Now that we have covered two-rail kick shots, let’s move on to three-rail kicks.
As with the one-rail and two-rail systems, the three-rail (or more) system works very similar. Use a known reference line, then use a spot in the distance for any cue ball position that can hit the same starting rail. For 3+ rails the distance to the spot becomes less and less of an importance. You can pick a spot varying many feet and still have good accuracy on the shot. As a rule of thumb, think one-table away for one-rail kicks, two-tables away for two-rail kicks, and three or more tables away for 3+ rail kicks.
Let’s try a fun example. Normally this shot would come across as very difficult, but with a little knowledge we can make this a high percentage shot.
NOTE: The cue ball travel lines are hand-drawn only for illustration. Do not take the points into the rails to be exact science, they are probably not correct. This is only meant to show the general path of the cue ball to the object ball.
Here the object ball (red) is buried. The only way in is a four-rail kick shot. How do we line this up? First, lets simplify this to a three-rail shot by estimating the spot on the fourth rail we want to hit. Let’s set our first ghost-ball there:
This should give us a reasonable hit on the red ball. Now, lets use the Magic Spot three-rail system to get ourselves a reference line to that ghost-ball. Let’s find a mirror ghost-ball, then find the path through the magic spot to reach our target ghost ball:
The blue X is our magic spot. Shooting through that spot will get us to the mirror ghost-ball, and consequently to our object ball. Now we lay our cue on that aim line, find a spot in the distance on that line about three tables away, and use that spot to aim with the cue ball.
Our cue ball should hit the fourth rail perfectly, and if our estimation was good, it should hit the object ball clean!
The spot kicking system is a great way to get fast, accurate results on kick shots. You only need a reference line to start with. You can use any kicking system you like to define reference points, the Plus System and Magic Spot are just favorites of mine.
Have fun, I hope this helps your game as it did mine!