APA Unmarked Pocket Cost my Rackess, then the Match
- Thread starter JessEm
- Start date
Even tho I don't understand how a simple, obvious and often stated rule can be unfair...indulge us.
How could you penalize the offender differently than loss of game, after the 8-ball has gone in? Spot it, and give ball-in-hand? That opens up a whole world of issues, much more complicated than the very simple, "loss of game if you don't do this, so don't do it."
Since this thread is still going (and it's been a good one), I have to ask a question to those that think the pocket should ALWAYS be marked for the 8-ball. Let me iterate that this actually happened to me some years ago.
Does anyone really believe it is absolutely necessary (regardless of THE rule) to mark a pocket for the 8-ball if it is literally hanging on the lip of the shelf of a corner pocket and could not possibly be touched by the cue ball without it going into that pocket?
Yep....I got called on it. To me, that scenario circumvented the spirit of the rule, which is put in place to keep someone from shooting at a particular pocket, missing, and pocketing the 8 in another pocket and the shooter claiming THAT pocket WAS the intended one. A marker, imo, is never necessary in the situation I was involved in and I thought that opponent calling me for it was the biggest d*ck move I have ever been involved in in all my days of pool. One of the sorriest acts of bad sportsmanship I had ever seen before (and since) regardless of the "rule".
Maniac
Does anyone really believe it is absolutely necessary (regardless of THE rule) to mark a pocket for the 8-ball if it is literally hanging on the lip of the shelf of a corner pocket and could not possibly be touched by the cue ball without it going into that pocket?
Yep....I got called on it. To me, that scenario circumvented the spirit of the rule, which is put in place to keep someone from shooting at a particular pocket, missing, and pocketing the 8 in another pocket and the shooter claiming THAT pocket WAS the intended one. A marker, imo, is never necessary in the situation I was involved in and I thought that opponent calling me for it was the biggest d*ck move I have ever been involved in in all my days of pool. One of the sorriest acts of bad sportsmanship I had ever seen before (and since) regardless of the "rule".
Maniac
I agree maniac because I had the same exact situation called on me. Literally straight in Inches from a corner pocket. I agree its a pain sometimes but on the other hand I think its a good rule when followed because there will never be a doubt where the 8 ball is intended to go.
To me .....its much like the thread earlier about integrity concerning called fouls in that vnea tournament. some people are going to use rules to their advantage to win a game.....it seems the higher the prize in a playoff/ tournament the lower the threshold for some ones integrity.
The marked pocket rule eliminates all the arguments of.....that's where I intended it to go....i don't hear you...i didn't see you point.....it didn't look that obvious to me.
Some people have integrity no matter what ....but some people behind you would pick up the 10 .00 bill you dropped and hand it back to you. Drop.a 100.00 bill and they will stick it in their pocket.
Marking the pockets foils those with low integrity
Not to a lot of 'em. You'd think that the mere possibility of a trip to Vegas was the Holy Grail to many a league player...something akin to winning a World Pool title.
I've seen league players bear down so hard playing a match that it took all the fun out of it for me. I played another SL6 one night and experienced this. Made a few friendly comments between some racks and never got a peep out of him. I guess you can't expect to glean any fun from a player that's got his "game face" on. And this was just regular weeknight APA league.
Oh yeah....I racklessed that stiff a**hole that night. After the match he didn't shake my hand and had his cues put up and was out of the bar in less than two minutes. I hope he's learned to mellow out some since that match.
Maniac
Yes, and those weak players learn to play pool and join other leagues or start playing in tournaments and eventually our sport grows.
And if you don't like inning adders - run the table?
You're an idiot.
I respect you as a ardent player/captain as well as a intelligent poster, but rule or no rule will I ever be convinced that a pocket with the 8-ball literally hanging on the edge of the pocket shelf needs marking. Every skill level player all the way down to a SL2 would surely understand that it is 100% impossible to touch that ball without it going into that pocket. Anybody taking a win in that scenario is a total a**hat imo and taking the league play way to seriously. It is not in the "spirit" of the rule to do something like that.
FWIW, I was having a conversation with the league operator several years after the fact and that night came up in our conversation. After explaining it to him in full detail, he told me that if I had called him about it immediately after it happened, he would have informed the opponent that he couldn't take the win that way. That was when I first heard the term "spirit of the rule" uttered. Whether or not he had the right to deny my opponent that way, I don't know. But he said he would have.
Have fun. Meet people. Play pool. (the APA's mission statement)
Fun? Sometimes. More so than not.
Meet people? Yes, but some of them are a**holes.
Play pool? Yes, but a bastardized form of it.
I wish there were more people like me that play leagues for literally nothing more than what the APA's marketing statement implies. It's trying to my patience and good nature sometimes.
Maniac (absolutely done ranting now :thumbup
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This post made me go read the APA rules. They are quite clear about marking the pocket; it's mentioned nine times, three or four of which saying it's a requirement.
So, a league operator who was not present and witnessing the game says that he would reverse a win, in contradiction of the clear, unambiguous, written rules, because of a sense of "spirit of the rule," when such interpretation of spirit is mentioned nowhere in the rules. That would be quite remarkable. I don't doubt he said that, I'm just saying that it would be remarkable for a league operator to do that. How would he explain it to your opponent, and their team?
I think it's unfortunate that it happened, but at the end of the day it's at the discretion of your opponent to concede the rule, isn't it? And I agree, it's a bit of poor sportsmanship, but still within the literal interpretation of the rules.
I don't recall, did you simply forget to mark the pocket, or did you just assume it was obvious and didn't require marking?
Its not that simple. In one of my previous posts I told the story about one of my players opponents using the rule only after it was hill-hill and neither player had marked a pocket the 8 previous racks played in that match. Only when he lost did he use that rule. That's the win at any cost many pool players have.....its not just an apa thing.
Yep. On my two teams there is nothing but people (except one, who just likes the companionship) who have become enthusiastic about learning pool and playing it a lot more of it to become better.
I captain one team of 8 people. I could play all 8 of us and still be under the 23 rule. But they join me in practice, and show up for every match.
And no, they are definitely not sandbagging...
As much as people ***** about the APA, it definitely gets people playing.
He needed a lobotomy. I hate people like that.
Even within NAAP, people ***** about rules; the National Association of Agreeable People...
I had taken a few sessions off from APA 8-ball to play in a BCA 8-ball league. Then, to play on a team with some friends, I went back to APA 8-ball.
It happened in my first game that I got a shot at the 8-ball, in my first match back after the hiatus. I had been playing with a very good group of people in the BCA and I must have forgotten that I am no longer playing with those folks anymore.
Besides, and I reiterate, that pocket absolutely didn't need marking regardless of the rule.
I took another hiatus after that session (I would never quit a team that I had committed to playing on for any session) just to re-evaluate whether or not I wanted to ever play again with such a large group of a**holes that permeated that league division. I started playing in non-handicapped tournaments and my game got quite a bit better for it.
I still ask my opponents now (APA) if it's okay to just call the pocket for the 8 and all but one readily agreed to it. When I have to play a person that insists on pocket marking, I have never, since that one fiasco, forgotten to mark my pocket....and often have to remind other teammates to do so.
Maniac
One of the things I always tell other players is you need to be able to read your
opponent.
So if you play the game like gentlemen (or gentle-women) this whole forcing you to
mark you pocket thing is moot. But in The APA it didn't take long to learn that not everyone has the courtesy to be out in public and to that end not everyone we play is a
gentleman or gentle-woman. This you should know by the time you finish the lag.
In what they call the higher level tournaments it's just smart to follow all the rules,
including marking your pocket, remember, some of those teams advanced there by not being gentlemen and they can be really good at being a bunch of bastards.
Lesson being - don't trust anyone you don't know
Is there a certain lag decorum I'm unaware of? Serious question.
Don't lag your ball before the other player is down on the shot to lag their own ball, make sure you are as far over to your side of the table as you comfortably can be to give them room. just kind of stuff you probably already do.