Traditional Straight Pool Opening Break Shot

Straight Pool (or 14.1 Continuous) is a game in which all balls must be called, even on the opening break. So, unless you are able to accurately predict what might fall and in which pocket on a power break, such as that made in the game of Eight-ball, you will need to master the most common and fundamentally defensive traditional opening break of Straight Pool shown in the diagram above. When executed "perfectly", each of the corner balls can actually end up coming back into the stack in the exact same positions they were in before you shot. Although it is not easy to do, and certainly you should not even expected it to happen each time you shoot it, I have achieved it myself from time to time. So, it is possible! Regardless of whether the "perfect" outcome occurs, what you can more commonly expect to have occur is what is shown in the diagram above, or perhaps even the diagram below where more balls come out of the stack. If you get something more like what is shown below, then you probably hit the corner ball too full which is easy to do on a table length shot such as this.

Even with this result, you have still left a difficult leave for your opponent, who must now either think of a safety play, or take a risky shot by trying to pocket the 11 ball in the lower left corner pocket.

Because it can be difficult to sometimes control how many balls will come out of the stack, the most important aspect of the opening break is that you must learn to get the cue back up table and as close to or preferably ON the headrail as shown. Focusing on placing the cueball on or as close to the headrail as possible will make any potential shots left for your opponent much more difficult to execute. This should be your main goal on the opening break!