It’s always satisfying to have a few tricks up your sleeve, right? In this billiard tutorial, Florian “Venom” Kohler provides us with three impressive, easy-to-learn trick shots to thrill all your friends, teammates, or even your pool crush. Pool is an individual sport, but sometimes it’s fun to show off a little or even set up these shots for a friend who’s new to the game. Master how to pocket up to four or five balls in one shot; or a gag shot to trick your friends into buying you a drink. Florian is THE trick shot guru. Press play to watch the magic or check out the transcript and visuals below!

Begin Transcript:

My name is Florian Kohler, also known as Venom. Here with me is Jamillette.

I'm a professional trick shot artist, so trick shots are kind of my job. Some of them are pretty easy and I think they’ll be great for you to impress your friends. .

Jamillette: I'm stoked about this part. This is where you make me look like a superstar.

Pretty much, yeah! We're going to try to show you how to impress your friends here. Sometimes some trick shots look very complex, but they're indeed very simple.

Trick Shot for Beginners to Make Four Balls in One Shot

This first one is the first one I ever learned, it’s called the 4-in-1 shot. So to do this, all you gotta do is put the 4-ball here in the middle, like if you're going to set up a rack. Then, you're going to take your cue and put it right in line with it. Make sure your cue touches the four, and then you put the 3-ball touching the four. It’s very important those two balls are touching, so make sure there's no space in between.

Beginner Trick Shot
When setting up the 4-in-1 shot, make sure the balls are touching with no space in between.

Florian talking through the 4-in-1 shot pictured above:

Now, the next step is, again, you're going to use your new knowledge about the diamonds, so you can put your cue here. You're going to find the diamond line, then you're going to kind of go the other way and try to find the diamond line here. So what I usually do is the best, so roll my cue here. Kind of like find the diamond line here, and then I'm going to go the other way and I look if I'm center with this diamond to the other diamond out there. So, now we're pretty good right here

Trick Shot set up with pool cue
Use your pool cue and the diamonds on the table to line up the ball's path to the pockets.

Next step is I'm going to set up the 2-ball. Again, I'm going to use my cue here.

Put it in the middle of the pocket, tip in the middle, cues on the side just like that. There we go. 2-Ball right here. So again they have to be touching. And you're going to repeat the same thing for the 1-ball, cue touching 1-Ball right here.

Alright, so that looks a little bit complex now. Got four balls frozen, two balls frozen to the cue ball, three here, four here. What do you think is going to happen?

So I'll tell you what's going to happen. You're going to make the one here, two here, three in the corner, and the four in the corner all in one shot.

Jamillette: Really?

So go ahead it's your turn. All we've got to do is take the cue.

Jamillette: Are you sure?

Put your recent knowledge into work.

Celebration dance

Clearly Jamillette was impressed with the 4-in-1 billiard trick shot.

Pocket Five Balls in One Shot Using Draw

Jamillette did pretty good on the first 4-in-1 shot, so we're going to raise the bar a little bit. This next one is slightly harder, so you're going to need to be a pretty good player already. All I really require on this shot is that you can do a little bit of a draw shot.

I'm going to show you how to set this up. It’s a little more complex. What I'm going to do is put a ball here so you can see the corner...here.

5in1 Trick Shot ball placement
Step one: Use two balls (any) for placing the one ball a width back from the edge or the side of the pocket and a balls width off the rail. Remove the other balls so just the one remains.

And I'm going to go one ball, and then I'm going to put another ball here, frozen to each other, and then I'm going to put the 1-ball right here. So they're basically staying, straight line, right here. Then we need to remove that.

The next step here is you're going to do two and three. You’re going to put the two and the three ball inline right here. But instead of being at the exact same spot as the 1-ball, which would be here, they're just slightly over it.

5in1 Trick Shot ball lineup
Step two: Position the 2 and 3 balls as pictured, with the 1 just inside the center point of the 3-Ball.

So you know to make sure it's OK. I go looking here in the one-ball, and I need my 3-ball to be going on this side of the 1-ball a little bit. It gets very complex to explain, but visually you'll see it right here with our graphics. So you got the one ball here. Three balls a little bit away. Two and three in straight line. So far it's pretty easy. Again, you’ve got to make sure you're touching all the time. So if there's a little gap in between, just make sure you tap the top a little bit. It's going to kind of put the fibers of the felt down and it's going to make it stay in that spot.

Now, the next ball is the 4-ball, so the 4-ball is a little harder to do. But again, it's got to be in a straight line. What I do is I'm going to use my cue as a guide again. So I'm usually putting the cue on the side and then putting the 4-ball. A misconception in this shot is that people think you have to aim the 3 and the 4 in a straight line into the pocket. But really it's not, it's aimed right here. So it's basically aim for the center of the 4-ball to hit right there.

Line up the four ball using pool cue
Step three: Line up the 4-Ball so it is aimed just inside the pocket as pictured to account for the throw effect.

The reason you do so is because there are a lot of things that happen in the shot, especially what we call the throw. The throw is when two balls are together and they're making a combo but you're pushing them and they're going to push them towards another direction.

Again, it's a very complex concept. We're not going to go in detail right here, just listen to what I say. Put the 2-ball in line and 3-ball in a side for balls to aim towards here. And we're good to go. Now, if you're really good already, we can add this ball here as an extra bonus ball, which is a 5-ball. Just hanging by the corner, really easy to do. And then, you’re going to put the white ball. I like to put my white ball right here. So it's below this diamond line, probably halfway. It's about as comfortable as you get.

Pocket five balls in one shot
Step four: Place the final ball in the corner and the cue ball slightly farther than a balls width from the rail. Hit the 1-Ball full on with lots of draw in order to pocket all five balls.

And so before we had the 1-ball, there was a ball away from the rail. So in this case you want it to go a little bit more so maybe like a ball and a finger away or something like that (for the cue ball). Sounds about pretty good. Really all we have to do on this shot is shoot straight to the cue ball into the 1-ball, the 1-ball is going to hit the left side of the 3, is going to carom at the 3 go in the middle, the 2 is going to go into the middle as well. Now, because of the way these balls are set up, the 3 is going to go in the corner, the 4 in this corner, and then because you put draw on the ball, the cue ball is going to come back and make the 5-ball right there. So I'm going to try and demonstrate that.

Just like that!

So if you can't make the same shot exactly, which means the cue ball isn't drawing all the way to it (the 5-Ball), you can still do the exact same shot. We'll set up the same way right here, just add an extra ball right there. Don't even have to worry about the five being here, just replace the five there. Do the same thing and you'll make at least four balls and it looks still really impressive.

PoolDawg Frank Frank Says:  "Fascinated by these trick shots and want to learn more? Check out Mike Massey's World of Trick Shots book, which inlcudes over 180 diagrams of 40 artistic pool shots!

So, now you have two really good, impressive shots.

The second one is going to require a little more for you, but it's a very good shot.

Classic 8-Ball Gag Shot to Win a Bet

So here’s a very, very classic shot about how to trick people in the bar or your friends if you wanna, you know, get a free drink. I'm going to set the two and the one right here, frozen to each other basically in the middle of the diamond here (on the back rail). We're going to put a ball on top of it. Make sure it stays, then I remove all the balls out here (on the rest of the table). The whole thing is about presenting the shot. So you’re going to go ahead and you’re going to be with your friend or anybody or you know just going to tell, “I bet you cannot hit the 8-ball first without jumping that ball.” What do you think?

Jamillette: I gotta see it.

OK. Well what happened here is again it's a very classic. You know they're very easy shots, too. Anybody can do that. As long as you can shoot in a straight line, you will make that shot. So I'm going to shoot the cue ball really slow and I'm going to let you see what happens.

Eight ball gag shot set up
Florian makes sure to hit the cue ball straight and with slow pace so that it heads right for the 8-Ball in this trick shot.

Again, the only bet here is to hit the cue ball into the 8-ball without hitting the solids. No jump, no foul, no crazy thing like that. Look at it...

Just like that.

Eight ball gag shot movement diagram
Smacking the table with your hand immediately after you hit the cue ball allows the 8-Ball to drop and the solids to separate, which will lead you to hit only the 8-Ball and win your bet!

You know, it's very easy to trick your friends and usually you get a free drink out of it

Jamillette: I guess we're going to have a lot of happy people now, free drinks on you.

Now that you know you have all the keys, just have fun with it. I wish you the best of luck in trying to impress your friends.

Again remember, if you want to see more, go ahead and check out my channel here. Subscribe to get more videos. And don't forget to check out Pooldawg.com for all your pool and billiard supplies.

* Video transcript has been modified for the reader.