The biggest enemy in any player’s game is the so called “kick”. A kick is when the cue ball fails to hit the intended object ball cleanly and changes the angle of the shot mid flow.
Modern technology has shown that when any shot is slowed down, the cue ball bounces on the baize multiple times before it makes contact with the colour. When a kick occurs, the cue ball deviates from the original angle and causes the ball to fail to hit the object ball cleanly. Therefore the object ball does not comply with the intended shot.
What causes a kick?
The truthful answer to this is no one actually knows. In the past when a kick occurred, players had the the cue ball cleaned by the referee as they believed that table fibres, cue dust, were on the cue ball and so had hindered the shot. However many instances have shown that when the ball has been cleaned , a kick still occurs.
Another theory is that it is caused by playing conditions. A match in the United Kingdom will differ from one in say China because of the humidity. To alleviate this, World Snooker introduced table heaters to heat the table slate to a constant temperature.
Many players have also changed their cue chalk, moving away from the traditional square chalk to a circular one, manufactured in Finland. They believe that this allows clean contact on the shot as less chalk plumes are produced when the shot is played. With the traditional chalk, marks are left on the table, causing the balls to be pick them up on travel.
Whether anyone actually finds out why a kick actually occurs is unknown but until this point damage limitation techniques will always be the desired way
