Help with Snooker Rule Please

I've wondered this same thing myself.

The simple answer to your question is yes, it is possible to elect and legally pot a different color ball when touching a color ball. For more detail, read on...

The "touching ball" rule in International Snooker should be viewed as being a shot choice OPTION that you may or may not use as called for by the situation. Put simply, it is a FOUL to push through the frozen ball under ANY circumstance, you must ALWAYS play away from a touching ball. On the other hand, as you desire, you MAY OR MAY NOT actually nominate the ball that is touching (as long as it is a legal "ball on") as you see fit. So in your situation, touching blue, say brown is hanging in the jaws of a pocket. You may nominate brown and pot it (of course, the BLUE may not be touched either by the action of the cue ball, or cue stick, or your hand or whatever).....you must of course play away from blue, it is completely irrelevant. Secondarily, if you choose instead, you may nominate blue and simply play away from it as contact is already considered as being made. In that case, you MAY NOT pot some other ball since you nominated blue as the ball on so potting something else would be a foul. It would be perfectly legal to nominate blue, play away from it, then make contact with some other ball as long as it is not potted, forced off table, or causes some other sort of foul. This is a strategy often used to set a very difficult snooker by purposely attempting to roll up as close as possible to a potential snookering ball to trap the opponent, for instance, when the cue comes to rest touching the "pack" of reds when red is the ball on, common strategy is to use the "touching ball" option as legal contact, play the white away and off two cushions attempting to roll up behind one of the baulk colors on spot, say the green.

Also possible though rare would be touching ball where you play away then pot the ball anyway. For instance, white and blue are touching both hanging very close to the jaws of a pocket. You may nominate blue, play away from it off a cushion across the table, and rebound to then pot the blue.

Similarly, if touching red and red is the ball on, of course you must play away from the ball that is touching and you DO NOT NEED to strike another ball since contact is already made with the touching red ball, but it is possible that you can play to pot another red if you wish. If doing this, you should verbally declare "touching ball" even if the other red is a simple pot because there is always the possibility of a miscue so you squib the cue ball and don't make contact. If you don't make contact with another red, you will have a hard time convincing your opponent that it was touching the red if you did not declare it and he will want to charge you with a penalty.

And to finish with some possible real strangeness, let's say only colors are left, yellow ball is on, white ball comes to rest touching blue on spot after a foul so that it is a free ball situation but no easy pot on for a clear and simple free ball choice. You can't pot yellow directly because it is on the other side of the blue, but it is hanging over the jaws so you don't want to give the shot back to the opponent because the shot is not that hard if you go off cushion first. What to do? If you want, you can nominate blue as your free ball (now acting as yellow), so you play away from it (you have immediately made a legal stroke--contact with free ball blue acting as yellow) off the cushion and pot the yellow hanging on the jaws. The REASON that you nominate the blue as free ball for yellow is that in case you miscue, or you roll slow so you don't quite reach the yellow, it is still a perfectly legal stroke, no foul (because contact was already considered to be made with the free ball). If you hand the shot back to your opponent, he does not have this touching ball OPTION because he is simply required to hit the yellow, he does not get the free ball.

Bear in mind, these are the proper rules for International Snooker. American Snooker tends to have different regional and house rules for the more obscure points of the game such as this so in the house where you play, the locals may go by a different guideline which you should respect.

TurdFerguson said:

Touching balls....

If you are touching a colored "ball on", say the blue, can you elect a different color and score on potting that color?

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No absolutely not. Only the ball (or balls) 'on' can be legally potted in any stroke. The first impact of the cue ball governs all strokes, therefore the first impact must be on the ball 'on' before any other ball is struck. You are deemed to have struck the blue already, so you can therefore legally strike (or indeed fail to strike) any other ball without penalty, but they are not pottable.

Boro Nut

Boro Nut said:

No absolutely not. Only the ball (or balls) 'on' can be legally potted in any stroke. The first impact of the cue ball governs all strokes, therefore the first impact must be on the ball 'on' before any other ball is struck. You are deemed to have struck the blue already, so you can therefore legally strike (or indeed fail to strike) any other ball without penalty, but they are not pottable.

Boro Nut

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With all due respect Boro Nut, I have read many of your posts and generally 100 per cent agree with your wisdom, but in this case, you must read your rule book a little more thoroughly. An exact quotation from Section 3., Rule 8.:
"
8. Touching Ball
(a) If at the completion of a stroke the cue-ball is touching a ball or balls on, or that could be on, the referee shall state TOUCHING BALL and indicate which ball or balls on the cue-ball is touching. If the cue-ball is touching one or more colors after a Red (or a free ball nominated as a Red) has been potted, the referee shall also ask the striker to DECLARE which color he is on.
(b) When a touching ball has been called, the striker must play the cue-ball away from that ball without moving it or it is a push stroke.
(c) Providing the striker does not cause the object ball to move, there shall be no penalty if:
(i) the ball is on,
(ii) the ball could be on and the striker declares he is on it, or
(iii) the ball could be on and the striker declares, and first hits, another ball that could be on....
"

This rule even gives the example that TWO colors are touching:
"...If the cue-ball is touching one or more colors after a Red.......the referee shall also ask the striker to DECLARE which color he is on."
By your interpretation, this situation would in fact be an automatic foul because TWO colors were automatically contacted simultaneously which is a foul according to Section 3, Rule 6.

I know the technicalities of the rules can run in confusing circles, so from a practical standpoint, if there is a touching color ball situation and the striker is on color, if he simply plays away from the the touching ball silently, the referee assumes the touching color ball to be the "declared" ball on. If the striker intends to play at some other color with the intention of potting it, that color MUST BE audibly declared (even if it is hanging in the jaws) for the referee to understand that the striker is not "on" the touching ball. If the striker plays at some other color without intent to pot, then it doesn't matter if he declares audibly or not because either ball could have been the "on" ball, the ref will just assume the touching ball was "on" and there is no foul. On the other hand, if the striker SILENTLY plays to another ball and pots it, the ref will declare "Foul" because he would have assumed the touching ball to have been the proper ball on.

To put it as simply as possible, a "touching ball" situation is ALWAYS an OPTION for the striker if the actual ball touching is a potential "on" ball, it is NOT a requirement.The specific example of touching blue, but playing to and potting the brown is precisely covered by Section 3., Rule 8. sub-rule (c) (iii) as I highlighted in red above and I am adding to it (but not actually written in the rule), 'and he pots the declared color, it is scored, re-spotted and the break continues...'.

I had corresponded with another poster on a related topic and used this post to explain the "optional" feature of "touching ball"; I think it may be useful here as well:

http://forums.azbilliards.com/showpost.php?p=4491773&postcount=29

This situation does not crop up too often because often with a touching ball, you end up cueing over the top of the touching ball ("Chinese snooker") so trying to pot another ball is difficult anyway, but if there is another color hanging in the jaws for an easy pot, you can ignore the touching ball option and declare and pot the hanger. Boro nut, if you have encountered this situation in the past with your regular playing partners, you should re-open the topic with them.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should also state that I believe there is a typographical error in the way this rule, Section 3, Rule 8 (c) is written. As I copied and pasted above, it states, "....(c) Providing the striker does not cause the object ball to move..." which I believe to be poor wording, object ball implying that the touching ball must be the on ball. Curiously, in the presumably most current version of the official rules taken from the www.worldsnooker.com website, this wording is slightly changed to "(c) Providing the striker does not cause any touching object ball to move,..." which is better but still not right in my opinion; it should very simply state, "(c) Providing the striker does not cause any touching ball to move except the cue ball ,..." and that covers all cases. Perhaps this "typo" is where Boro Nut is inferring that the "touching" ball must also be the "object" ball, although the sub-rule 8. (c) (iii) clearly states that another color may be declared to be the object ("on") ball.

Thanks for the respect, but that's not the scenario the OP presented. He specifically stated that he was touching the blue ball, which was the ball 'on'. If the blue is the ball on there is no possible scenario that any other ball than the blue can be legally potted, and the only way to do that legally would be to play off a cushion or another ball and back onto the blue, if he was already touching it. He asked if he could nominate any other colour and legally pot it. The answer to that specific question is categorically no, as no other colour than the blue is on, therefore potting any other coloured ball would be a foul.

Nor could you possibly have a free ball scenario after a foul if you are touching the ball on, as you are not (and cannot be) snookered on it by a ball or balls that are not on, which is the definition of a snooker. Your only option would be to play from where it was, or to ask you opponent to.

You have to play away from a touching ball whether it's on or not. The referee doesn't have to indicate which ball is on, only which balls are touching. It's up to you to know the rules, and he specifically can't warn you if you are about to play a foul stroke. If you were touching the blue after potting a red, then you can nominate any colour you like and legally pot it. But if that was the case then the blue wouldn't be on if you nominated the pink, whether you were touching it or not, so that's not the scenario the OP asked about.

The blue would only be on if you legally nominated it, or it was next in sequence after the brown had been potted, in which case you could then play away from it without needing to hit any other ball, but if you did, it wouldn't be a penalty, as you are deemed to have struck the blue with the first impact of the cue ball. But you can't nominate another colour if blue is the ball on simply because you happen to be touching the blue.

Boro Nut

Ahhhh, yes, now I understand and as usual, I agree with you completely. We simply had different interpretations of what the OP meant. When he stated, "... touching a colored "ball on", say the blue,..." you took that to mean such as the case that only blue, pink, black are left so blue MUST be on. I took it in the more generic sense that the blue COULD be on as in after potting a red. I acknowledge that yes, the OP specifically said "ball on". I took the OP's "ball on" as a misnomer similar to how I believe the official rule's statement of "touching object ball" is also a misnomer.

I absolutely agree, in your scenario, neither the pink nor black could be potted as if they were a free ball when the blue is the only potential "ball on". Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Boro Nut said:

Thanks for the respect, but that's not the scenario the OP presented. He specifically stated that he was touching the blue ball, which was the ball 'on'. If the blue is the ball on there is no possible scenario that any other ball than the blue can be legally potted, and the only way to do that legally would be to play off a cushion or another ball and back onto the blue, if he was already touching it. He asked if he could nominate any other colour and legally pot it. The answer to that specific question is categorically no, as no other colour than the blue is on, therefore potting any other coloured ball would be a foul.

Nor could you possibly have a free ball scenario after a foul if you are touching the ball on, as you are not (and cannot be) snookered on it by a ball or balls that are not on, which is the definition of a snooker. Your only option would be to play from where it was, or to ask you opponent to.

You have to play away from a touching ball whether it's on or not. The referee doesn't have to indicate which ball is on, only which balls are touching. It's up to you to know the rules, and he specifically can't warn you if you are about to play a foul stroke. If you were touching the blue after potting a red, then you can nominate any colour you like and legally pot it. But if that was the case then the blue wouldn't be on if you nominated the pink, whether you were touching it or not, so that's not the scenario the OP asked about.

The blue would only be on if you legally nominated it, or it was next in sequence after the brown had been potted, in which case you could then play away from it without needing to hit any other ball, but if you did, it wouldn't be a penalty, as you are deemed to have struck the blue with the first impact of the cue ball. But you can't nominate another colour if blue is the ball on simply because you happen to be touching the blue.

Boro Nut

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