Bob Jewett is right about this, players not reading the rules beforehand. As most pool aficionados know, there's many different rules to the same game. Take 8-ball, for instance: call pocket, call shot, 8-ball neutral, 8-ball not neutral, 8 on the break wins, 8 on the break loses.
One year at the World Pool Championship, Rodney Morris was studying a shot, and he gently let his cue stick touch the table as he was measuring a straight line, to see more clearly how the object ball would go.
The referee immediately came up and told Rodney he broke the rule by using his cue on the table as a measuring device. It was counted as a foul, and he forfeighted his shot.
It was written in the rules, but the Americans, according to Charlie Williams, never received a copy that year. You would think that Charlie Williams in his role as President of the UPA, the men's pro organization at that time, would have gotten the rules to his beloved UPA members before such a prestigious event.
Rodney is still one of my all-time favorite American players. He's Mr. Cool!