it will bounce, which is the fastest way to learn what a cushion really does. Turn it down as you improve.
It also has rooms that are round, bent into an L, or with a post in the middle of the felt. Once you can bank on a rectangle, try banking on a circle — the mirror trick stops working entirely, and you find out how well you actually understood it.