Ummm, kind of a broad subject.
Gear effect is always in play, I use it largely to my advantage when frozen to or even near a rail. I don't know how many hundreds of times I've been off just a hair and had the object ball spin itself into the hole and save me.
I don't usually concern myself with throw on the object ball because I don't see it as an issue to my game. I guess I've never paid attention, but I will now. I have a Predator Z shaft that decreases deflection but I have noticed that I throw the ball a lot harder for some reason. Maybe it's my imagination.
After thinking a little bit I feel like it's probably almost impossible to throw an object ball far enough out of whack to miss a pocket under most normal circumstances. Some spin does transfer from the cue ball to the object ball but it seems to me that it wouldn't matter unless there was extreme english and you were slow rolling the entire length of the table. At that point I'd question also the consistency of the roll of the table (more often than not the issue in these parts).
Just my $.02
