There's so much image squaring in the original, the shot itself looked wrong. I figured sweltering humidity; doesn't take much. The Dr.'s video cleared that up by looking identical lol.
Controversial Non-Call of WRONG-BALL-HIT-FIRST FOUL - Hanoi Open - Capito vs. Lechner Quarter Final
- Thread starter dr_dave
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I'll give him the benefit of the doubt every time.
I don't want him reffing my match if he doesn't know that much about ball contact.
sometimes on push shots cueball behavior is the basis of the call. why wouldn't it be in wrong ball first hits?
i would say though, there is a practical problem getting knowledgeable referees for a tour that travels to 6-7 countries and uses local refs. maybe AI could be utilized for matches on stream tables.
yes there's this tendency to always say the player had to have known/felt the foul. i don't agree with that. i have no clue how these guys' perception is affected by that level of competitive stress, the heat of the moment, including crowd noise etc. my guess is it doesn't compare to a weekly pool room tournament
I see where you are coming from but I think push shots and wrong ball first are different enough situations to have different ways of judging them.
AI or similar technology is used elsewhere in sport. The best example I can think of is in cricket with the Decision Review System (DRS). It's quite technical for non-cricket fans but esessntially it projects the path of an impeded ball as if it hadn't been impeded. It would certainly be interesting to see sophisticated AI replicate the path of the cue ball if it i) hit the 4 first by the smallest measurable margin, ii) hit both balls simultanseously, iii) hit the 9 first by the smallest measurable margin. My guess it the actual path of the cueball would be close to situation (iii). But, if it were between (ii) and (iii) and it were used to make a judgement, then it would surely be "referee's call"/go with the shooter?
This is just dead wrong. The referee's job is to make to make the most accurate call possible after looking at all the available evidence and seeing if it makes it conclusive one way or the other, and if nothing conclusively shows a foul, then giving the call to the shooter.
Among the evidence that can be conclusive at times are what his naked eye saw in real time, the ball paths/speeds, a video replay, video replays from other angles, replays in slow motion, etc. Ironically enough, when it comes to close hits, what the naked eye can see is typically one of if not the least reliable thing we could go by.
Saying that you have to be able to see with your eye which ball was hit first sounds like some kind of made up bar rule that would come from the same guy saying "ball in hand anywhere on the table is for people that don't know how to play pool, ball in hand should only be in the kitchen and if the 8 ball is in the kitchen too you have to kick at it ," and "if your object ball rubs the rail on the way in it wasn't a clean shot and doesn't count and only unskilled players would play where that counts," and "playing safes is chicken sh!t pool". There is just no logic to that statement.
Not only can you make decisions based on ball behavior, but you are obligated to, because sometimes it gives conclusive proof about what happened, just as it does in this case. Even though you are saying you shouldn't made decisions based on "ball behavior", you yourself already do this unless you are a rank beginner, you just don't do it for situations like this one because you don't know how yet. Fortunately it is very easy to learn. You can find all the information on Dr. Dave's site (and I believe he provided most of the applicable links already earlier in the thread).
An example I can give you where you already rely on ball behavior to know what happened, rather than just what your eye can see about the hit itself, is this one. The object ball and cue ball are a quarter inch apart. Your opponent shoots the cue ball full into the object ball at high speed and both the object ball and cue ball then travel forward together one right behind the other at the same high speed without hesitation. You know without doubt that it is a double hit, even though your eye could not actually see the double hit, and you know it because those ball reactions were literally impossible without a double hit, and so it can and should be ruled a foul. The ball paths and speeds that happened in Capito's shot were similarly impossible without fouling and hitting the nine first, so the foul can and should be called based on that impossibility.
