The Corner Five System

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When someone steps inside a local pool hall to begin a game of billiards, either friendly or not so friendly, the player does not expect to use mathematics to try and win the game.

On the other hand, the best billiards players are experts on what is known as the corner five or the diamond system. It takes advantage of the way that the majority of billiard tables are made by using the designed marks on the table to create a system for how to make a shot.

The dots that line up the outsides of the table are usually numbered and these numbers are used to determine the way a shot will break. For example, aiming for the first spot on the third rail will let the ball hit the seven spot on the first cushion.

This simple use of mathematics makes it possible for the player to gauge a shot by just observing how the table is set up before making the shot.

The shooter typically works backward on the shot, seeing how it would need to be hit to be able to go into the desired pocket.

The diamond system takes time to learn and must be perfected for the player to get the most out of the process. Learning how the ball must come off of the nearest cushion to the ball permits the shooter to work backwards and figure out how the cue ball needs to be hit to make the desired shot happen.

Finding out how to use the diamond system does not happen overnight or even by going through one short article that summarizes the entire 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 over the years that the diamond system definitely works.

There is a three-cushion shot that uses 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 popularly used shots in the diamond system that can be regularly and easily found in books and on the internet.