1 Pocket Rule Question

kzoojam2006

kzoojam2006

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Last night a friend of mine was in a game of 1-pocket for $50/game with a fine gentleman from Detroit.

A rule question came up and after a few minutes of discussion and calls to local players there was no sure answer.

Player A broke from the left side establishing the right hand corner pocket to be his. Upon scratching on the break, he mistakenly put a coin to mark his scratch on the left corner pocket (player B's pocket).

The question at hand was: "Did player A lose his right to the pocket he intended by placing his coin on the wrong pocket?"

A rule was brought up that a player must announce his pocket before breaking, but from my 1-pocket experience (or lack there of) I have never seen or heard anyone announce there pocket. This rule is kind of beside the point, but it was just brought up by someone and I thought it was interesting.

Being the gentleman that they are, the players just decided to not count it as a foul and Player B kept the initial (left side) pocket that would have been his.

Does anyone know if a foul was committed by placing the coin on the wrong pocket?

Thanks!
 
There is a rule that the pocket must be called prior to the break, but in standard practice it is usually just assumed. This thing happens all the time, and there is usually no penalty for marking the wrong pocket. There is no rule that the owed balls even have to be marked, and that is really just a common practice way to remember, so technically you can put coins wherever you want to. It is the opponents responsibilty to remember the owed ball anyways, not the offending players, but most players will mark their own fouls as a courtesy.
 
We use a chalkboard. But the answer is No, no penalty for marking the wrong pocket, players do make a mistake sometimes and forget which pocket they have. Sometimes they even shoot one in for you.LOL:D
 
CaptainHook said:
...players do make a mistake sometimes and forget which pocket they have. Sometimes they even shoot one in for you.LOL:D
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Are you serious? I can never imagine myself doing that! :o

It's amazing what an otherwise competent mind can do after skipping sleep for a few hours.
 
While not exactly the same scenario, this thread reminds me of a one-pocket situation from DCC a few years back. Corey was playing a match (vs. Putnam, IIRC), and he opted to use his wide-open 1-p break, in which he breaks the balls much harder than usual in an attempt to pocket a ball in his hole while leaving the cueball on the opposite side of the table (imagine a softer version of the second-ball 8-ball break). The problem was that his wide-open break required him to set up to break with his cb on the same side of the table as his intended pocket, opposite of a normal 1-p break, and the rules, at least in that tournament, stated that if a player did not explicitly call his pocket before the break then it was assumed that he wanted the pocket on the opposite side from which he was breaking.

Essentially, Corey's break worked perfectly, but, since he didn't explicitly call his pocket, Putnam was the benefactor and he promptly ran 8 and out in the hole that Corey should have had.
 
desert1pocket said:
There is a rule that the pocket must be called prior to the break, but in standard practice it is usually just assumed. This thing happens all the time, and there is usually no penalty for marking the wrong pocket. There is no rule that the owed balls even have to be marked, and that is really just a common practice way to remember, so technically you can put coins wherever you want to. It is the opponents responsibilty to remember the owed ball anyways, not the offending players, but most players will mark their own fouls as a courtesy.
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Thanks for this. You saved me writing.
 
mosconiac said:
Are you serious? I can never imagine myself doing that! :o

It's amazing what an otherwise competent mind can do after skipping sleep for a few hours.
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I've done it more than once!....it happens to me mostly when I'm playing the same guy for a long time and we keep the same pockets, then one of us switches pockets and oooops. The last time I did it I banked a ball for the wrong hole and it doubled up into my actual pocket!:D....I was pissin and moanin, and he never got out of the chair.......he only shook his head and laughed.....good thing was I went out.

Gerry
 
kzoojam2006 said:
A rule was brought up that a player must announce his pocket before breaking, but from my 1-pocket experience (or lack there of) I have never seen or heard anyone announce there pocket.
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Many people (including some well-known AccuStats commentators) will say that if you're breaking from the right side, then you are choosing the left foot pocket, but that's just a shorthand way of explaining the break to people who do not play one pocket.

There is a seldom-seen one pocket bank-break where the player shoots the cueball from the left side of the head string into the right long rail, then into the right side of the pack. Like Corey's break, calling your pocket is necessary if you're going to play that break.

Ken
 
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