How long did you train to make good throws?

I typically only run low on pokeballs if I’m not actively playing (not spinning stops, opening gifts, etc, and just catching what I see). I try to catch everything I see for the stardust and experience.

I started practicing throwing when I came back to the game in January/February, because I would tend to just throw the ball straight at the Pokémon. Now I only throw curveballs and usually try to hit at least a nice throw.

Curveballs and better throws increase your catch rate so you’ll end up wasting less. Try to practice on larger targets (raid bosses, slowpokes are out in abundance with this event), if your ball goes too far to one side just compensate. I remember trying to throw curve balls and it would just fly off to the corner of the screen at first, until I practiced more.

It’s definitely worth it! If you have an area with a lot of stops you could just walk loops and catch everything while resupplying

I’m going to assume you’re aware of the changing circle mechanic when catching Pokémon. To start, I would only throw balls when the circle is as big as possible, you will consistently hit nice throws. Obviously always aim for the middle, but once you get confident enough, start going for the great throw every time. This is especially easy on Pokémon with big circles i.e. Drowzee, Wailmer. Those Pokémon are also great to practice curveballs on, but I think once you start practicing, and start getting to know the distances of Pokémon curveballs will become easier to aim, and before you know it you won’t be throwing an uncurved ball! Once you’re truly skilled, you should be able to hit a excellent curveball on a big circle Pokémon very often. This helps a LOT for catching raid bosses too. Hope that helps!

Train on things like Sentret, fairly common (when we're not in the middle of an event), and it has a fairly large hit area. Go somewhere with lots of stops to spin, and try to throw nice curves, then great curves.

Success in catching high level raid rewards is partly dependent on throwing great curves and excellent curves. The curve ball gives a 70% bump to your catch chance (so a 10% chance would become a 17% chance), while going from a normal hit to a nice hit to a great hit to an excellent hit gives 50% at each step (as do moving from a regular ball to a great ball to an ultra ball).

Once you do your job and throw almost entirely great curves, then it's just about random numbers. A great curve on a typical legendary raid boss has a 1/7 catch chance, so if you throw 7 of them, on average you catch one time. If you throw 10 great curve balls, your chance of catching is 78.6%. So you'll catch about 4/5 if you have 12 balls and hit 11 great curves every time.

Anyway, practice on the little stuff, with red balls you can replace easily. You'll get the hang of it soon enough. And take challenges that want you to throw nice balls, curves, etc. Forget the excellent balls until you're better, but try for the others.

Edit: Right now, Slowbro and Drowzee are fairly sedate and have large hit circles, which makes for great curve ball practice. If they swat your beautiful curve ball away, be happy that you get another practice shot. Hypno and Xatu (evolved forms) also have a big hit box, and the advantage that they escape more from red balls, for more practice shots.

It took me a while to learn consistent curves, but that's because I didn't practice. Once I moved to a place with 18+ spawns an hour, I had all the practice mon I needed.

Also, if you can find a spot with multiple reachable stops, excellent practice point for catch and refill.

Spin your ball, and when you're ready, release. (I, being a righty, spin with my right index finger and swipe about 40% of the screen from the ball icon, heading for about the top left corner.) After a few hundred attempts, I got to a place where I rarely score worse than great curve on the average mon. 3x XP + lucky eggs means that's 960 to 1260 experience a mon, depending on first throw or not.

You might see people talk about setting the circle - right now just focus on the throwing, and then once you're comfortable throwing a curve ball quickly, look into that more.

Did you check out the Gamepress article on throwing curves? It's for throwing excellents on legendaries, but it helped me figure out throwing curveballs in general when I first started out.

Plus if you check out the catch rate mechanics, throwing a curveball that doesn't even hit inside the colored circle gives you 1.7x, which you'd need to hit inside the colored circle at 30% to get on a straight throw. So definitely worth it to learn to curveball, and you'll waste less balls while practicing to get even more accurate curveballs.

Watch a couple of video tutorials and try the different styles people use and find one that makes sense to you. Then just throw only curveballs ever, it's what I did and it forced me to pick it up fast.

I'm not sure how long it took me to become good in throwing, but in the early days I've always had the need to throw as good as possible, because the amount of Pokestops was very low in my area. I had to catch everything with 1 ball to prevent spoiling resources. Helped me a lot working with that mentality.