There need to be ground rules for identifying situations like this and having reliable parties in position or else.
FOUL Called on SVB at the UK OPEN
- Thread starter dr_dave
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crazy8legs
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I always thought if there was a simultaneous hit or it was undeterminable, the call went in favor of the shooter. Regardless I'm sure the referee, Marcel Eckert, will be studying up on that shot and those like it. (Wouldn't be surprised if he does in fact see Dr Dave's analysis of it.)
Referee is tought job, they are human, they do goof.
The referee is to be respected.
The referee is to be respected.
Agreed. It is a tough job, and they do deserve respect. I should have said this in my video.
However, when they make mistakes, the mistakes should be pointed out and learned from so fewer mistakes will be made in the future (by all).
For those interested, lots of past "bad call" examples (and resources) to learn from can be found here:
Yes, he also had an easy safety available if he wanted it. Either way, he was in control.
True, FSR might have opted for the safety instead, but even that was kid stuff. FSR always had control of this rack and would only lose this rack if he made an error. He made awfully few of those in the entire single elimination round.
Yes, it's possible for sure.
It also possible that FSR would have failed to run out the rack WITH ball in hand, but the guy was in dead punch. It took a very inspired performance by Filler to deny FSR the title.
In the original thread, Gatz posted a very good video that clearly showed a good hit.
I'm not making a statement about whether I think the hit was good or bad. Refs are human, and bad calls are an unavoidable part of almost any sport.
That being said, if the referee has any doubt, he should call the shot good. I'm willing to bet the ref in this case agrees and abides by that same guideline, as would other trained referees. The fact that he immediately and confidently called foul is worth noting. It's also worth noting that video is notoriously unreliable in situations like these, and the referee was the only person standing at the correct position at the time of contact to determine what actually happened.
Good points. However, it is impossible for a human to accurately see the action of a shot like this live without slowed-down video. Something like a double hit or wrong-ball-first call is much simpler since the indirect evidence from ball motion is clear (e.g., the CB going forward of the tangent line with a double hit). Those types of fouls can be easily judged live (even though you cannot see the foul directly). With Shane's shot, there were no direct or indirect clues available live or in video to indicate a foul.
Another thing about point of observation - The ref walked into position as the shot transpired and pivoted to a stop just as the hit was about to occur. That's too much multi tasking besides the problems of equilibrium and in this case instantaneous orientation.
Thanks. That's a great example of the philosophical slant in the rules of pool favoring the shooter.
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Technically, that is not a rule. That is in the "Regulations" for pool. Regulations describe how the rules are to be applied and discuss peripheral things like dress code that are not actually part of the specifics of how the disciplines are played.
Similarly, there is no "cue ball fouls only" rule in the WPA World Standardized Rules. There is a regulation for that for situations in which there is no referee available for the table.
And for this thread, I agree that the "split hit" regulation should be applied even though it only discusses ball contacts.