Foot Spot/White

[Island Drive]

Seeing this as of late, I like it allot.
It's not easy when your eyes age, to see a DARK spot in the shadows of the head ball.
Playing in an event this past weekend, was seated at the table head watchin my opponent rack his break, it was VERY easy to see he was well below the foot spot.. Being old school, I still don't like my opponent racking his 9 ball rack.
All other games it's not as big a deal, but the wing balls in ''niner'' are important to the ''seated player'' to get ''tight and right''.
I've had opponents rack the wing balls loose before/intentionally, they sure go in the hole easy.

 

[hang-the-9]

I don't say anything about rack your own setups till I see the break doing something consistent for the player that it should not be doing. I played a guy at The Rack near Detroit, every break the 9 would shoot towards the corner pocket. Half the games were won by an early 9 ball combo if the 9 did not go in. Our race to 7 was the last one I played with him after I said "boy you sure know how to rack em, I'll play when you don't cheat it so much" LOL

Normally when players ask to do rack your own it's because they don't trust the other player to know what they are doing, but in some cases it's because they want the opportunity to cheat a bit. Template racks take care of a good amount of cheating the rack and make the rack your own thing a moot point since anyone over the age of 5 can do a tight rack with one once they are shown.

 

[Island Drive]

Plus they can also ''tilt'' the 9 ball rack, so watching from the side is not smart when your gambling with a new character' .