A couple of weeks ago, I made 50 consecutive shots on the pool table -- and I haven't broken 40 since. It's a pleasant pastime, I find.
Now, if you are striking the cue ball in the center rather than putting left or right English on it, the ball it strikes will rebound off it according to the usual rule: draw a mental line between the centers of the balls at the point of contact, and that's the path the struck ball will take. The balls, after all, are hard, so there's only microscopic compression when they collide. But the cushions are another matter. They're not made of ivory or steel. They give. Also, when you strike a ball at an angle into the cushion, the struck ball will have a bit of spin on it, and that also affects how it will rebound. In other words, you can't just use mathematical angles to hit bank shots.
You have to go by your gut, then, and not just your brain. I find that when I'm judging a bank shot and I go by my brain, I miss, and almost always in the same way -- the ball does not bounce off the bank with enough of an angle. It comes short. So I'm teaching myself to trust my gut. I see with my brain a shot that should bounce past the hole if you hit it dead on, but my gut says, no, it's not going to get that full bounce -- so you should hit it HERE, and tell your brain to be quiet. Of course the brain is working, but it's working with a lot of experience, and not just by a simple rule. And I've been making a heck of a lot of bank shots, including some really impressive ones, with bizarre angles, across the length of the table. The gut is a reliable guide.
I think that somewhere in there, there's the difference between RATIONALISM and REASON -- at least what most Englishmen meant by REASON during the age of Dr. Johnson. RATIONALISM treats the world like a pool table and billiard balls, when, so to speak, even a pool table and billiard balls don't work that way. RATIONALISM gets mankind wrong all the time. You can say till you are hoarse that it SHOULD work, it MUST work, and by all that's progressive and rational it damned well is GOING to work, but the REASONABLE person who knows mankind will shake his head and say, "That's never going to work, and here's why."