In general, we must make a distinction between experienced players and those trying to gain experience. T-ball is not played by the rules of Major league Baseball, not is little league. Casual golf allows for Mulligans (we allow after eating a Jalapeno), High Performance Driving Education (HPDE) has controlled passing, and multiple driving levels to allow novices to become experienced before tearing their cars up.
What casual pool needs (and this is where the masses come from) is a set of rules that if fun across the skill set.
I/we have spent the last 6 months converting a bar-rules bar into a Ball-in-Hand pool playing bar. It was not easy getting most/many of the players to agree, and we still have a few hold-outs. We still allow for the winner to call the rule set. Imposing all-ball-fouls on this set of characters would probably drive half of them away. Heck, we cannot even eliminate scoop-jumps (I am the only person at that establishment that can perform legal jumps.) Over the course of an evening (say 4 hours:: 20 games--yes that slow) there are more than 20 scratches, at least 20 miscue double hits, at least 15 wrong group first hits, at least 15 no rail after legal contact,...) Most of the players are closer to SL2 than Fargo 350. You might as well institute BIH for any termination of an inning !!
This is not a league--this is random people showing up on a random night with few pool skills--20-10 years ago we had a league there on Sun nights, but it collapsed (variety of reasons) and we don't have enough participants to restart. Even here, we use BIH rules, but allows scoop jumps, and legal contact first but no rail rules as OK-ish.
Do you really want to use all-ball-fouls on someone who has never held a pool stick in their hands before ?!?
It is a sure way to drive them away--and in a bar setting at night, it is virtually impossible to give a lesson because there is no IDLE table on which to do that. It is fine to take the position that they should have had that lesson somewhere else--but that is not realistic.
Our goal at this establishment is to make people enjoy the game (a lot like casual golf with Mulligans). One may whiff at CB and we move CB back and let them have another go at it. This has rarely caused any of the better players to loose a single game that otherwise could have been won.
Our goal is for the people to enjoy being there and playing pool--that way they come back.
