As you progress from setup shots, there are plenty of other variables you can adjust to make a shot. Many relate to your stroke, such as stroke speed, spin, and elevation. You can also adjust your aim point. Even with all of these variables, the setup remains critical.

The easiest of these to explain is stroke speed, or how hard you hit the cue ball. This can change the reaction of the cue ball coming off the rail and the reaction of the object balls. The rebound angle tends to shorten up with a harder hit and throw is also reduced. Some trick shots even test stroke speed directly, such as trying to hit an object ball without knocking over a coin balanced on top of it. Further, stroke speed must be adjusted for when you play on different tables. If the cloth is worn and fuzzy, it will play slower and you'll need to hit the cue ball harder to travel the same distance as it would on new cloth.

Spin is another delicate adjustment. You can apply top or bottom (follow or draw) and right or left or some combination thereof. You can also apply different degrees of spin by moving the cue tip closer or farther away from the center of the cue ball. It's easiest to measure this using tip widths. Say you initially address the cue ball using a center ball hit. Then if you want to apply a little bit of left spin, you move the cue tip left so the right edge of the shaft is aligned with center of the cue ball. This is applying ½ tip of left spin or English. Similarly, if the right edge of the shaft is aligned where the left edge of the shaft was when hitting center ball, you are now hitting with 1 tip of left spin. Most cue tips are 13 mm diameter, but some cues can be smaller. Just be careful if you change cues. Different spin and degrees of spin change how the cue ball reacts coming off the rail. You can use this to adjust for differences in the way tables play.

Many shots, particularly jump and masse shots, require the use of elevation, or raising your grip hand so you're aiming slightly into the bed of the table. Different degrees of elevation will cause the cue ball to jump to different heights. It can be difficult to manually judge elevation. I like to use my bridge length (how far my bridge hand is from the cue ball) and height to help set the elevation.

Adjusting your aim point is relatively straight forward. A lot of it though depends on how precisely you can increment your aim. Aiming is often enumerated using ball fractions, such as a ¾ ball hit or ½ ball hit. Depending on how well you can visualize these aim points, you can break it up even more. Also, it may end up being easier to adjust your setup rather than your aim, so play around with both and see what works best for a particular shot.

For some stroke shots, such as fouette or whip shots, the cue ball must be placed within a balls width of the object ball, sometimes as precisely as 2 mm. Slight adjustments to this distance and to the cue balls alignment with the object ball will often wreak havoc on the shot. It's best in these cases to use a tool to measure the distance, such as a chalk cube, shaft width, or finger width to ensure repeatability.

Advanced trick shots are difficult and making the proper adjustments requires precision and diligence. Treat it like a science experiment and change only one variable at a time to understand how that variable affects the shot. Also learn how to change each variable in a quantifiable way so it's easier for you to remember how to do it again.