Dawgie said:
Thanks for the response. I read the rules and this is how I interpreted them also. I approached my team cap't today and he was adament that it is BIH to the opponent. He also reminded me that he is an APA region rep.
Tomorrow night I will hand him the rules and have him read them and then ask his opinion once again.
With all due respect and this is not necessarily a slight about your captain but it's not terribly unusual to run across people in the APA who only know the APA. I mean, this rule interpretation is fairly obvious and was handled poorly by someone who obviously needs to review the rulebook a few more times. However, I have been in the middle of debates with APA players who really know nothing about pool outside of APA and do not know how to handle scenarios that fall into the gray area of the book (situations that are not necessarily defined).
Whenever you compete in ANYTHING, it's important to get a hold of the rules yourself and to read them thoroughly. I can cite almost every difference between BCA and APA, current and past. It's important to know these differences because it provides some insight as to why these differences exist and can help you predict how a referee might rule on situations that are not specifically covered.
A perfect example of poor wording can be found on page 49 in the Team Manual:
"9.a
Anytime the cue ball goes in a pocket, on the floor, or otherwise ends up off the playing surface [it is a foul]."
Now, this seems extremely cut and dried but the fact is, there will be someone out there who is going to pick up the cue ball and drop it on the floor and some doofus is going to scream FOUL.
The way to argue it is to cite "ends up off the playing surface" which gives an implication that these scenarios would be deemed a foul if this is the result of a shot. There isn't a single referee in the world that would say otherwise. The only time this would even be a problem is when no referee is present.
The reason I bring this up is because if you're aware of a few rule books, you're going to have a sense of the "spirit of the rules" and you'll avoid a good chunk of the poor rulings commonly seen in the APA.
