I once walked into a pool hall and asked at one of the tables if I could get next. A pretty arrogant guy says to me:
Him: “What’s your skill level?”
I thought about it for a second and answered:
Me: “I’ll show you my level — by playing.”
Him: “Fine, get in line, but just so you know, you won’t last long at this table. Everybody here is a pro.”
I love people like this. They love to talk big, only to get shut up later and left looking like a fool in front of all their buddies.
While I waited for my turn, I got to thinking about something I want you to take away from this article: your skill level isn’t defined by what you say you are — it’s defined by what you’ve actually put in.
What Actually Builds Your Level
My skill level shows through the experience I’ve built up by:
- Doing pool drills every day.
- Practicing a wide range of game situations.
- Playing against people better than me.
- Surrounding myself with professional players, because they push you to raise your level.
- Pushing myself further with every challenge that comes up while playing.
- Losing plenty of games and reflecting on why I lost, which shots I missed, and how I could have played them better.
- Losing the fear.
- Staying in control when people make noise, talk to you before your shot, say things to distract you, or move their cue right in front of the pocket you’re aiming for.
Staying calm in those pressure situations is, to me, what separates one player from another more than raw technique ever will. That takes real mental strength and strong motivation to face everything that comes your way — and that’s not just true in pool, it’s true in life.
How to Know What Level You’re At
To figure out your skill level, look at your actual experience with the game — not at what you think you should be.
You’re a beginner if you don’t know anything yet, don’t know the basics, or hold the cue the wrong way. Further down you’ll find a free guide to fix that.
You’re semi-professional if you already know the fundamentals of pool, the main spins (top, center, and bottom), the secondary ones (left and right English), and the other topics covered in each level’s section (you’ll find them in the navigation menu).
You’re a professional once you’ve learned and gone past the two previous levels, won at least 1 major tournament, and genuinely feel like you are one. Even so, the work doesn’t stop there — you have to keep improving every day.
If your goal is to become a professional player, you need to go through that entire learning process, keep pushing yourself, and keep gaining experience through practice.
Losses make you stronger, so keep going, don’t give up, face your fears, and get out there and compete in tournaments to become number 1 — in your club, your town, your city, your country.
Back to the Story: My Turn Finally Came
First of all, don’t get nervous — nerves are what make you miss shots.
Take a deep breath on every shot, look at the table, and build a mental movie of how you’re going to run the balls and where you’re going to place the cue ball. This visualization technique isn’t something I made up — it’s something a lot of pool coaches recommend: mentally tracing out the entire shot before you execute it, including where you want the cue ball to end up afterward, not just whether you’ll pocket the object ball.
Okay, I’ve got the movie playing in my head. I chalk up, look up before getting into position, and picture each shot along with the spin I want on it.
I get down, get into position, chin grazing the cue. On the third practice stroke, I pull the trigger.
Bang! First one’s in, second, third…
The guy starts sweating and talking:
Him: “The first two were luck, you’re not making that third one — it’s too tough.”
The third one drops.
He starts making noise, moving his cue around, doing anything to grab my attention.
“Gamesmanship”: What This Is Called and How to Handle It
What this guy was doing to me has a name in pool: it’s called gamesmanship, or distraction tactics — and it’s a documented part of pool culture going back decades. It’s not something rare or specific to one particular club. The most common ones are:
- Talking to the player right as they’re about to shoot.
- Making comments about luck or difficulty to plant doubt.
- Moving around, or moving your cue, in the shooter’s field of vision.
- Making noise (coughing, dropping something, scraping a chair) right at the moment of the stroke.
- Rushing the player to shoot before they’re ready.
In my head I thought: nothing, none of it — none of that touches me, thanks to an exercise I built for exactly these situations. I focus in, and nothing distracts me. I keep picturing the balls moving along with where I want the cue ball to land.
If you’re ever in a similar spot and you’re not confident about making the shot: STOP. Look at the table, chalk your cue, take your time, think the shot through, and once you’ve got it clear, execute. Interrupting your own rhythm to reset works better than rushing your shot just to “get it over with” — because that’s exactly what the distraction tactic is designed to make you do.
When to Play Defense
Another thing that can happen if you’re facing a tough shot is to play a defensive shot — in competitive pool this is called a “safety.” It’s not cheating or playing dirty: it’s leaving the cue ball in a spot where your opponent doesn’t have a clear shot, instead of risking a miss on a difficult shot and handing them the table.
I have a friend who barely practices but wins a lot of games, because all he does is play defense: on every shot he plays safe so his opponent is forced to bank the ball or can’t hit it cleanly, and he only takes the easy shots when they come to him. That’s his entire strategy, and it works.
If you’re still learning, you can lean on that kind of strategy for now — it’s completely valid to rely on defensive play while you build up more control. That said, the ideal long-term goal is to learn how to place the cue ball using different types of spin, so you get to decide where it ends up, instead of depending entirely on your opponent not having a shot.
Accepting a Loss (and Why It Matters More Than You’d Think)
The guy didn’t know what to do anymore. When he lost, he made an excuse.
Making excuses looks bad — it’s better to accept the loss. Say something like “I need to push harder, practice more.” Not something like: “that was luck,” “it’s not my day today,” “it’s this cue’s fault,” “I left my glasses at home,” “I haven’t played in a while.”
Excuses hold you back and stop you from improving your game, because if the loss is never really yours, you’ll never actually look for what to fix. Accept the loss and congratulate your opponent — that’s one of the most satisfying feelings there is: shutting up someone arrogant who claims to know more than you, without saying a single extra word, just by playing.