Abstract: Roof cutting pressure relief is one of effective ways for optimizing the surrounding rock stress and structure in thick layer of hard roof, and the application of guide hole to roof cutting pressure relief is a new attempt. Based on the mechanism of short-hole blasting for roof cutting pressure relief in gob-side entry retaining, using the combination of LS-DYNA numerical simulation and theoretical analysis, mechanism of guide hole has been analyzed, and the effect of the selection of parameters on the blasting of rock mass has been explored. The results show that free surface of blast hole increases in the guide hole, which affects obviously to the tangential stress, and increases the fracture penetration rate and utilization rate of explosive energy; The guide will give full play to the role as stress concentration when charging hole non-coupling coefficient is 1.31；There is a positively change relationship between maximum tangential tensile stress and guide hole diameter，but it has little effects on the position away from the guide hole. According to the dynamic tensile strength of the rock, the charging hole spacing is determined as 1.2 m.

Key words: guide hole, gob-side entry retaining, short-hole blasting, roof cutting pressure relief