Strangest rules you've ever seen?

[hang-the-9]

I got a couple, both happened in the same place while I was away on business.

The first is just a house rule. When they played 9-ball, the 2-ball always had to be in the bottom spot of the rack. They said this was to make running out harder, though I still don't believe it has any effect.

Next one, I was playing a guy 8-ball (VNEA rules) and he kicked at a ball and missed. We were both watching the ball and it was an obvious foul so I walked over and picked up the cue ball. He then called a foul on me because I was supposed to ask him if it was a foul before I picked it up. I called the TD and he agreed with the other guy saying I need to ask if it's a foul. :angry:

That 2 ball in the same spot in the rack I've seen before, in the Hong Kong Challenge with Earl and Efren, they racked the 2 in the back every rack so it was fair for both players about where it would go after the break. At least that's what I though it was for.

The second one about asking your opponent if it was a foul is interesting. Like telling your wife it was OK if you cheated because the other woman said it was OK.

 

[Softballmvp]

Technically, aren't you supposed to ask your opponent if it's a foul before grabbing ball in hand? Otherwise everything sides with the shooter without a ref, right? Though it's obvious in this case he was abusing the rule since it was obvious to both by the sounds of it.

"Country" league around here, 8 ball, you rack the 8 ball on the spot, not the head ball.

 

[chefjeff]

Couple years back I played with a huge Norteño at my hometown bar. And I do mean huge - I'm a 6'2" and he towered over me. I called an easy combo shot and he glared at me after I made it and growled "Nah fool, none of that combo shit. You play clean when you play with me." I would have objected but in the interest of not being ripped in half I "played clean" for the rest of our games.

Kinda makes the break shot a little silly, doesn't it?

Jeff Livingston

 

[pt109]

play a safe
opponent goes up taps cueball about 3" out from beind the impeding ball,
then SHOOTS AGAIN
of course i said what the f are you doing, you cant shoot twice

his answer> if cueball doesnt go 6" , it's not a shot

i wont bore you with the aftermath of that fukn stupidity

but i never played there again as i verbally insulted /assaulted every idiot there that agreed
:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

You never heard of that?
In my home town the 'six inch' rule applied to all games, even snooker.
..and if it was going to go farther, you stopped it.

So, I guess you wouldn't like the YMCA rule....if the cue-ball is froze on
the rail, you get to put the butt of the cue between the rail and the ball.

 

[Smokey Ramone]

I used to have a couple buddies that both worked the same schedule and played a lot of pool on their days off. They had a 'winner calls' policy and played a few standard variations (bar pool, ball in hand, bank the 8 and the like) but came up with one they called the "Tom Cruise" rule where the guy shooting the 8 had to make it a no look shot. I always got a kick out of it.

 

[victorl]

I had a guy try to tell me I had to call the number of rails hit on EVERY shot. If the shot rattles in the pocket, he said I'd have to call how many times the ball hit the pocket facings before it fell. I had a lot fun calling random numbers and then blasting the balls into the pocket and watching him try to count it.

 

[Push&Pool]

Playing 8-ball while traveling in Toronto years ago, I had solids and made a solid but in the process the cue ball bounced off a stripe (after contact) and also pocketed the stripe. I went to shoot again and was told that I lost my turn since I made one of his balls.

Gambling cheap, thought he was messing with me, but asked another person and they said the same thing. Not sure if it was a local rule or general "Canadian" rule, but one of the weirdest of the typical weird 8 ball rules I've come across.
Scott

Maybe that rule is weird to you, but it's quite common where I live. I didn't know Canadian rules have similarities with Central European. Oh well... Anyway, I personally dislike that rule, I play by the version where you can drop as many of the opponent's balls as you want as long as you pocket at least one yours. In a couple of places the house rules are "pocket an opponent's ball and you lose your turn", in other bars it's "keep shooting", something like 50:50.

Technically, aren't you supposed to ask your opponent if it's a foul before grabbing ball in hand? Otherwise everything sides with the shooter without a ref, right? Though it's obvious in this case he was abusing the rule since it was obvious to both by the sounds of it.

"Country" league around here, 8 ball, you rack the 8 ball on the spot, not the head ball.

OK, I'm not surprised you find that one strange, but again, in my region literally everyone racks that way, even the tournament players when they're playing for fun. For us here there's no alternative to this rule.

You never heard of that?
In my home town the 'six inch' rule applied to all games, even snooker.
..and if it was going to go farther, you stopped it.

So, I guess you wouldn't like the YMCA rule....if the cue-ball is froze on
the rail, you get to put the butt of the cue between the rail and the ball.

I never heard of any rule about how far the CB has to travel, but I've seen quite a few low-level players putting the cue butt between the CB and the rail. My friends and I played that way as well in the beginning, later decided it was stupid and unnecessary.

 

[Kris_b1104]

I was playing 8-ball with an acquaintance the other day because he refused to play 9 ball. No gambling, strictly friendly competition. I'm about to shoot the 8 in and then he says you have to bank the 8 to win, which is fine because I had an easy bank cross side, but then he adds, to a pocket that he chooses...Are you kidding?

 

[Straightpool_99]

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[Guapo]

Here's one I've ran into at a couple bars recently.

My opponent will be on their last ball before the 8 and and call the 8 also. So, if they pocket their OB and make the 8 after in the same shot, he wins cuz he called it.

I about lost my chit on that one. If they can make it, more power to them. But why the hell would they complicate it instead of taking it one at a time. Oh and if they call that and fail to make the 8,they lose their turn....

 

[ykndoit]

Supposedly this is an actual VNEA rule that I've never known and I've been playing for over 20 years! This just happened to me about a month ago and never before this. I even told the guy I didn't believe him and called a ref. The ref agreed with him and I told the ref I didn't believe him either that I wanted to see it in writing! He said that he would show me later. He never did and I still disagree with the rule until I am proven wrong!

8-ball
Your opponent breaks and makes a ball(stripe or solid doesn't matter). They then call a safe and shoot in a ball(stripe/solid doesn't matter). They have now claimed that suit that they pocketed but have relinquished their turn.

To me, that just makes no sense!!!

Maybe someone can post the rule and prove me wrong.......:shrug:

 

[Kim Bye]

Not so much a rule, but a couple of guys where i play substitute the regular cueball for a snooker cueball. First time i saw it i walked over to them offering them a regular cueball - they looked at me like i was from Mars, but stupid as i am i tried to explain to them that the smaller CB would be less efficient in transfering spin to the other balls than if the CB was the same size as the other balls, again they looked at me like i was a complete idiot.
They where using the YMCA rule and all kinds of other strange rules so i walked away asuming my talk about draw, follow and spin had confused them... I don't think they knew about draw, follow, stop or spin shots.

 

[Straightpool_99]

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[Straightpool_99]

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[Kim Bye]

They are probably used to english 8 ball, where the cueball is indeed smaller than the object balls. In that game the balls are snooker size and the cueball is even smaller (1 and 7/8 inches i believe). I have always like playing with a (slightly) lighter cueball, It does make drawing the ball easier. English 8 ball is played on cloth which can only be compared favorably to shag carpet and the ball return mechanism separates the cue ball from the others by size or weight (not sure which) but it is smaller for that reason. I guess it also makes drawing the ball easier on that very rough cloth.

Yep! I have stumbled across those 6" tables with the marble sized CB and the yellow/red balls. Where the F is the fun in that?
Your right about the cloth, feels much more like carpet than billiard cloth.
Tables like that seem to be common in UK, Spain, Cyprus and Malta.

 

[Inaction]

South Dakota used to have 8 weekly tournaments and the top three places in the 8 player tournament went to the state tournament in classes A, B & C. The first year I went in 1983, it was 2 out of 3 single elimination format played on 13 tables. Times have sure changed.

Each match had a ref watching and calling all fouls. Three fouls is loss of game. A local drunk was refereeing a game that my brother was breaking. The cue ball went several inches upward and the ref called a foul because the ball left the table.

 

[Dead Money]

I've been called out for running a rack out on a Valley and I "lost" the game, because the 8 ball hit the pocket facing and I didn't call the "Kiss off the rail"

It wasn't a very classy place. The bar in the bowling alley, with some classless rednecks.

This seems to be common!:thumbup:

 

[aff]

Just had this happen a couple weeks ago.

I ask the guy on the table what rules he's playing by, he says "straight eight, call shots, scratched cue ball stays behind the line". I agreed, he broke made a couple balls and scratched. I went up to the table, ran 5 off and hid the cue ball behind one of my obs on a rail (yes I called a pocket). He goes up to the table and starts moving the cue ball all over the place, so I stopped him and said "what are you doing?", he responded with " I have ball in hand". I asked "why if I didn't scratch, and I thought we were playing behind the line?" He said " we are until one person has a strong lead on the other, then the other person gets ball in hand for every first shot in their turn."

Wtff!??

I finished my game and left.

 

[Luxury]

The scratch on the break = loss of game has to be the one that boggles my mind the most.

 

[IamCalvin06]

The scratch on the break = loss of game has to be the one that boggles my mind the most.

This whole thread boggles my mind. It's like a guilty pleasure. I read and I laugh and I shake my head. I feel like I'm in another world but yet I've somehow been there before.

There's a local bar that opens the bar boxes up on Sunday and Monday for free play. I used to go all the time and knew that I was gonna come up against the rules atleast a few times per night so I would just play along.

Bar pool is always an adventure in human studies lol

I could take the same ppl that most of us are talking about with their "rules" and change my attitude or demeanor and they will have no complaints. Ex. After every shot walk up to them and say something funny or take a dead bank over an obvious cut bc both lend position but they don't know the difference so they are dazzled by the shot that whatever you do now is ok.

but back to the OP question.

FATBOY had a post about when he went gambling in a foreign country and they had some gaftty type tables with really strange but deadly equalizing rules. Here's the original post.


the game was on a 8' coin op table, big CB, there was 3 14 balls LOL and 2 9 balls, there was the correct number of stripes and solids just the numbers were messed up, and tehy werre from different sets, so they weighed different so the big CB would just roll thru some some balls and not teh others, there was no way to know where the CB was going.

it wasnt pool, it was their game, when you scratched the CB goes on the spot, if you make a solid and strip you lose the inning, so cant open break, the correct break was to glance off the head ball and scratch. another fantastic rule was when you scratched the CB was spotted and you couldnt hit any ball that was below the center of the table, so you had to kick at everything. and If you hook a guy were he cant see the edge of the ball its push out-so no hooks. no rail aint a foul, keep all that straight and play on a table that rolls off every direction possible and see how ya do? there are more rules, i just cant recall them now,



Me and another guy played it, I played better than the guy who won, the guy with me plays a hair below Mad Max i'd guess, he couldnt win that game last night. he robbs me period on regular equipment-i got ZERO chance ever in life to play his speed( we played 5 hours tonight). he couldnt out run that game-it as their game period, SVB might not win, no knock its that brutal. I think maybe Bobby Cotton, Matlock and Danny Medina(RIP) could win cause they could play big ball CB. Cotton plays good 1P and runs the balls good, he of everyone i know in pool would have the best chance in that game, forget JA, Hatch, SVB, those skills aint required to fade that action. no knock but only the old big ball guys have a chance and still mite not get there.


then we find out the whole story today, about who we played. Wow, lets say i got nothing to say right now. it could have been worse if we won.


never again will i play last pocket 8 ball, not a single rack ever.