Pure Pool

In my opinion this is the hardest achievement in the game, so it's gonna be tough! Just like the other career modes you will need to beat all the matches down the middle to progress to the final of each round. When you win the 5 finals, the career will count as complete. The side games are optional but you will need to play some of them to earn enough stars to unlock later events.

The main difference with Master mode is that there is no aiming assist at all. This makes it incredibly hard to tell where the cueball and object ball will go. Nevertheless, I have a few tips which should help.

-Remember to play as tactically at all times. i.e. leave balls over pockets for as long as possible, if you don't think you can pot anything then try to make it difficult for the opponent.
- The AI can still not see plants, so if they have a cluster of balls together near a cushion, leave them there as long as possible to make it tricky for the opponent.
- VERY IMPORTANT - the game will always line you up dead straight with your next shot. This can make some very long pots much easier. If you can, always try to leave the cueball in a position which will give you a nice straight shot on the next ball.
- Get used to using the fine aim by holding . This is good to use when a shot is slightly off straight and only minor adjustments are needed.
- Try to keep control of the cueball as much as possible, make sure you are comfortable judging the pace of screw shots to help you keep position.
- For Killer Mode, I personally chose to miss the first shot on the break, which meant the computer also had no shot on. They will usually gently break them up, leaving you both with 2 lives. After that you can sometimes pot a ball and leave it in a position which is impossible for the AI. If you can pull all that off it leaves it 2-1 in lives to you which should make it a lot easier to finish.
- Practice! After a while you will get used to judging where the white will go, and it becomes very rewarding to pull off some tricky shots with no assistance at all.

I've added a video showing my final match in the career mode. This clip demonstrates a few of the tips I mentioned, like covering pockets and using the fact it always leaves you straight on the next ball. I know every game is different but this should just help give the general idea.

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or tips you could also add to the guide. This is a tough achievement and worthy of the high TA ratio, good luck to all who go for it

Madison Williams is an enigma. Some may call her a hacker. Others think she is a psychopath. How else can you explain the way Williams plays?

Madison Williams is like no other. Her skill is unfathomed, like nothing the billiards world has ever seen before. She will attempt that one degree slice from across the table instead of an obvious safety shot (and she will pot that one degree slice, every time!). She will make fantastic impossible four-rail kick shots to escape snookers. And she plays every single shot with the perfect amount of power: teasing her opponents in a sadistic, tortuous way by making them think she's going to scratch, only for the cue ball to stop a single millimeter before dropping into the pocket.

If billiards were entirely skill, Madison Williams would be the world champion every year. Unfortunately, when it comes to strategy, Madison Williams was dropped on her head as a baby. She fails to understand even the simplest combo shots ("plant shots"), she'll never intentionally pot her opponent's balls even when it's the correct strategy to do so, she'd rather attempt an impossible-looking five degree slice than a simple bank shot or kick shot, and she often leaves herself bad position on future shots.

This juxtaposition between skill level and strategy level is one that has never been observed before -- not in billiards, nor any other sport -- leading some to speculate strange conspiracy theories about the origin of Madison Williams. Biotechnology? Witchcraft? Extraterrestrial Life? Regardless of the cause, this perplexing style has earned Williams the nickname "Mad" Madison Williams.

One thing is for certain: No matter how small the angle -- if there's a direct line from the cue ball to one of Madison William's object balls, and a direct line from that object ball to any pocket, there is approximately a 97 in 100 chance that Madison Williams will successfully pot that ball.

Okay I'm gonna stop faffing about now and get down to business. Beating Madison Williams will take a lot of practice. There's no way to cheese the angles since there's no top down view in this game. You really just have to practice a lot and get a good feel for the angles and cue ball. A high degree of skill is required, but even more important is strategy. You probably aren't going to be able to out-skill Madison Williams, so you need to know how to exploit Madison William's strategy.

About the skill, I recommend going to your local billiards club if you don't already have some experience with real-life billiards. I started practicing real life billiards a couple hours per week and in addition to it being a lot of fun, I think it also helped me finally take down ol'e Maddie. The reason I suggest this is because "aiming assisted billiards" is a completely different game than "no aiming assist billiards."

When you have an aim assist, you're encouraged to make really thin slices because you know exactly where you're hitting the ball. And you're discouraged from making bank and kick shots because you *don't* know exactly where you're hitting the ball. You never have to worry about things like position or cue ball control because most of the time you can just use the aim assist to get out of a poor situation.

But in "real" billiards, it's the opposite. Sometimes you just have to go for that bank shot or that kick shot, and that will give you the best likelihood of sinking your object ball. For this reason, aiming-assisted billiards is actually a really bad stepping stone to no-aim-assisted billiards. In fact, it may even be detrimental because aiming-assisted billiards builds bad habits and bad foundations. That is my number one tip. Forget everything you learned about billiards from aiming-assisted billiards and learn some real billiards theory: go to a club and play with experienced players, watch videos of billiards online, read about billiards theory.

Next, we need to exploit Madison Williams' play style. The number one thing here is to use your object balls to block pockets. This leaves you with a really easy "out" to continue your visit if you ever accidentally leave yourself with bad position, and it will confuse Madison Williams and likely stop her from being able to pot most of her balls.

We don't want an open table. We want balls blocking each other. With an open table, Williams will run the table nine out of ten times. Don't smash your breaks. In fact, break as softly as possible while still getting at least four balls to the rail. This will give you your best chance of beating Williams.

Lastly, you're going to need a lot of luck. Williams must have beaten me over a hundred times in a best of 7 before I was able to beat her just once. If I was losing the match 0-1 or 1-3 I would restart, otherwise I would continue until the match finished. Good luck.