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The Rail Nurse (Part 2)

© Copyright 2003, Jim Loy

Here I tried to run a few points at straight rail, using The Rail Nurse. My cue ball is the yellow ball.

1. I started in a nearly ideal position and shot a rail nurse shot (the red ball went to the rail, and the white ball moved a little to the right in the top frame of the diagram).
2. In the second frame, the cue ball is a little far outside the other two balls, and I chose a double kiss. I shot the red ball to the rail and back, where it kissed the cue ball into the white ball, moving the white ball to the right, and leaving a similar shot.
3. I chose the same double kiss, and again left a similar shot.
4. I chose an interesting multiple kiss. I just shot into the red and nudged the white. The red came back and kissed both balls, knocking them apart slightly. The result looks nice.
5. This looks like a nice rail nurse, but I think that the white ball will move too far outside (farther from the rail than) the yellow ball. So instead I shot softly between the balls, moving the red to the rail, and the white moved a little farther from the rail.
6. Here I can use The Chuck Nurse, which I wanted to shoot relatively hard. My idea was to move the red away from the rail, and have my cue ball glance off the white and end up outside both balls, so that I might be able to get back to a rail nurse position. That's probably dangerous, as I might have moved the white too far away. In this position, if the red ball were farther to the right, I might try something similar by hitting it thin with some right English, and glance off the white ball.
7. I shot a little soft on that last one, and left another chuck nurse shot. I may now shoot a couple more chuck nurse shots, and see if anything promising develops. I'm not sure that I can get back to a rail nurse position.

One thing that we might learn here is that double kisses can be very useful. Most of the above shots involved double kisses. Even the multiple kiss of shot #4, which may be somewhat unpredictable, can be very valuable.

I only shot one true rail nurse shot here, but the first five shots can be called rail nurse shots, as they are similar, with double kisses thrown in. In Europe, a sequence of several rail nurse shots in succession is called the American series.

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