I've started and aborted this entry several times. I know what I want to say but actually putting it into words has proven to be a lot tougher than it should be.

Back when I first started to learn how to bank, I don't know why, but I adopted what I'll call the object ball overlap method of aiming.

I just learned the various banks in terms of how much of the object ball to hit. For some banks it was a half-ball, for others a nearly full hit. Whatever.

Take the shot above for example. I learned that making this shot required a full hit with a touch of inside english.

Of course speed is important as well.

What I never really paid attention to is where the object ball should hit the cushion.

This is the exact opposite of my method for shooting all other shots. In 9-ball, 8-ball, one-pocket, or whatever else, driving the object ball at a specific target has always been my primary objective.

In the shot above I couldn't give a rat's ass how much of the object ball I'm hitting. I think it's about a third of a ball, but I could not care less. My goal here is to drive the ball into the pocket.

This difference in the way I approach the shots has been causing a big problem for me as I change from one game to another, and I've spent a lot of time trying to settle on a specific approach. One that would work equally well for any shot.

For the longest time I've tried to work the overlap approach into games like 9-ball. Sometimes I've had good days, but more often I've had pretty shitty ones. I stuck with this approach for so long because it worked for banks, and in my mind banks were always the tougher shots. If the overlap approach worked for those shots then, dammit, I should be able to make it work for easy shots where you're just cutting a ball into a pocket.

Well it's time to admit that I was wrong.

Bank shots are not harder, they're just different.

So what I've been doing lately, what's been keeping me so busy practicing that I've been neglecting this 'blog so much, is completely rebuilding my approach to bank shots.

I spent a week, an entire week, playing nothing but 9-ball. I never banked a ball. This was tough, but I needed to redevelop my old method of approaching a shot. I needed to work on driving those object balls at a target instead of just hitting them where I thought they needed to be hit.

That week, as I expected, did wonders for my 9-ball game.

After a week I started practicing banks again. I forced myself to always pick a target on the cushion and drive the object ball to that target.

At first, as I expected, my banks sucked giant donkey balls.

But then something pretty cool started happening.

I began to relearn the bank shots. The balls started going in. They're still going in.

And the really great thing, the thing I was hoping to accomplish with this, is that I can switch from banks to 9-ball to straight pool to whatever, and my game does not suffer. I'm using the same approach - the same style - with every shot I shoot.

I am becoming an all-around player, which is something I've never been since I started banking.