i've been playing billiards since elementary, high school, college.. i now own a house and has an 8-ft billiard table.. my cousins that started the same time i played are now very good players.. somehow i never really improved.. i'm an ok player..

my level is i can pocket 3 or 4 balls consistently.. i never got to the level where i can pocket 1-9 balls despite playing for many, many years..

i guess i dont have the talent coz i've seen some become really good in a span of 1 or 2 years..

anyone here like me, who just dont have the talent despite playing for many, many years and get easily surpassed by beginner players with talent..

What kinds of things do you struggle with?

If you're missing shots, do you keep a mental inventory of what side of the pocket you miss on? If so, maybe you need to start trusting your mental side and adjusting your aim to make up for typical misses.

If you're missing when you add spin then you also need to ask yourself what side of the pocket you're missing on and figure out what that means for your aim.

Make sure you stay down on every shot and learn from every miss

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)

enter lots of tournaments.. you are bound to get better

you arent doing the right practice. just knocking balls around nver gets you better.

spend an evening just hitting balls two feet from the pocket and hitting the exact center of the cueball so it stops exactly and doesnt move after it hit the object ball. after you can do that every time hit it a fraction lower and draw it back an inch or so. and continue until you can get the cueball exactly where you want it. also do the same going forward.

after that you can experiment with other shots and improve quickly to a good players speed. but until you can control the cueball and make your hit on the object ball clean you can never get much better. and it is so easy if you just work on the basics.

Dude . You are at a level at which depend heavily mentally. Put emphasis on game strategy and learn to concentrate fully . Just so that you become a very good player ! P.S : Not once do not think that you miss . Good luck !!!

i have got the same phenomenon. it may be just because of my rare practice. Dont worry man, keep persuing ur passion

nope it is a practice thing not mental. thats a lame excuse people use.

as in golf you cant hit your driver straight 270 yards if you cant first hit your nine iron straight.

good comparison. Fundamentals in both games are so important. It's funny when guys ask me how to improve their touch around the green. It's all about consistently solid, proper contact. How can you hone feel if your not sure how solid you are hitting hit? In golf especially, you see the best players hitting 200 3 foot, straight in putts. Everything flows from the fundamentals. Poker too.

alongside practice, almost certainly your technique will be horrible which will cap your improvement, watch youtube videos on how to stand, how your cueing action should be etc.

then like others have mentioned, practice lots, but learn practice routines, knocking balls around will only get you so far, you need to become proficient in making easy pots, then medium difficulty pots and then start learning how to position, this should allow you to get past the 3-4 ball runs and into clearing up.

yep as with the golf analogy the guys you see playing once or twice a week on the course and complaining how they cant ever get into the low 80,s and shoot 90, are the ones you never see on the practice tee or green putting or hitting balls for hours.

Concentrate fully, that must be the hardest thing to do.

I've been playing 5 days a week( 2-4hours a day) for the last 2 months now, and after a significant improvement i seem to be going backwards the last few weeks. Half of the time I am playing alone so it's starting to get boring.

At the moment when I practice I don't practice any particular shots, I am just playing trying to get the easy things correct(no point practing the difficult things if i cant do the easy things consistently), on my day i'm pretty good, but lately I seem to be getting worse the more I play. I know mostly it's to do with concentration.

How long do I need to practice until I know I've reached my peak, 6-12months? I know 2 months is nothing, I plan on playing in a league in Norway next year, there is Div 2, Div 1 then the Elite, someone at our club said they will write me a letter to get me in Div 1 because I am to good for Div 2, I have played some of the players and they are good, I can beat them but I don't think I am capable of beating 3/4/5 in a row. I will see how i fair in this league next year and if i can compete I will really try hard for a few months to practice and improve.

Anyway I have rambled on for a while now, any advice on fun good ways to practice alone? I am still getting used to the weight of the balls and how they react, my position isn't anywhere near as good as it is at snooker or normal 8ball pool

I had the exact same problems when practising alone, i got bored too, routines didn't even become too easy, i just didn't really care.

I think when you start the league, your concentration/drive will change, right now you have nothing to practise for other than the sake of doing it.

Playing matches will give you an idea of your ability too, if you lose every match there will be determination to improve and practise will have meaning.

As for reaching your peak, once your technique is great in every area then it will come down to form. Honestly, idk when that will be, but the harder you try in every training session the closer you'll get.

Fwiw, I'm not sure if this is a good approach or if others do it but i try to always be aware of what the weakest aspect of my game is, whether its long pots, positioning, cuts, playing safe or w/e and work on that more than anything else until its as good as other areas of my game.

Spending time watching videos/reading books on technique will also make training more fun, you have new things to try/learn and they take time.

Just before xmas it all came together for a few days, I played this one guy in the morning and I didn't play well but after he left all of a sudden I couldn't miss, then I played some guy where it's normally close between us and I won 7-0 7-2 7-1, and I then played like this for the next 3 days.

I had planned to go home for xmas but I really didn't want to stop playing, I've not played now for 2 weeks, back practicing sometime today, I feel it's going to be frustrating and might time some time to get that form back, my first tournament is 8 days so need to practice a lot from now on