I tried Corey's rack at league the other night... and I think I'm sold on it...
Oh, and btw, I was hitting the head ball (from the side rail) as hard as I could with control. (didn't want to risk breaking dry)
Glad you had success, but I'm not sure if you're using corey's rack the way he intended.
He broke soft and hit the 2nd ball, you're hitting hard and hitting the head ball.
Your results will be at least a little different from his.
The main thing that makes his rack amazing is, you not only get a good runnable spread,
the opponent's group is ridiculously clustered. Did you notice if that happened when you broke hard?
8 ball must go to a standardized racking pattern.
Do you have anything against random, other than it's hard to prove/enforce?
If a tournament had some way to guarantee truly random racks, would you be ok with that?
Personally I think a little randomness adds spice.
The solution is quite simple.
Balls should alternate between solid and stripe except for one 2 ball cluster of each suit.
OK, and how did you come up with that?
This is nothing against you personally, I apologize for ranting... but this is what's driving me nuts.
So many people out there suggest specific patterns, like alternating solid-stripe-solid.
But I can almost guarantee those people didn't spend hours studying the outcome of a thousand breaks.
Alternating solid-stripe-solid is just something people think looks good on paper.
If you spend more than 10 seconds thinking about it, it falls apart. It doesn't work.
If you haven't studied where the balls usually END, then how can you make an
informed decision on where they should START?
Not to pick on you but, what are you trying for when you specify the "2-ball cluster of each suit"?
Do you think that means there will be clusters after the break? It doesn't necessarily.
Do you think that means there will, no clusters after the break? It doesn't necessarily.
Do you think that means there will be an even distribution of each group across the table? It doesn't necessarily.
Unless someone has specifically studied where balls go AFTER the break,
Then any proposed pattern is just a total guess, it's not based on anything scientific.
The break is much more complex than "if I alternate balls, then there will be an even, fair spread."
That's like thinking that if you have a roll of quarters all facing heads-up, and you throw
them into the air, you will get mostly heads.
</rant>
I'm not sure if the poster was in violation of this exception
because the rule allows you to alternate around the outside of the rack only,
I read him to mean he alternated balls (stripe/solid) across the rows which would not fall under the exception.
We should actually make this super clear though you or someone else already said it.
Standard WPA rules: it's flat-out against the rules.
Standard BCA rules: it's flat-out against the rules.
BCA League rules: it's against the rules, but buried at the end of the rulebook,
someone asked for a ruling and the refs made an exception.
APA League rules: not mentioned so presumably OK.
So alternating balls is only legal in league.
And even then you must break the pattern by making sure the corner balls are different.
I tried yesterday the Corey pattern, my question is how
I should shoot the second row in rack, to make a ball? Because if you don't make a ball,
rack is perfect open for your opponent.
That's the catch with any good 8 ball rack though, unless you intentionally pattern and break
them to always have clusters. But that seems like scared thinking.
In general, if you hit the 2nd ball as square as you can, coming as close as possible to the first ball
but without actually touching it, the opposite corner ball will often fly right into the pocket.
If it doesn't, the other corner ball frequently goes. And I've noticed a ball often goes in the side,
on the side I'm breaking from. I think the 2nd row break actually comes up dry less than a standard break.
It's what SVB recommends in his 8-ball video.
There are TWO ways to fix this kind of thing:
[snip]
2) using some sort of random ball generator - machine or smartphone APP -
that would need to be followed so a true "random" racking order is provided for each new rack.
Did you happen to see my suggestion about the wedge?
In that solution, you gather the balls into a triangular pattern with your arms,
but cannot pick up any specific ball. Whatever triangular pattern you create,
is the one you must use when you rack. You are allowed to swap only 2 balls -
switch the 8 with the ball in the center, to make sure the 8 is in the middle.
And swap one of the corners if they're both the same group. That's it. No other swapping allowed.
This gives you an easy low-tech solution that is random and doesn't allow anyone to sneak in a pattern.
I think a phone app would be fine, too. Already
http://pool.bz allows you to do randomized breaks.
A randomized rack would probably be something Wei could easily add.
