9 ball variant idea. How might this game be broken?

I invented a full rack "9 ball" game out of necessity in 1977, when I was playing in the game room of the Purdue University Student Union, which at the time had a strictly enforced "no 9 ball" rule, in order to discourage gambling.

Here's how I got around it: Full rack, balls randomly racked. After the break, the first six balls are run in any order, either low or high balls, doesn't matter.

Then after nine balls remain, you then have to run them in order, with the highest remaining ball on the table becoming the "9 ball". Although in most cases the "9 ball" would be the 15 ball or another striped ball between the 10 and the 14.

Most of the time it was pretty straightforward, but if after the break you saw a striped ball sitting near a pocket, say the 13 ball, you'd want to pocket the 14 and 15 ball among your first six, leaving you with a possible combo on the 13 once you started shooting the last 9 in rotation.

Obviously it's a slower game than real 9 ball, but what I liked about it was that it made for more variety in strategy, plus it lessened the advantage of the break, since even with the best breaks you'd still have 12 or 13 balls to contend with, rather than 6 or 7, and with more congestion on the table.
 
sjm said:
If anything, I think 9ball has become too difficult, but I figured I'd have a look first at the At Large stats from the Reyes Cup first. To state the obvious, most of these matches featured highly ranked players with good breaks.

Here's what I found.

Racks played 103 B&R racks 17 so B&R % approximately 17%

Racks played 103 the side that broke the balls won just 49 of those racks and lost 54

At the Reyes Cup, the world's best, as a group, were not breaking and running much and the break did not appear to be an advantage.

This seemed odd, so I looked at the China Open 9ball, played just a few weeks ago.

There, the B&R rate was 23% and the breaker won 52% of the 126 racks tracked.

At the US Open 9ball, the B&R rate was a very impressive 30% and the breaker won 62% of the 204 racks tracked.

If we add the stats together for the Reyes Cup, the China Open and the US Open, we find that of the 433 racks played, there were 107 B&R (25%) and the breaker won 241 of those racks (55.6%). In other words, over these 433 racks tracked by AtLarge, the breaker won about five of every nine racks.

In short, the break offers only a small advantage. Any suggestion that the 9ball break is broken does not hold up to scrutiny. The days of dominating with the break (as SVB did in 2014-16) are long gone and the formula for winning includes a lot of defense, kicking, jumping and tactical exchanges.

Of course, as we have seen at Derby City, enlarge the break box and loosen the pockets and the top pros can have a field day, but those are not world-class specifications.
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According to those stats 9 ball is not broken at all.
 
Get rid of the jump shots make the pros kick jump shots are to easy to hit a ball.
 
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