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- 🎱 Fix Your Stance, Fix Your Game
🎱 Fix Your Stance, Fix Your Game
Stance fundamentals, pool as a science, and Filler shows his skills
Madison Gazda
September 04, 2025
Welcome back to Stroke of Confidence—your weekly dose of pool wisdom. Hope everyone is enjoying September so far.
This week we’ve got some important tips regarding an often overlooked factor when you miss a shot: your stance. It’s not a flashy topic, but it’s one of the most important parts of your game.
This week’s topics:
Dialing in your stance
Science over superstition
Josh Filler takes on an impossible drill
Let’s dive in:
Taking a stance
Finding your ideal pool stance isn’t about copying pros. It’s about building something that actually works for you. The right stance gives you stability, consistency in your aiming, and helps your stroke stay straight and repeatable. If your stance is shaky or awkward, everything else falls apart. You’ll miss shots and not understand why. But when your stance fits your body and supports your mechanics? That’s when your game levels up fast.
The goal is to feel grounded, connected to the shot, and able to do the same thing over and over. Here are some tips to help you get there:
Know your dominant eye – This affects where you place your head and how you see straight. If your dominant eye is off-center from the cue, you might need to shift your stance slightly to compensate.
Make room for your stroke – If your back leg, hip, chest, or even stomach is crowding your cue, your stroke won’t flow. If this is you, try stepping your front foot out a bit wider. That opens up space for the cue to move freely and helps your back arm swing straight without bumping into your body.
Align while standing up – Make your aiming decisions while you’re still vertical. Don’t crouch down and guess. Commit to your line, then drop into position with purpose. If it doesn’t feel right, stand up and start over.
Find what’s comfortable – Take note if you feel stress on your knees, back, or shoulders while down in your stance. If your stance causes discomfort, adjust it immediately. Comfort = consistency.
Film yourself from different angles – What feels “straight” might not be. A quick front and side video can reveal bad habits—like cue tilt, head misalignment, or inconsistent drop-ins—that you’d never catch otherwise.
Your stance is personal. When you nail the sweet spot between comfort, alignment, and repeatability— you’ll build a foundation that keeps your aiming sharp and your stroke consistent. Check out this video below from Dr. Dave. It walks you through how to find your personal best stance, supporting better aim, visual alignment, and consistency.
KONLLEN Pool Cue Extension
Sometimes a few extra inches is all you need on a shot. The KONLLEN Pool Cue Extension is a simple, solid tool that gives you just enough reach to make long shots or stretch shots way more comfortable. This has helped me out of a few jams since I started carrying it.
Why I like it:
Instant reach – Attaches quickly to the butt of your cue to give you extra reach. Perfect for shots where the cue ball ends up in no man’s land.
Lightweight and balanced – Made from carbon fiber, so it doesn’t mess with your stroke or make the cue feel back-heavy.
Size and brand compatibility – The extension is available in a variety of lengths. I got the 8” version. It also comes with multiple butt-end thread options to fit a variety of cue brands.
Easy to pack – It’s compact and fits in most cue cases without taking up much room. Great for travel and league nights.
Downsides:
Minor adjustment period – Even though it’s well-balanced, it might take a few racks to get used to the slightly longer feel.
If you want an easy way to add reach without sacrificing feel or control, this one’s a smart pickup. Especially handy for anyone who hates using a bridge. Grab it here:
*Buying through this link helps support the newsletter at no extra cost to you.
Finding the real reason
One of the biggest mental traps in pool is falling for advice that sounds deep but doesn’t actually help. You’ll hear players toss around phrases like “don’t think so much” or “play like you’re practicing.” They’ve been said so many times that they start to sound like truth. But as Bob Fancher explains in Pleasures of Small Motions, a lot of the mental game advice out there is just superstition in disguise. It might feel helpful in the moment, but it doesn’t give you anything solid to work with.
When you approach pool as a science and not superstitions, your mindset starts to shift. You stop saying “I always do that” and start paying attention to what’s actually happening and why. Instead of trying to force your way through a slump or hope your “feel” comes back, you start testing and asking better questions.
Here are a few shifts to think about:
Instead of “just focus harder,” try noticing what actually pulls your focus away during the shot.
Instead of “trust your stroke,” ask whether your setup and tempo are consistent from shot to shot.
Instead of “don’t overthink it,” focus on building a clear pre-shot routine you can rely on under pressure.
Instead of “stay positive,” try being specific—what exactly went well in that rack?
Instead of “I knew I was gonna miss,” look back at what thoughts crept in before you pulled the trigger.
Instead of “I just wasn’t feeling it,” track your warm-up and rhythm to see what was missing.
The point isn’t to overanalyze every little thing. It’s to get better at seeing what’s real and what’s a myth. A missed shot isn’t bad luck or some mystery you’ll never solve. It’s feedback. It’s information. And when you treat it that way, you make real progress.
Filler the Killer
Josh Filler just made the impossible look easy. In a recent video, the former world champ runs through a brutal 15-ball drill that would trip up even top-tier pros.
If you don’t know Filler yet, this is a great introduction. He’s one of the most dangerous players in the game today. Filler’s resume speaks for itself. World Nine-ball Champion. U.S. Open winner. Multiple-time Mosconi Cup MVP. We could go on all day. He’ll go down as one of the best to ever pick up a cue. If you want to see elite-level discipline and execution in action, this is the clip to watch.
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That’s a wrap on this week’s issue. Pick one thing from today, take it to the table, and try it. That’s how this stuff sticks. Confidence and consistency comes from repetition and intention. You don’t need to do everything at once. You just need to keep showing up and stacking small wins.
