Appendix B -- Drill Category Descriptions
Several drill categories are supported by ICATS, with different categories targeted at exercising different billiard skills. A description of categories and their intended purpose are below.
| Category | Description / Purpose |
|---|---|
| Aiming | Aiming drills work on ball pocketing skills from a variety of distances, cut angles and side/corner pockets. Fundamental to all billiards play is the ability to sink balls in a pocket. |
| Banking | Banking drills focus on making bank shots, with single and multi-rail variations. |
| Transition | A Transition drills' focus is to sink the object ball, with the CBall landing in a specific Target Zone. Transitions combine all the skills of Aiming, Speed Ctrl and Cue Ctrl drills, making them some of the most challenging drills and critical for superior play. |
| Breakdown | Pattern Breakdown drills are essentially a sequential set of Transitions. Thus they have all of the Transition drill challenges, packaged in a "runout" scenario. |
| Kicking | Kicking drills focus on kick shots, with single and multi-rail variations. |
| Safety | Safety Drills focus on another critical skill for advanced play. The goal is to hide either the CBall, or the key OBall (e.g. the next numerical ball in 9-ball), leaving a difficult/indirect shot for your opponent, and possible ball-in-hand for you. |
| Pattern | Pattern drills goal is to run a sequence of balls, attempting to clear the table. Patterns can be run in relatively easy "Open" (balls in any order) style, or more difficult "8-ball", "9-ball" and "14.1" styles. |
| Cue Ctrl | Cue Ctrl drills focus on being able to control the cue ball to make it follow a desired track. This involves skills in cueing (English and follow/draw), as well as judging carom angles off of the initial object ball hit. Skill in Cue Ctrl is critical for getting proper leaves, as well as for advanced play in breaking out trouble balls or separating 14.1 clusters. |
| Speed Ctrl | There is one "flavor" of Speed Ctrl drill. This allows you to practice your cue ball striking speed, to calibrate your stroke to the speed guidance in many ICA drills that contain the Aiming Ball speed indicator. |
| Various | Drills in this category don't conform to a particular skill, or are an "image" (JPG, PNG) that ICATS EZ can't categorize. |