The Diamond System

Most of the time when someone steps inside the local pool hall to begin a friendly, or not so friendly game of billiards, he is not expecting to use arithmetic to try to win the game. However, the best players in the game of billiards have mastered what is known as the diamond system. The diamond system takes advantage of the way that most billiards tables are constructed, using the designed marks on the table to create a system for how to make a shot.

The dots that align the outsides of the table are usually numbered and by using these numbers you can determine the way a shot will break. For instance, if you aim for the first spot on the third rail the ball will then hit the seven spot on the first cushion. This simple use of arithmetic makes it where a player can gauge a shot by simply observing how the table is set up prior to shooting the shot.

The shooter usually works backward on the shot, seeing how it would need to be hit to go into the desired pocket. This diamond system takes time to learn and must be perfected to be able to get the most out of the process. So learning how the ball must come off of the nearest cushion to the ball allows the shooter to work backwards to figure out how he or she needs to hit the cue ball to make the shot happen.

Finding out how to use the diamond system doesn’t happen overnight or definitely through one short article summarizing the idea. You must learn the geometry involved in how to hit a shot and master the use of the invisible grid that lies on the billiards table. Nobody will be there to tell you how to hit it, but it has been proven for years upon years that this diamond system does indeed work.

There is a three-cushion shot that utilizes three sides of the table, a three or four cushion shot, a five or six cushion shot, and another very popular three or four cushion shot. These are the most commonly used diamond system shots that can be found regularly and easily found on the internet or in a local bookstore. Use these first and master them before getting more complex at the billiards diamond system.