It's 8,9,10 ball rack infused into one... and I personally don't want it. The 8 ball magic rack is terrible. I never use it so I want as little of that rack on the table as possible. I love the magic rack and use it daily but it changes the path of balls when they slow roll over it so I don't want more of the rack on the table.
I have had to change several peoples thinking on this and so far I have had success so let me give this a shot.....
We had 258 8-Ball racks using the SOLO in the event.... There were zero slugs... There were 3 instances where the cueball made contact when it was hopping which created a light hit on the head ball and left the 8ball and another ball frozen where they were racked but not 1 slug rack was seen where a player hit the balls and they made a dead sound and no energy was released.... There were quite a few slugs in April and we only played 102 games of 8-Ball in the All-Star and that was with a wooden rack and neutral racker... In 2012 we saw a ton of slugs as well. Part were due to a "different" template being tried the first day but there were plenty when the template was tossed.....
As far as slow rolling balls having their paths being altered.. Yes it will happen from time to time... And it's not got anything todo with the amount of material it has to do with the edges... It also really doesn't have a lot todo with thickness past a point... A slow roller can be altered by a human hair on the table...
But here is the thing... The rack is neutral so it is not going to be for a player or against a player when it happens... It is just another part of the randmoness of a break... A ball can travel 36 feet bounce off 2 balls, 5 cushions before settling on a spot but an alteration of an inch or 2 is troublesome? None of the pro players had any comlaints about this aspect. Sometime you get a good roll and sometimes you get a bad roll. At the highest level in the game they still happen but at the highest level of the game it is understood they almost always even out...
After using the templates for a long time now it doesn't trouble me when a slow roller is coming into the rack.. I have seen enough of them to know it doesn't know it's my opponent who just broke so sometimes they end up tieing up for him just like they sometimes tie up for me.....
Another thing is speed... Granted Cosmo and Kenny were slow in this event... They had never seen the SOLO and didn't get to play around with it before the tournament. You should be able to get a perfect rack in 30 seconds even on a table with bad cloth and bad balls... I have no idea if you saw the US Open the last year they had the opponent rack rule in place but we had match after match after match where the racking was taking 5-10 minutes before the rack would be accepted... I saw Rodney rack 9 times for soemone before they would accept it when they finally saw the gap they wanted or maybe it took 9 times to freeze them all and that was 9-Ball....
Last but not least.... Next time you play 8-Ball and you have your opponent rack... Count the number of times you make a ball straight into either of the bottom pockets without the balls going 2 or 4 rails... It happens quite a bit racking by hand and should be a dead solid give away that there are gaps in the 8-Ball rack... It's not uncommon for people to break 8-Ball on the SOLO an it be the first time ever they have broken a rack of 8-ball where all of the balls were frozen... LOTS of players think as long as the first 3 balls are frozen thats all that matters... Kenny even said that was all the players cared about in the beginning...
Kenny is now in the Accu-Rack camp and will be asking to have them used in future events where he is involved....
Chris
