How to Shoot Pool Like Fedor Gorst: A Data-Driven Study
Fedor Gorst is one of the top pool players in the world today. He is remarkably consistent and systematic in his routine and approach to every shot. Some call his style “robotic”, but we call it the perfect example to learn from.
In this blog post, we’ll analyze Fedor’s shots in detail and see what we can learn about how he plans and executes shots.
About Fedor Gorst
In case you’ve been living under a rock, here’s a quick introduction to Fedor Gorst.
Fedor burst onto the pool scene in 2019 when he won the World Nine-Ball Championship when he was only 19 years old. He has since won a steady stream of major events in all disciplines of the game including eight-ball, nine-ball, ten-ball, one-pocket, and straight pool.
2024 has been a banner year for Fedor with victories at Turning Stone, Derby City, the World Pool Masters, World Nine-Ball Championship, and the U.S. Open 9-Ball Championship.
Case Study: A Boring Shot Sequence
When pool videos go viral it’s usually because of something like this famous run by Chris Melling. Heroic shots like those are exciting to watch and Fedor can certainly pull those off when he needs to. But championships are largely won on the back of routine patterns executed flawlessly.
So let’s look at a boring sequence of shots that you won’t find on any highlight reels or viral videos. This clip is from Fedor’s match against defending champion Ko Ping Chung in the 2024 US Open 9-ball Championship. Fedor has a pretty easy shot on the 5-ball into the side pocket. None of the balls are tied up and this sequence is pretty routine for a professional player.
The pattern isn’t too difficult even for decent amateur players—but you just have to get a little bit on the wrong side of a shot or on a rail or a little too straight, and you’re in trouble and kicking yourself because you know you should have run that out.
At the top level, you simply can’t afford to blow chances like this, so Fedor approaches every shot with precision and care. He goes through a series of carefully choreographed steps that we can observe and learn from.
Phase 1: Planning
If you’ve ever taken a lesson or picked up an instructional book, you’ve heard the advice to think three shots ahead and to aim while standing up. Fedor delivers a masterclass in doing just that.
He plans each shot in three steps that we can see from his actions. First he checks the current shot, then walks over to the next shot, and finally walks back to the current shot to aim and shoot. Let’s talk about each step in detail and take an educated guess at what he’s thinking at each step.
Step 1a: Evaluate available options on the current shot
The first thing Fedor does is walk to the line of the current shot. This is just a quick glance. It’s not time to aim yet.
At this point he is checking the natural angle and evaluating the options available to him. How much speed will the cue ball retain? What is the natural rolling cue ball path? What about stun or draw? He is thinking about which of those options leads to the next ball with the least effort.
A lot of players would just get down and shoot from here. After all, they are already in the right place for the shot and can sort of guess where to leave the cue ball for the next shot, from where they are standing. But Fedor is still in the planning stage and is just getting started.
Step 1b: Walk to the line of the next shot
Fedor physically walks over to the line of the next shot almost every time, even on routine patterns.
A lot of lesser players might hand-wave about getting the cue ball somewhere over there. To be sure, somewhere over there would certainly be good enough most of the time, for a player of Fedor’s caliber. But actually walking over helps him add a level of precision to his game and avoid unforced errors.
It’s not too hard to make the purple 5-ball and roll forward to make the green 6-ball in the side pocket, but the devil is in the details. Getting on the wrong side of the 6-ball pocket line, leaving the cue ball on the rail, going too far and leaving too much angle all make the path from the 6 to the 7 harder. Fedor has a vast arsenal of recovery shots at his disposal to recover from situations like that, but relying on the big shots too frequently will cause errors to creep in.
Angles can be deceptive when looking from a different perspective, so looking at it from the line of the next shot really helps avoid pitfalls and dial the target zone in.
Step 1c: Walk back to the line of the shot
Now the plan is set, and it’s time to walk back to the shot line and begin the transition from planning to execution. At first glance there isn’t much to see here, but are a few details to observe.
Most of the time he walks right over to the shot line. On particularly difficult pots he will pause to look at the line from the object ball to the pocket, but it’s rarely more than a quick glance before moving to the shot line.
Watch him lock his eyes on the object ball as he walks towards the shooting position. He has a mental picture of what the shot should look like doesn’t want to lose that image by looking at anything else and getting distracted by other considerations.
When he arrives at the shot line, Fedor takes a good look at target before getting down into his shooting stance. Once down, you will never see any adjustment or sideways motion. Planning is done, aiming is done. Only thing left to do is deliver the cue as needed with accuracy and precision.
Phase 2: Execution
I painstakingly watched every shot Fedor took in this match to collect data on the number of practice strokes, pause, stroke time etc. Excluding break and jump shots (those shots require different technique and timing) Fedor took 101 shots this match. A few shots couldn’t be measured because the view was obscured or they switched camera angles mid-shot.
The data reveals just how consistent Fedor is with his shots. Let’s look at each step in detail.
Step 2a: The practice strokes
Like most players, Fedor takes a few practice strokes before striking the cue ball. Unlike most amateurs, he has a very consistent rhythm to his practice strokes.
Once he gets down into his shooting stance, Fedor swings his arm back and forth a couple of times to settle in. This “pre–practice stroke” helps him verify that everything is comfortable and warm his arm up for the shot. He pauses for a fraction of a second before beginning the actual practice strokes.
Although there is some variation in the number of practice strokes, they follow a consistent pattern. The first swing is the largest and each subsequent swing is smaller in size. The pattern makes me think of a ball bouncing on the floor and coming to a rest. This pattern naturally leads to settling down and pausing before the final backswing.
Amateurs tend to be all over the place with their practice strokes. Sometimes they take no practice strokes, sometimes they take a dozen. As you can see, Fedor is very deliberate and rarely deviates from the 2-5 range.
In fact, almost every shot where he took 6 or more practice strokes involved a particularly difficult shot—or one of the rare occasions where he missed a routine shot. More on misses later.
Shot | Strokes | Situation |
---|---|---|
Rack 2: 2-ball | 7 | Long shot with precision and power |
Rack 3: 2-ball | 8 | Long shot, precision power follow, CB on rail |
Rack 5: 9-ball | 6 | Straightforward 9-ball |
Rack 6: 1-ball | 7 | Long shot, cue ball near rail |
Rack 8: 4-ball | 6 | Long shot with precise speed (missed) |
Rack 12: 2-ball | 6 | Slow roll to small shape zone (missed shape) |
Rack 13: 2-ball | 6 | Long difficult shot. Some hesitation (missed) |
Rack 15: 8-ball | 7 | Routine 8-ball (missed) |
Step 2b: Pause between practice stroke and backswing
Beginners often go right from practice strokes to the final backswing with no real transition. Fedor has a very noticeable pause after his final practice stroke before he begins the backswing. He never skips this pause even under pressure from the shot clock.
On 90% of the shots in this match, the pause was between 0.4 seconds and 1.24 seconds. A pause of 0.4 seconds does not sound like a lot but it’s actually quite noticeable. On the other hand, there were zero shots where he paused longer than 1.4 seconds. A quick pause marks a decisive transition from practice strokes to shooting, but an excessively long pause allows distraction or indecision to creep in.
During the pause, Fedor’s body, eyes, arm are all perfectly still. If it wasn’t for the people moving in the background, you’d think this was a still image rather than a looping video.
It is truly uncanny how perfectly still top professional players like Fedor keep their eyes and body in the moments before they shoot. Videos don’t do it justice and you have to watch in person to really appreciate it.
Step 2c: Backswing and stroke
If you had to pick one thing that separates amateurs from professionals, it’s the quality of their stroke. As with other aspects of his game, Fedor demonstrates impeccable mechanics here.
Like many top players, Fedor varies the length of his the backswing to control the speed of the shot. These images were grabbed at the end of the backswing, right before the cue started moving forward.
Fedor pulls his cue back a varying amount, depending on the speed he intends to use. Regardless of the backswing distance, the time from the start of the forward motion to the tip striking the cue ball stays nearly constant. A short backswing translates to soft cue speed at contact and a long backswing gives fast speed.
I watched every shot frame-by-frame to measure the time the cue starts moving forward to the time it strikes the cue ball. The precision of measurement is a little bit limited by the frame rate of 25fps (40 ms/frame). The cue ball usually starts moving between frames. I don’t try to guess where in that 40ms the cue struck the ball, but just count the time from the first frame where the cue appears to move to the frame where the cue ball moves.
Remarkably of the 96 shots measures, 49 (51%) were exactly 7 frames (280ms) long. In fact, 75 (78%) were 6 or 7 frames (240-280ms). This is true across a wide range of shot speeds from a soft roll to a powerful force-follow.
When beginners are in an uncomfortable or uncertain situation you can often see their stroke break down as they rush shots or tentatively poke at the ball. Even the great Fedor Gorst isn’t completely immune from this tendency—although his deviations are measured in the tens of milliseconds.
Shot | Stroke (frames) | Situation |
---|---|---|
Rack 2: 4-ball | 4 | Shot clock pressure |
Rack 6: 2-ball | 5 | Stretching out, over a ball |
Rack 7: 7-ball | 5 | Stretching out, over a ball |
Rack 8: 1-ball | 5 | Hard shot, shot clock pressure |
Rack 8: 3-ball | 5 | Hard shot, shot clock pressure |
Rack 9: 2-ball | 4 | Long power draw |
Rack 15: 1-ball | 5 | Easy shot with ball-in-hand |
Rack 15: 6-ball | 4 | Difficult position shot, time pressure |
All but one of the shots involved extra difficulty or pressure. Even the easy shot in Rack 15 came after Ko had won several racks in a row so Fedor might have been feeling some pressure.
Even Fedor Gorst Misses Shots
Fedor missed five shots in this match. In all but one of those shots, at least one aspect of the shot deviated from normal. He either took a higher number of practice strokes or his final stroke was slightly tentative—keeping in mind that a tentative stroke for Fedor is only a few milliseconds longer than usual and looks better than the best stroke for us mere mortals.
Shot | Practice Strokes | Stroke (frames) |
---|---|---|
Typically 2–5 | Typically 6–7 | |
Rack 1: 8-ball | 5 | 9 |
Rack 8: 4-ball | 6 | 8 |
Rack 13: 2-ball | 6 | ? |
Rack 13: 3-ball | 5 | 7 |
Rack 15: 8-ball | 8 | 6 |
All but one all of those misses occurred on difficult shots, so it’s understandable that he took extra care with them or was feeling a bit of pressure during the stroke.
The missed 8-ball in the 15th rack of this match is an interesting case. It was a completely routine shot that would easily lead to shape on the match-winning 9-ball. But for some reason, the rhythm of his shot was shot was off. He seemed to hesitate halfway through the practice stroke and then continued to shoot without getting back up to reset.
We can’t know what was going through his mind. Maybe something felt uncomfortable. Maybe something at the back of his head said his aim was off. he Maybe it was the occasion—he was about to knock the defending champion out of the tournament. Either way, his rhythm was slightly off and he made his one true blunder of the match.
It’s interesting that even at the highest level of the game, missed shots are correlated with deviations in shot metrics.
Summary
To summarize, this is how Fedor Gorst approaches his shots:
- Planning
- Take a quick look at the shape of the current shot
- Walk over to the line of the next shot
- Walk back to the shooting line for the current shot while focusing on the desired cue ball - object ball contact point
- Execution
- Get down into a shooting stance while keeping focus on the contact point
- Swing the cue a bit to settle in and verify that everything feels comfortable
- Take 2-5 practice strokes, starting large and decreasing in size to transition to a pause
- Pause for 0.4-1.24 seconds and keep the eyes and body still. Never skip the pause nor make it too long
- Smoothly draw the cue back a distance proportional to the desired speed of the shot
- Smoothly accelerate the cue forward to strike the ball with consistent timing
If this seems slow and meticulous, keep in mind that Fedor was shooting with a 30 second shot clock here, and rarely even got to the warning beeps.
So What Can We Learn?
Fedor has his planning, pre-shot routine, and stroke all that down to a science, and there is a lot you can learn from him regardless of the level of your game.
Walking over to the line of the next shot will really help you plan ahead, especially if you are an intermediate-level player with a tendency to get down and shoot right away with only a vague idea of where you want to leave the cue ball. You can’t walk over to the next shot if you don’t know what the next shot is, so it will force you to make up your mind before you shoot.
A lot of amateurs tend to rush their shots when under pressure. Incorporating the “bouncing ball” pattern can help because it naturally leads to settling down before the final backswing and stroke.
It probably doesn’t makes sense to try to copy his stance, eye alignment etc. Your height, body type, vision center and other physical aspects are different from his, and you need to figure out what works for you. The end goal though is to the able to swing the cue freely in a straight line like he does.
It will take thousands of hours of practice to truly develop a stroke like his, but there are other aspects you can incorporate more easily. It’s not possible to know or control if you swing your cue forward in 240ms or 300ms, but you will devlelop a feel for what a good stroke feels like as you practice and observe.
Things will still go wrong because you are not Fedor Gorst (…unless you are! Are you reading this Fedor? Tell me if I got anything wrong!), but improving your process will improve your results over time.
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