PLAY YOUR BEST POOL: Secrets to Winning Eight Ball and Nine Ball

Phil Capelle's Play Your Best Pool is by far the most comprehensive book ever published on playing pool. The book's 442 pages reveal hundreds of secrets and strategies that can help improve your game regardless of whether you are new to the game or are on the verge of going pro.

A complete course on the fundamentals includes over 40 photos that demonstrate the correct stance, bridge, grip and stroke. A series of checklists shows you how to practice and evaluate your game. The next two chapters cover everything you need to know about aiming and shotmaking. Ninety diagrams demonstrate gamewinning shots including banks, cuts, combinations, billiards and caroms.

The pros make pool look so easy because they've mastered the art of position play. Play Your Best Pool shows you how to use english and then provides you with over 130 diagrams on all facets of position play so you can also learn expert cue ball control. Phil Capelle's 21 Principles of Position Play alone are worth far more than the price of the book. Speed control, natural position, how to plan for three balls at a time and down the line position are just a few of the principles covered in this section.

Your success at 8-ball and 9-ball, America's two most popular pool games, largely depends on how much you know about the strategy of each game. In two big chapters you'll learn all about offensive and defensive strategies that can help you gain control of the table and keep your opponent in his chair. You'll find solid advice on kick shots, safeties, pattern play, break shots and much more. These two chapters alone contain over 170 illustrations.

Developing a topflight pool game requires that you spend many hours at the practice table. Play Your Best Pool provides you with over 20 diagrams of practice drills and many other useful suggestions for making your practice sessions as fun and productive as possible.

To round out your complete course in pool you'll find chapters on the mental game, competition and how to improve that will tell you how to think like a winner and compete successfully in tournaments, leagues and money games.

Phil Capelle is a nationally recognized expert on playing pool. He has spent the last 30 years playing, studying and teaching pool and he is one of a select group of instructors to be certified by the Billiard Congress of America. Mr. Capelle has won numerous tournaments including a major Southern California 8-ball championship. His column appears monthly in Pool & Billiard Magazine where the readers chose him as the top billiard instructional writer.