How would you play this? My first attempt.

[2rgrbn]

To a lot of people, this probably looks like nonsense. But it brings up the same point I initially made in Jude's thread. Most of the lower levels are going to play safe in this position. If that is what you choose to do, then, as Roy pointed out, look at ALL your options. In this case, you can play safe on the 2 and still get a freebie shot on the 9. And the 9 itself is a two way shot.

So, when playing safe, see if you have an option to win the game, or break up clusters in the process. Don't just try to hide the cb. Always look at all your options. A lot of times, the secondary benefit may be a low percentage. But it is zero percentage if you don't even try for it.

You actually think a real player playing against another real player would fly the balls like shown in the last example and hope for a break, not a chance if riding the nine is the goal then just draw the cue off of the 2 towards the 9 and the 2 will towards the 9 but the percentage is low

 

[Neil]

................

 

[2rgrbn]

You're missing the point.

I read back over what you had written earlier and yes I did miss the point, My apologies. My lack of attention to detail got me against a buddy on the tables earlier tonight and then again in my response to the earlier post.

 

[Chris_Lynch]

Some interesting responses here and I thank you all for them. I felt then and still do that there wasn't an excellent high percentage safe here so I went for the runout. There are 2 things that influence the shot for me as well.

1) I'm left handed so it was easy to reach
2) The tables where I play have rails that play pretty fast/short. It was impossible to miss the 4 ball and draw around it.

I definitely hit the shot too hard and didn't really recognize at the time that I didn't need to hit it so hard. I wasn't playing enough straight pool back then to really be conscious of where the 4 would go or else I would not try to get all the way down and risk having the 4 tie up with the 7 or anything else.

As for the "obvious" shot I will say that we were playing regular 9-ball and not Honolulu or some variation!

 

[SmoothStroke]

Talk about head games

Lefty explains it. I should have set the shot up on the other side of the table and saved my testicles a lot of abuse. I am going to wear a cup when I play for two reasons.
1) For safety
2) If my opponet performs well, instead of the old finger snap, hand smack on the chair or verbal compliment,etc I can just bang on the cup a few times. He has to be thinking this guy is nuts, I run a 3 pack and he is hitting his testicles like he is knocking on a door.
He may never make another shot or throw the cue ball at my head, that's where the football helmet comes in.

 

[Bigkahuna]

I just can't believe that no one has seen the OBVIOUS solution yet...

CueTable Help

Roy That is funny! Now if you figure the pockets are five inches a piece and there are six that is 30 inches of pocket if you can enough balls moving over the distance of the table!:idea2: :scratchhead: :rotflmao1:

Seriously though this makes me think it would be neat if WEI could calculate the percentages of shots and offer different solutions. There would probably have to be a pant load of information loaded into a database.