If you have not read the rules, keep your trap shut!

Billy_Bob

Billy_Bob

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I get so disgusted with league players who have been playing for years and have obviously never read even *one* page of the rules.

They will insist they know the rules, be totally WRONG, and yet insist they know what the rule is. Read the rules!

For example double hit: Players will insist it is a good hit every time if the cue ball is more than a "chalk cubes" distance from the object ball and they are hitting the cue ball with a normal stroke. Wrong!

Other player; "Well so and so told me it is always a good hit if the cue ball is more than a chalk cubes distance from the object ball."
Me; "Read the rules!"
Other player; "I know it is a good hit because that is what so and so said!"
Me; "Read the rules!"
Etc...

You can have a double hit even with the cue ball 6 inches away from the object ball if your follow through stroke is more than the distance between the balls. The cue tip hits the cue ball, then cue ball hits the object ball, then the cue ball stops or hesitates, then the tip of the cue hits the cue ball *again*. Then the cue ball closely follows the object ball. This is a double hit and it is a foul. You have hit the cue ball twice with the tip of your cue.

Or 9-ball "Three consecutive foul rule":
Someone who has been playing BCA for 3 years says; "What is that?"
I tell them; "It is in the BCA rule book!"
Player says; "Well I have never heard of this, what is it with all these new local rules? That new league director is a jerk for changing everything!"
I say; "It is in the *national* BCA rule book!"
Etc...
[I have a 1992 BCA rule book in which this rule appears, so this rule has been around awhile.]

BCA general rules...
http://www.bcapoolleague.com/rules/gen.php

BCA 9-ball rules...
http://www.bcapoolleague.com/rules/9ball.php

BCA 8-ball rules...
http://www.bcapoolleague.com/rules/8ball.php
 
Most of the guys on my club team or the other teams out of the club laughed at me when they saw me reading the APA rule book. Throughout the season when anything happened I was the one to step up and tell people that they were wrong and what the rules were and every arguement I made was a valid one and we won the arguement since i had the rule book with me. By the middle of the session people were happy I had read the rules :)

Last night I double hit the cue and made the ball in the pocket i called (BCA'ish rules I think) I told the guy I had double hit and gave him ball in hand, he ran out and I lost. (I dont know if its actually ball in hand or just loss of shot BUT i figure ball in hand would teach me not to let it happen again) :)

-Lou
 
hehe. I hate loudmouths that don't know the rules.

Here are 2 complaints against me, both happened in vegas, both from the same guy on the same team. He wasn't even playing and he was trying to call these fouls in a game against one of his players. I could have called a coaching foul, but anyways here they are.

I guy was less than a millimeter away from a ball, so before he got down to shoot it, i got up, went over and had a look to see if they were frozen. They were, so i told him he could shoot away. His teammate behind my back started bitching that I'm not allowed to look, or get out of my chair unless I am getting a ref. UNTRUE, i had a ref tell me earlier that I am a referee in my game and my opponent is a referee, and we can both do whatever is acceptable for a referee. That is until we actually call a referee, then we have to sit down.

The other thing this dumbass tried to call on me is not calling all of my safeties. He told his guy to call a foul on me next time i played safe and didn't call it. I told him you only have to call it when your ball is at risk of going in and it looks like you might be purposely trying to sink it. He flipped out and said i had to call every safety if i was intentionally playing safe. I told him to shut the hell up, bumped a ball against a rail and hooked his guy again. He then called a REF over, BIG MISTAKE. The ref explained the rules to him, then explained the rules about coaching fouls, and then told him to keep his damn mouth shut till our match was over or he'd give me ball in hand.

PEOPLE ARE RETARDED.
 
Quote any rules and they'll think that you're from Mars. I mean, read the BCA's ruling when the cueball sits less than a chalk's width from the object ball.

Now I ask all of you grasshoppers, how many times have you seen players literally push the object ball, setting very close to the cueball, into the pocket?
 
Billy Bob,

Hearing your story reminded me of a guy I'll call "moron" that I ran into
in Vegas in '98.

We had to play his team in an APA 8 ball match and from the 2nd shot
of the first rack, he was complaining about this and that. We had the refs
at our table at least 8 times on nit-picky stuff and not once was Moron correct on a call. Eventually, the ref covering our area tired of him and threatened to DQ him if he
kept disrupting the matches over non-issues. Fortunately, we won 3-0 and didn't have
to listen to him for a full 5 matches. The best part though, came later that night.

I had signed up for a $20 mini and after a couple tough matches, made my way into the final. I decided to go watch the other semi to see how my opponent played. Sure enough, Moron was one of the players. He was driving his opponent nuts with the same garbage he tried on us and was winning even though I didn't get the impression he was the better player. During one of the next games, Moron's opponent had a buddy stop by to watch him play. The friend casually and loudly asked his buddy where they were going drinking after he was done. Moron jumped up and called foul. He claimed the his opponent was being coached. After calling a ref, and getting everybody's story, the ref told Moron to stop whining and shoot pool. I gathered from that response that these ref's weren't happy with him either. I think Moron's opponent threw the match just to get away from him.

So our final match is called and I asked Moron for his ID. Now I know him and vice versa from earlier in the day, but I wanted to give him the same hard time he had been giving everyone else. I took his ID and told him I'd be right back. I walked across the room to the TD and approached the guy at the desk who had earlier told Moron to stop whining. I asked him to look like he was checking something on his laptop and when he saw the ID, he laughed and played along. After a couple minutes, I took the ID and went back to the table. I handed Moron his ID and said "Alright, let's play!". He never asked what I was checking, but I know he was thinking about it the whole match. I shut him out 5-0 and I don't remember him ever getting close to winning a game. Sure, it was a shark of sorts, but after watching this guy's act all day, I figured he had it coming.

Two of his teammates caught up to us later in the restaurant and apologized for his behavior during our team match. They told us they had been trying to get him off the team, but he owned the place they played out of and they weren't sure how to shake him loose.
 
fxskater said:
hehe. I hate loudmouths that don't know the rules.

Here are 2 complaints against me, both happened in vegas, both from the same guy on the same team. He wasn't even playing and he was trying to call these fouls in a game against one of his players. I could have called a coaching foul, but anyways here they are.

I guy was less than a millimeter away from a ball, so before he got down to shoot it, i got up, went over and had a look to see if they were frozen. They were, so i told him he could shoot away. His teammate behind my back started bitching that I'm not allowed to look, or get out of my chair unless I am getting a ref. UNTRUE, i had a ref tell me earlier that I am a referee in my game and my opponent is a referee, and we can both do whatever is acceptable for a referee. That is until we actually call a referee, then we have to sit down.

The other thing this dumbass tried to call on me is not calling all of my safeties. He told his guy to call a foul on me next time i played safe and didn't call it. I told him you only have to call it when your ball is at risk of going in and it looks like you might be purposely trying to sink it. He flipped out and said i had to call every safety if i was intentionally playing safe. I told him to shut the hell up, bumped a ball against a rail and hooked his guy again. He then called a REF over, BIG MISTAKE. The ref explained the rules to him, then explained the rules about coaching fouls, and then told him to keep his damn mouth shut till our match was over or he'd give me ball in hand.

PEOPLE ARE RETARDED.
Click to expand...


In my final year in the APA, I was playing an s/l 5 in 8-ball. He was rather unhappy about the fact he was getting his ass handed to him but unfortunately, I was completely unaware of it until I fouled. As the cue-ball was slowly coming to a stop and in no danger of hitting anything, I picked it up and gave it to him. He says to me, "You can't do that." I ask why. He says, "You have to wait until it stops rolling." I ask what the penalty might be since it wasn't going to hit anything and mockingly ask if it'd be a foul. You can only imagine how pissed he was at that.

No more than a minute later, I fouled again, only this time, I sent the cue-ball into the pocket. As he kneels down to pick-up the cue-ball from the ball-return, the woman I was dating says, "Did you wait until it stopped rolling?"


We laughed over that for hours!
 
Billy_Bob said:
They will insist they know the rules, be totally WRONG, and yet insist they know what the rule is. Read the rules!
Click to expand...


This isn't really about rules, but it sure is about being totally wrong and insisting you're right...

I was watching a local tournament recently and noticed - heck, everybody noticed - that one of the matches was being held up as the two players (I'll call them Bill & Joe) argued over whose break it was (alternating format).

Joe & Bill agreed that there were a total of five games on the wire. Joe and Bill agreed that Bill had broken first. Both Joe & Bill insisted they were "odd breaks" and each insisted it was his break now.

Bill said that since he had broken first, he had broken game #1, an odd number. This made him odds, and since there were five games on the wire and five is an odd number, it was his break. Joe attempted to explain to him that 1) when Bill made the first break, there were 0 games on the wire, and 0 is an *even* number, or alternatively 2) since there were five games on the wire, they were starting the 6th game, and Joe had broken the odd games 1, 3, and 5, and was not entitled to break game 6.

Bill was not convinced. They got louder and louder until Bill slammed $100 down on the table and demanded to see the ref. The ref, of course, tried to explain that it was in fact Joe's break. Joe pocketed the money and went on to win the match.

The argument raged among the spectators for an additional 15 minutes.

Apparently it's really hard to see that you either have to go by the games on the wire (which starts with 0), or the number of the game being played (which starts with 1) - but you can't switch in the middle.

:rolleyes:

M
 
Looking through this thread I've come to the conclusion Billy_Bob and Jude shouldn't play each other. I agree with B_B in that you need to know the rules when you play a game but agree with Jude(I think) that some of these APA rule quoters ought to shut their traps. Using B_B's example of the double hit, a person could make a perfectly good hit (even inside of a cue chalks width) and get a ration of shit from some rule spouting ass that didn't even see the shot but cry foul just because that's what the rules say. People like that will often see the situation developing and keep their mouth shut until after the shot also.
Yeah that example pisses me off because I have had someone say that there was no way I didn't double hit after I took great care not to. If they can't do it that's not my problem.Also why I don't think I'll be playing in the APA.

Terry
 
Have to disagree with you here, BillyBob. In a perfect world, everyone would know all the rules, but that's not reality.

The few of us who really do know the rules are best off protecting ourselves (getting a ref on tough calls) as often as possible, but it still won't fully protect us from those who don't know the rules. We need to recognize that many are less serious about the game than we are, and the fact that somebody has been playing twenty years doesn't necessarily mean they are serious about pool or scholarly about the rules.

When I run into one of the many who doesn't really know the rules, even if they think they do, I'd rather teach the rule to them (after the match is over), even if I have somehow been harmed by their ignorance of the rules.

Yes, this invloves swallowing some pride, and showing incredible restraint, but I believe it serves pool well if those with superior knowledge of the rules are willing to share it in this way.

My personal experience corroborates that people usually appreciate it when you share this kind of knowledge with them, as long as you do so with courtesy and respect, rather than with bitterness.

Just one man's opinion.
 
sjm said:
Have to disagree with you here, BillyBob. In a perfect world, everyone would know all the rules, but that's not reality.

...

Yes, this invloves swallowing some pride, and showing incredible restraint, but I believe it serves pool well if those with superior knowledge of the rules are willing to share it in this way.

My personal experience corroborates that people usually appreciate it when you share this kind of knowledge with them, as long as you do so with courtesy and respect, rather than with bitterness.

Just one man's opinion.
Click to expand...


Oh how I agree with you on this, SJM. Actually, I have a copy of the rules that I've printed out from online and carry it with me in my cue case. It's resolved soooo many problems.... Nothing like saying, with a smile, of course, "I have a copy of the rules with me, would you like to read them?"

Cheers!

Flex
 
I agree with you a 100% in last years league i got into a fight over this, even with my cousin, that was of course drunk, but still he is playing he should know the rules, playing valley rules, just call you pocket right. I am solids and i call the oneball in the corner but i hit the two ball first and i am trying to carom the one in the corner but i don't hit the one ball, so he grabs the cueball off the table saying ball in hand i didn't hit the one. big hassle anyways i give him ball in hand, and still whipped his ass lol. Another situation, this guy hits his objectball he called but neither do the cueball or his objectball hit a rail, ball in hand i ask, and he says no i hit my objectball. Stupidity. Cole 'TheConArtist'
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top