Not having a good go of it so far this session, but on my Tuesday APA team I got as close as I’ve ever come to choking out our captain (a low end SL-5 who loves to call timeouts).
I stepped up to the table with BIH as stripes, and this is what the table looked like.
View attachment 756953
This seemed straight forward enough, use the 10 in the top side to bust the cluster and have the 9 in the top right corner as an insurance ball if I don’t have a good look at the 12 after cluster busting.
“Time Out!” He says. “Why don’t you take the 9 first”
I was honestly dumbfounded. This isn’t even USAPL where you get points for balls pocketed, and you can’t safety down in APA so if I make a ball I have to shoot it or concede BIH. I really don’t need “feel good” points for having some of by balls still on the table after an 8-ball rack when that doesn’t matter at all for the match.
He wanted me to shoot the 9 and then get shape on the 10 for the breakput…except when I go for the breakout this time I’d have no insurance ball. Plus, I’m not Fedor Gorst so the chance of me ending up either too shallow or on the wrong side of the 10 is quite high.