I put up what he said on why he reacted that way. He did think it was good, but knew it was close. He was just waiting for the ref.
Oops I did it again (Yapp's) foul in a final, a second time!
- Thread starter smoochie
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No one knows what Yapp was thinking in the moment except Yapp himself (sometimes I am not even sure what I am thinking on such close shots).
In any case, Cornerman told us what Yapp said about why he reacted as he did. Sounds plausible to me. Cornerman's explanation also sounds plausible to me.
Hard for me to believe Yapp is lying.
Raises the question: Should refs based calls on physics. Marcel has done that, with some controversial results.
I am fine with humans making the call, even if it means some mistakes.
WobblyStroke
Well-known member
Appreciate the insight with the note.
Slow mo is pretty clear 4 first tho.
Not sure slo mo is relevant. Refs and players seldom have the advantage of slo mo in most pool matches. Not sure whether Predator even had instant replay available, as MR sometimes does on its TV table. Even then, the camera might not be at the right angle.
Unless pool becomes big, and Eagle Eye type technology is used, pool will never have the same advantage of instant replay or some such as other sports do.
WobblyStroke
Well-known member
I agree slow mo shouldn't be used in games. Where the balls go is enough. And if it's too close to call, don't call a damn thing. I just mentioned the slow mo cuz cornerman said he wasn't so sure anymore it was a bad hit. It was.
Railbird-2026
New member
Bad Hit
middleofnowhere
Registered
People can convince themselves of anything and not necessarily be lying. Just be at the scene of an accident. A guy runs a red light and eight people witness it and he says he didn't.
In baseball we now have the instant replay and umpires get overruled. I remember years ago before instant replays, seeing an umpire on the Johnny Carson show. Carson asked him did you ever make a wrong call? His answer was no. Once i makes the call that's what it is.
I also prefer the human element in pool. I like the idea of just racking the balls not using a template. There needs to be a certain randomness to the game. We don't need it to turn into a video game.
As far as Yapp, he didn't need the referee to tell him if it was good or not, he is in the best position to know. His immediate reaction is that of somebody who knows they just screwed up, then turns to the referee hoping he gets a favorable call.
The referee was actually in probably the wrong position to make the call. She should have been on that other side of the table right over the shot, not standing behind him.
It was just too much at stake both money and title to have been so casual about it. I don't think there was a camera on her when she acknowledged the call. I would like that a chance to see her and read her body language.
I'll be clearer. I've seen just as many slow mo videos as anyone else. There is at least one video that it isn't clear at all if the 4-ball was hit first, and it looks like the 8-ball may have been hit first in that video. We literally cannot see the contact point since it's on the other side of the 8-ball. This is why refereess are trained at looking at the cueball path. Unless someone can give me a better analysis on where physics say the cueball would go on a bad hit vs good hit, the cueball path tells me the 4-ball was hit last as it followed the 4-ball tangent and not the 8-ball tangent.
His shot at 4:00 he says is a foul, but it looked good to me (edit: looks like a bad hit on further review). He isn't talking about tangents but rather full hits on the 2nd ball. So, this is a good analysis.
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WobblyStroke
Well-known member
Ima have to set this up and hit it now. thanks lol.
As for explanation...
The CB goes (Yapp's) left of the 8's path. That's not possible unless it's 8 last.
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Not a foul, because incompetent ref didn’t call it. Definitely a bad hit. For those referring to the tangent line, the original doesn’t exist, in relation to the eight ball. It is altered by the bad hit. There have been many recent threads about this exact thing, and so many people on the wrong side of it. This just reconfirms my policy of never allowing my opponent to call a foul. If there is no ref, I call it on myself. If my opponent wants to call a foul, he has to have video, that is conclusive.
FWIW, I asked ChatGPT to create a physics-based analysis and statistical model (including actual physical parameters as well as information gleaned from Dr. Dave), then run Monte Carlo simulations on extreme right spin shots and then to plot the results of
1) hitting 4 first and
2) hitting 8 first.
I had it run 250,000 attempts and show the results on an overhead of the actual [real world] table. These tests resulted in resting cue ball locations that had no overlap between 8-ball-first and 4-ball-first shots (as would be expected). The estimated end location of the actual shot aligns with a 4-first hit. I then had it run a second simulation at 25% higher speed (10,000 attempts) to show a broader plot.
Below are the graphs and here is ChatGPT's answer: Under standard WPA rules, such contact would constitute a foul. However, absent clear real-time evidence, the original ruling remains valid.
[edit: the object balls are so close, and are separately approximately by the diameter of a ball. Super close hit. The line of centers [arguably] supports that the cue ball path will almost exclusively be because of natural roll after contact. The cue ball contacts the 2nd ball (whatever that is) almost immediately and would lose almost all movement along the tangent line. The resulting location is largely a result roll.
-td
1) hitting 4 first and
2) hitting 8 first.
I had it run 250,000 attempts and show the results on an overhead of the actual [real world] table. These tests resulted in resting cue ball locations that had no overlap between 8-ball-first and 4-ball-first shots (as would be expected). The estimated end location of the actual shot aligns with a 4-first hit. I then had it run a second simulation at 25% higher speed (10,000 attempts) to show a broader plot.
Below are the graphs and here is ChatGPT's answer: Under standard WPA rules, such contact would constitute a foul. However, absent clear real-time evidence, the original ruling remains valid.
[edit: the object balls are so close, and are separately approximately by the diameter of a ball. Super close hit. The line of centers [arguably] supports that the cue ball path will almost exclusively be because of natural roll after contact. The cue ball contacts the 2nd ball (whatever that is) almost immediately and would lose almost all movement along the tangent line. The resulting location is largely a result roll.
-td
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What I'm noticing as a general theme on these "was the ref wrong" threads, is that people care less and less. At first, it was: "can you believe the ref made the wrong call, he should be fired, the player should have called the foul on himself as well" sort of reactions. Now, it's more: "the ref might have gotten it wrong, but his call is final, and that's just the way the game is played".
Its no big deal, its just a judgment call that's sometimes wrong.
Its no big deal, its just a judgment call that's sometimes wrong.
but that would also be true of simultaneous hit, or am i thinking this wrong?
Aside from the fact that a simultaneous hit is extremely rare, I think the path of the CB would be straight through the gap (in this case towards the foot rail) not towards the corner pocket.
middleofnowhere
Registered
The big conversation is the fact that the shot turned out to be so critical. If this had happened in game 2 nobody would be talking about it. I've lost sets that were very close or you see a mistake I may have made on my final game. it looks like that's why I lost.
Realistically I don't kid myself. I may have made mistakes or missed a ball or two in the beginning of the set that put me in that position in the first place.
You failed to get out and he wins that game and runs a rack or two. That's a big swing over one miss ball that you may end up never making it up and lose the set by like two games.
Sharivari has a good video discussing the shot and showing 8-first and 4-first shots. In each case the cue ball follows the ball it hit second. That is for shots that clearly hit one ball first.
A very general principle in physics says that as the incoming line of cue ball is very gradually changed from hitting one ball first to the other ball first, the final path of the cue ball will smoothly vary from one direction to the other. These in-between directions happen when the cue ball is in contact with the two balls simultaneously. The contacts are not instantaneous. They last about 0.2 milliseconds or 200 microseconds, or about a tenth as long as tip-ball contacts.
The "normal" situation is that the contact begins with one of the object balls, the cue ball and first object ball acquire their new speeds and directions, and then the cue ball leaves contact with the first ball. It travels a little distance and then contacts the second ball.
The unusual situation is when the cue ball is still in contact with the first ball when it hits the second. The two contacts overlap in time. This is pretty rare, because the duration of each contact is so short.
A reasonable way to decide which was first for overlapping contacts is to see which of the "normal" paths the cue ball is closer to. This requires you to know what the normal paths are. A very simple case is when shooting directly between two frozen object balls. If the cue ball comes perfectly straight back, you hit the balls simultaneously. If it goes even slightly to either side, that tells you which was struck first. I have seen the cue ball come back within a couple of degrees of straight back, but never perfectly straight back.
I think the positions of the balls for the shot in question was pretty complicated and it was not easy to predict the exact paths of the cue ball for various sequences of hit. Maybe a video review would have helped, but I doubt that the actual collisions would have been in separate frames. The frames are typically around 10 milliseconds apart and only very expensive equipment could see the actual ball-ball contacts.
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Just so I understand, are you saying you think there were scenarios where the CB could have followed the path it did with anything other than hitting the 4b first so that absent high-speed video you would not be able to determine if it was a foul or not?
As an aside, I really wish they had shown an overhead view of the hit, a view they clearly had but did not show.
If you look at the two paths of the cue ball in the Sharivari video for separate (non-overlapping) contacts, the paths are quite far apart. The path in the stream video was very close to one of those paths. It is possible that there was overlapping contact, but that is still hitting one ball first, and I think for this shot, the first ball is obvious from the path of the cue ball.
I think that if high speed video had been available -- 10 or 20 frames during each ball-ball contact, so 10,000 FPS -- it would have been very clear which ball was struck first, even with overlap. No tournament has such equipment.