BCAPL Rule Question

fastone371 said:

This is regarding BCAPL 8 ball play.
I have always been under the impression that when the cue ball is frozen to your object ball the cue ball must contact a different ball of yours or leave the frozen ball and then contact it again then some ball be driven to a rail for a completed shot. According to what I found in current BCAPL rules is that as long as the object ball you are frozen to moves and then the cue ball or any other ball touches a rail you have a completed shot. In other words the ball you are frozen to counts as a contacted ball as long as you do not shoot away from it. I shouldnt be surprised that the ruling may have changed, when I started playing pool 6 or 7 years ago you could not shoot directly into a frozen ball but now that is a legal shot.

This is all I could find in BCAPL rules, its a little ambiguous.

5. Shooting the cue ball away from an object ball that is frozen to the cue ball does not
constitute contacting that object ball.


I have 1 more question. I assume most of you know that if your object ball and cue ball are separated by approximately an inch that if the cue ball and object ball travel along the same path at the same speed that you committed a foul, double hit the cue ball. When and how do you explain this to your opponent? Do you ask them their intent then explain the rule before the shot or do you just let them shoot then call a foul? What is proper etiquette?

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In my 15+ years running a BCAPL league, the frozen ball rule in the BCAPL rules has not changed.

As far as your etiquette question goes, a player has no requirement to explain any rule to their opponent prior to their opponent shooting. In a friendly league that isn't wickedly competitive, however, I would have no problem explaining the rule if my opponent was unclear. The way I tell my league members to approach this situation is to stop play (BEFORE the opponent is down on the shot) and ask that both teams watch the shot to judge for a double hit. The more eyes the better. It is at this time that you can gauge the opponents knowledge of the rule, and if necessary, advise your opponent as to what everyone is looking for to judge whether or not the shot was a foul. The BCAPL used to publish a guideline of how to determine if a double hit occurs, but I think they removed that from their rule set. In our league, if you are shooting directly at an object ball that is very close (less than a chalk cube) to the cue ball and the cue ball travels past where the object ball was, this is considered a foul, absent any other visual proof that it was not a foul. At the start of every season I spend at least 20 minutes at the captains meeting on this one rule, as it is ALWAYS the most misunderstood rule, as well as the hardest to judge.

Interesting

Interesting, I had this same issue come up last night in APA - and the rules there are so unclear it's ridiculous about touching balls - stating that it's not called, that you can angle to avoid being called and then stating that it's a sportsmanship foul.

You can imagine the fun time I had trying to explain the physics of a double-hit to them... and I still don't really know the APA ruling on this..

fastone371 said:

This is regarding BCAPL 8 ball play.
I have always been under the impression that when the cue ball is frozen to your object ball the cue ball must contact a different ball of yours or leave the frozen ball and then contact it again then some ball be driven to a rail for a completed shot. According to what I found in current BCAPL rules is that as long as the object ball you are frozen to moves and then the cue ball or any other ball touches a rail you have a completed shot. In other words the ball you are frozen to counts as a contacted ball as long as you do not shoot away from it. I shouldnt be surprised that the ruling may have changed, when I started playing pool 6 or 7 years ago you could not shoot directly into a frozen ball but now that is a legal shot.

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Yes, no change here

This is all I could find in BCAPL rules, its a little ambiguous.

5. Shooting the cue ball away from an object ball that is frozen to the cue ball does not
constitute contacting that object ball.

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One reason this may be confusing is no pool player would think otherwise. But in snooker, an initially frozen cueball is considered to have already met the contact rule, so you can shoot directly away.

I have 1 more question. I assume most of you know that if your object ball and cue ball are separated by approximately an inch that if the cue ball and object ball travel along the same path at the same speed that you committed a foul, double hit the cue ball. When and how do you explain this to your opponent? Do you ask them their intent then explain the rule before the shot or do you just let them shoot then call a foul? What is proper etiquette?

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If they look like they're likely to try a pretty full hit on a close object ball, I recommend explaining nothing to them but rather asking if it's OK to grab another player to watch the shot. Look for an experienced player and just agree to whatever that player says.

fastone371 said:

BCAPL got rid of the whole "cube of chalk" distance and how far forward the cue ball travels. It is now just a simple (yeah right) good hit/bad hit call. I found this out at our BCAPL state tournament 6 months ago. My opponent called the ref over to watch my shot, I asked the ref what would make it a bad hit and also about distance the cue ball would be allowed to travel, he gave me no clarification an simply said he was watching for a bad hit. After that match I went a spoke to the ref again about clarifying the "cube of chalk" cue ball travel distance and he said that is no longer a rule, its either a good hit or bad hit regardless of where the cue ball and object balls go.

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The "cube of chalk" and "cue ball travel" distances were never a rule, just a guide to help league members to judge a double hit. It is a shame that they were removed. I miss Bill Stock.

WillyCornbread said:

You can imagine the fun time I had trying to explain the physics of a double-hit to them...

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fastone371 said:

Its the same as the physics of the cue ball traveling right behind the object ball at the same speed when they are separated by a very small distance. Even on a nice force follow shot the cue ball hangs a pretty good distance behind the object ball because it momentarily stops then moves again as the spin takes over. Then you get an opponent or someone on the sidelines who says "I can make the cue ball follow the object ball an inch behind and at the same speed so that was not a foul", you offer them to show you that shot and they clam up right away.

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Explaining the physics of a double hit doesn't often work for the typical level of player that doesn't yet understand double hits but I still always start with that and explain that the cue ball imparts much of its energy to the object ball on anything remotely close to a fuller hit and because of that it is impossible for the cue ball to go anywhere close to the same speed as the object ball or to be right behind it etc. Sometimes this works but usually not.

What I follow up with and which seems to offer more success is to tell them to set up the exact same shot, except put the cue ball one diamond away instead of one inch away (or whatever it was) and see if they can ever get the cue ball to come even close to following right behind the object ball at the same speed with as many tries as they want. Explain that the reason they can't get that result from a diamond away is because at that distance it makes the unintended double hit nearly impossible (or at least super obvious if they could manage to make it happen), and that the cue ball following right behind the object ball at the same speed can only be done on very close shots because the unintended double hit is actually very hard to avoid on those very close shots and because of the closeness of the balls it usually can't be seen, felt, or heard because the two hits happen so close together they look, feel, and sound like one hit.

Lots of people don't even have to set up the shot at a diamond distance and actually try it out because once you mention that to them it suddenly occurs to them that they never see that type of cue ball reaction except on close shots and then it all clicks and they suddenly get it and understand what has really been happening. And if they do set up and actually try the shot at a diamond distance they obviously are never going to be able to duplicate the cue ball reaction they got from their double hit and this helps to convince a good portion of them too (but not all of them as some people are just slow or stubborn or just need a little more time to mull things over before they are willing to embrace reality).

Poolplaya9 said:

What I follow up with and which seems to offer more success is to tell them to set up the exact same shot, except put the cue ball one diamond away instead of one inch away (or whatever it was) and see if they can ever get the cue ball to come even close to following right behind the object ball at the same speed with as many tries as they want. Explain that the reason they can't get that result from a diamond away is because at that distance it makes the unintended double hit nearly impossible (or at least super obvious if they could manage to make it happen), and that the cue ball following right behind the object ball at the same speed can only be done on very close shots because the unintended double hit is actually very hard to avoid on those very close shots and because of the closeness of the balls it usually can't be seen, felt, or heard because the two hits happen so close together they look, feel, and sound like one hit.

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I like this. And likewise if they are drawing the ball instead of following. Have them shoot any shot at whatever distance and see if they can get the cue ball to go forward and then draw backwards (without jumping, of course). So many times I see players jack up and while the cue ball may have not traveled much beyond the tangent line, they think they’ve avoided a foul by "shooting at an angle" or some rule-of-thumb they’ve heard of.

If there was ever a mention of a piece of chalk, I’m glad it was removed. To me that’s just more rule-of-thumb jargon that causes poor interpretations of the intended rule.