IBD uses them so much I'd been thinking that they invented them, but it seems lots of people like 'em. Here's the basic pattern (from here) and when I looked I even found a youtube chat here. Several times a week IBD has several dozen stock graphs and they point out what the buy points are --for a while I was writing down the 30 or 40 buypoints they were announcing and used those for my "buy" list.
So using cup'n'handles is easy (or head'n'shoulders or whatever). The hard part is making money off 'em. After about a year or more of sooo many IBD cup'n'handles I wasn't making as much money as I was before, so a few months ago I decided to ignore those patterns and all I'm doing is I buy stocks with good valuation numbers that's got good steady price growth. Seems to be working better & it's a lot easier.
Everyone has their own risk tolerance and their own investment goals so there's not right or wrong here. The only rule is to understand what we're doing and then be happy with what we did.