D Bag pool move.

Blue Hog ridr

Blue Hog ridr

World Famous Fisherman.
Silver Member
My wife and I are playing scotch tonight. Against a couple that we usually have a fun night with.

To us, Scotch is just a fun sociable night out to mix it up a bit. We have done well in the past in end of the year tourneys where we will buckle down a bit harder.

Ok, close to the head string, we have the eight ball out front, one of ours and one of theirs behind in almost a perfect 3 ball rack.

We have one ball left in the open. My wife calls a safety and shoots our ball down.

Good call on her part because obviously she doesn't want to break our ball out, with theirs and risk giving a BIH.

So, the female opponent walks up to the table, picks the cue ball up and drops it on the table, giving us BIH.

Then she starts in with this, OMG, what was I thinking, why did I just pick the ball up, yada yada yada.

I have seen high level players do almost the same thing in tourneys, but at least they take the cue ball and shoot it directly in a pocket.


This is something that I certainly didn't expect to see in a fun Scotch division and certainly have never seen any of the Scotch players ever do this in the many years that we have been playing.

I could have reciprocated in kind and shot the cue ball down a hole but I set the cue ball up, slightly skinned our 10 ball, the ten hitting the rail and coming back almost where it was before.

The cue ball being left in an equally difficult shot for them.

I consider what she did to be perfectly legal, (in an unsportsman like way), and also douchy times ten to have to give the speech that she did afterward.

I guess that I was a bit shocked mainly because I have never seen this done before in Scotch and didn't expect it from this team.

A couple of people that were watching mentioned later that they thought it was a pretty unsportsman like move on their part.

What do you guys think about moves like this?

Also, I can't remember the rule exactly on this. How many times could a person purposely foul in a situation like this before it would be considered a stalemate and a re rack?
 
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A schmuck did almost the same thing twice against me in League last night, so I
kept safety-ing him until he got frustrated and opened the rack. Can you say Re-Tard ?
I ran out on him just to spank his dumb ass. I don't rattle easy. Been around the block
way too many times and played for 36 hrs. straight plenty of times in my "Yute".
 
Not too brag but I play pretty lock up safes and I have guys just pick it up all the time I think its kinda funny I love getting in there head sorry but if I can't get out or get a break out ur getting hooked part of the game and if u hand it too me I'm eather gonna get out or ur gonna get hooked again may as well try too shoot
 
Terry, I'm not sure what the problem is.....
...ball-in-hand after a foul gives her no advantage.

If I had your wife's shot, I would have rolled th ball over a hole and let them see their ball.
 
I don't quite see what you mean Paul.

My wife called a safety. Where she left the cue ball for them, all she would have had to do is hit the short rail and come up against their ball.

It would have been an easy enuff shot for them but she didn't want to be the one that broke the balls out.

Explain it better so maybe next time I, or we will play it better.
 
I assuming standard rules....gotta hit a rail after contact.
So with ball-in-hand, I'm gonna hit the 10-ball and leave whitey locked on the 8.
Reyes can jack up the bet from that position with me.

But your wife making a ball calling safe, I've never seen the advantage to that.....
....roll it over a hole and it becomes a threat.
 
I see what you are saying now Paul. I will keep that in mind and also relay that to my wife.

Doing that would have kept our opponent from just picking up the cue ball and dropping it on the table.

It was a good safety and was expecting our opponent to break the balls out for us.

I wasn't expecting her to do what she did, but good point and I will remember it for future.

My point, regardless if my wife called a safety and dropped a ball or just rolled the ball up to the hole, what would have stopped our opponent from doing what she did anyway. If she didn't want to make the shot she would have pulled the same stunt.
 
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No problem with the way she gave you ball in hand.

As to eight ball strategy. Eight ball 101 is never make a ball unless you have a plan to make them all. I might have to revise that plan seven times in the course of a run out. In the situation you describe I would want to try to maneuver the ball she pocketed close to the three ball pile so if I get the right angle I can pocket it and break the problem up. Basic eight ball strategy calls for breaking up the problems as soon as possible while you have more balls on the table so you have more options after the break out. I do get in these situations when I swing and miss(multiple times) at the break out pocketing my object ball each time.
 
Thanks Greg. Altho my wife is a fairly decent player, I doubt that she would have thought of your strategy or been able to pull it off.

I doubt that I would have myself.

I guess my question was, my wife thought she was doing good by calling a safety, not turning the shot over to me so I would have to break the balls out for our opponent.

Our opponent didn't want to be the one to break the balls out so she picked the q ball up and dropped it on the table.

The end result was myself getting our ball out of the pack, while leaving our opponent to
break their ball away from the 8. So, it really didn't work out well for them anyway.

It wasn't my intention of making the thread, just relating a move from a player that I hadn't had done to me in 20 or so years.

Buy its a good thing anyway as I am sure that I am going to be getting some great
strategy for my future playing.

If someone does a good safety on myself, I try and get out of it. I have never thought of just opting out of not trying and handing the cue ball over to my opponent.

So Greg, you feel that there is nothing wrong with just picking up the cue ball and dropping it on the table. I guess that is ok. It was just funny that we had to endure the speech after ward that she gave us.

It was pretty much mocking us is the way I felt about it. If you're going to pull a move such as that, fine, just spare us the speech. Just drop the ball, walk away and sit down.
 
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Blue Hog ridr said:
My wife and I are playing scotch tonight. Against a couple that we usually have a fun night with.

To us, Scotch is just a fun sociable night out to mix it up a bit. We have done well in the past in end of the year tourneys where we will buckle down a bit harder.

Ok, close to the head string, we have the eight ball out front, one of ours and one of theirs behind in almost a perfect 3 ball rack.

We have one ball left in the open. My wife calls a safety and shoots our ball down.

Good call on her part because obviously she doesn't want to break our ball out, with theirs and risk giving a BIH.

So, the female opponent walks up to the table, picks the cue ball up and drops it on the table, giving us BIH.

Then she starts in with this, OMG, what was I thinking, why did I just pick the ball up, yada yada yada.

I have seen high level players do almost the same thing in tourneys, but at least they take the cue ball and shoot it directly in a pocket.


This is something that I certainly didn't expect to see in a fun Scotch division and certainly have never seen any of the Scotch players ever do this in the many years that we have been playing.

I could have reciprocated in kind and shot the cue ball down a hole but I set the cue ball up, slightly skinned our 10 ball, the ten hitting the rail and coming back almost where it was before.

The cue ball being left in an equally difficult shot for them.

I consider what she did to be perfectly legal, (in an unsportsman like way), and also douchy times ten to have to give the speech that she did afterward.

I guess that I was a bit shocked mainly because I have never seen this done before in Scotch and didn't expect it from this team.

A couple of people that were watching mentioned later that they thought it was a pretty unsportsman like move on their part.

What do you guys think about moves like this?

Also, I can't remember the rule exactly on this. How many times could a person purposely foul in a situation like this before it would be considered a stalemate and a re rack?
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It's not a douchy move. I'm still still not sure why you would think it is.

The stalemate rule used to be be three intentional fouls in a row by both players (6 total). But the way your situation reads, it wasn't going to be one of those times. I have really only seen the stalemate in 8-ball when the 8-bal is locked up next to a pocket and a legal safety by either player will lose the game.

She probably was complaining about her picking up the ball because she spotted a viable shot after the fact or she saw the easy return shot once it wasn't her turn.

But, her move to pick up the cue ball and give you BIH is not unsportsmanlike. It's the proverbial "I've seen it a thousand times" in league and tourney play. It's simply taking an intentional. Where it is unsportsmanlike is if the cue ball was trapped in a group of balls such that some onject had to move if she shot at the cueball. She wouldn't be allowed to pick up the cueball. She would need to touch the cueball with the tip (not the ferrule).
 
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Ok, that answers one question. 6 fouls, 3 by each.

I was unsure of that as had never run across it before.

So what I should have done is return the foul if I felt it necessary by shooting the cue into a pocket and returning BIH.

I will remember that for next time.

As far as the speech goes Freddy, you would have had to be there to hear it.
 
Blue Hog ridr said:
I guess my question was, my wife thought she was doing good by calling a safety, not turning the shot over to me so I would have to break the balls out for our opponent.
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Your wife calling safe was a good thing. Better would be to keep that ball on the table and call safe. Better still, would be to have that ball blocking one of the corner pockets near the group. Best would be to have it where it could be used as a break ball if they give up ball in hand.

Eight ball is a game of strategy where nine ball is about shot making. I have always said eight ball is the old man's game and nine ball is the young man's game. I got my first eight ball lessons from an old man when I was a young man, for a few dollars a game. He would consistently just move balls in front of the two corner pockets at the rack end of the table and let me try to run out. When I tried and failed he had easy picken's as I had removed most of my balls so there was less traffic for him to navigate.

My record in eight ball is 22 games straight without running a single rack. It was in a tavern with two tables and ladies leagues on one table. All the guys wanted to own the other table to impress the ladies. I charged them $2 a game to try. I never lost the table and had $44 at the end.:grin-square:
 
Thats one thing Greg. I am definitely getting much better at noticing problem balls and being able to actually break them out after pocketing a ball.

One thing that was difficult to convey in my first post, is that our Scotch league is an open league. It consists of many players of different abilities.

One thing, over the years, we have become friends. Our nights out are very sociable. We compliment each other for well played shots, safeties etc. We try hard to win but don't take it too seriously until the year end tourney.

The move that this girl played was pretty much unheard of for how we play each other.

Thats fine, as I originally posted, I felt and knew it was perfectly legal move, just unsportsman like. The unsportsman like statement came from the fact of the speech afterward.

You would have to have been there to see the animation and her tone. It was in a talking down and mocking fashion and I am sure that no one likes to get mocked or talked down to.

It would be the same as if I laid a nice safety on them and gave them a spiel of how I didn't mean to do that to them and how sorry I was that it happened. Just to rub it in a bit.

You know what I mean hopefully. That type of move just isn't done at our level and that was why I was a bit taken back.

However, I did learn a couple of good points so far.
 
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More pointers.

You want to plan your table run from the eight ball back. Find where you want to make the eight then what ball is best to get on the eight and so on all the way back to the shot you want to take. If you can not complete that chain, do not make any balls. Move balls to block pockets or move them closer to balls that are tied up to use as break balls later.
When choosing ball set after the break, one thing I look for is which set is the eight ball closest to. If there are a few small ones close to the eight but no big ones, that could be what tips the scale for selecting that group. I also look at the balls that are tied up and see which set has a neighbor that could be used for a break ball.
 
Ya know Greg, I was at the hall one night practicing. There was an old Native Canadian man there also. He had asked a couple of guys for a game but they refused him.

I noticed what happened and went over and offered to play with him. The type of things that he ended up laying on me is exactly what you are teaching me right now.

It ended up being a teaching session more than playing.

He had to leave but I seriously wished that he had stayed all night.

It was wonderful and with this type of strategy, he could turn what may end up as a tough table, into his table.

I wish that I could remember half the things he taught me that night.

I saved your last post to a text file so I can refer to it later.

It just jogged my old memory back to that night and made me rethink my game.

Too bad you didn't live closer. I'm only about 1250 away from you.
 
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I guess it might depend on how well she knows you. You seem like a nice guy
with a broad sense of humour. Is it possible that she did this trying to be funny
and not to offend? If not then disregard what I've said, and yes it would be
a douche move. If women are allowed, you should give her a membership
application to the D-Bag Club:eek::wink:
 
I didn't think of that angle. My wife and I are very friendly and that maybe was the case and I just took it too seriously.

Or, she may have thought she was being funny and chose the wrong way to go about it.

It is easy to try a joke sometimes and get taken the wrong way.

I should know as I am always being the class clown, even after 40 years.

Either way, next time we play them, I may try it back and see if she thinks it is just as funny.

BIH is the Teacher.

Besides, no wimens allowed in DBag Club.
 
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