It really happened!

A

Ak Guy

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
A friend came over last night to shoot some 9 ball race to 7 matches. Winner breaks and loser racks. He is just getting back into pool, breaks hard and could easily be a solid B shooter if he practiced a few hours a week. First match I'm up 5-0 in a hurry so I quit shooting safe and went for every shot and beat him 7-4. Here comes the 2nd race to 7. I break and miss on the 8 like an idiot so he wins that and shoots early combo on the 9 on game 2 to go up 2-0, which I'm glad to see. When he breaks on game 3 the 9 goes in left hand pocket. next break he shoots an easy 3 to 9 combo and is now up 4 games. This is all happening pretty fast, but I ain't scared! He breaks on game 5 and makes the 9, breaks on game and makes 9 in corner a other end of table, breaks on game 7 and 9 goes in corner pocket where he made 2 other 9 balls. Match over 7-0! So 7 games, 2 combos on the 9 and 4 times he makes 9 on the break and 3 of those were in a row. Never saw any thing like it and doubt I will again. Next match I turn it on and win 7-0. Talk about crazy 9 ball! Go figure!
 
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Sounds like you need to learn how to rack......or better yet do you wanna be my official racker?

I would've like to have seen this.
 
I was gonna say hopefully joe tucker doesn't see this he will lose his mind haha jk of course. Buy the DvD :grin:
 
I concur, you need to rack the balls better.
You also witnessed your friend get very lucky.
 
Ak Guy said:
A friend came over last night to shoot some 9 ball race to 7 matches. Winner breaks and looser racks. He is just getting back into pool, breaks hard and could easily be a solid B shooter if he practiced a few hours a week. First match I'm up 5-0 in a hurry so I quit shooting safe and went for every shot and beat him 7-4. Here comes the 2nd race to 7. I break and miss on the 8 like an idiot so he wins that and shoots early combo on the 9 on game 2 to go up 2-0, which I'm glad to see. When he breaks on game 3 the 9 goes in left hand pocket. next break he shoots an easy 3 to 9 combo and is now up 4 games. This is all happening pretty fast, but I ain't scared! He breaks on game 5 and makes the 9, breaks on game and makes 9 in corner a other end of table, breaks on game 7 and 9 goes in corner pocket where he made 2 other 9 balls. Match over 7-0! So 7 games, 2 combos on the 9 and 4 times he makes 9 on the break and 3 of those were in a row. Never saw any thing like it and doubt I will again. Next match I turn it on and win 7-0. Talk about crazy 9 ball! Go figure!
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Your friends crazy luck only occurred because of your crazy bad racking skills.
 
The only time the 9 goes into those corners without being kicked in is when you have a lose ball in the rack behind the 9. You just happened to leave the gap in on the same side, or maybe both sides and he picked the right side of the table to break from. Those early combos also tend to come from the rack and knowing how hard to break. Often one of the balls by the 9 sits right next to it for an easy combo. There is a post on here I think with the title "Corey found next best thing to 9 on the break" or something like that, there is a video there that shows this.

You already had several others say the same thing, so start kicking yourself right after you read the replies and then as someone suggested, get Joe Tuckers book/video.
 
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To funny

Guys I put the 1 ball in front and the 9 in the middle and tried to get the balls as tight as I could every time. It was fun to watch no matter how it happened and I doubt I will see the likes of it again. I play for fun and I am not and probably never will be a "rack mechanic". When playing friends on my home table I rack the same for them as I do for myself and have never seen that happen before. It sounds as though many of you are good at reading racks and I have much to learn and would love to see a video of the 9 consistently falling in on the break like that if any of you can point me to it, or better yet, duplicate it, film it, and post it here.
 
I once made 7 9-ball breaks in a row in a race to 2 tournament. This was against 4 different players (rackers), so luck has a lot to do with it.
 
Its difficult to give exact odds on snapping the 9 do to various racking issues etc, but accustats figures the 9 on the break as a 1 in 35 chance. Snapping the 9 ball 7 times in a row brings the odds to somewhere around 3 billion to 1.
I know these stats because this exact situation made big news in Vegas a couple years ago when a roulette wheel at the Rio supposedly hit the same number (19) 7 times in a row. And that is a true 35-1 bet of a particular number hitting once, no sloppy racks to account for.
Maybe you should have played the lottery that day instead of pool...... :eek: :grin:
Chuck
 
I don't feel like searching for my old post, but long story short, I was playing a guy race to 11 for $1000. I was playing great and was up 10-6. Next game he makes a 2-9 combo, no biggie. For the next 3 games he makes the 9 on the break. All of a sudden its hill-hill. Then makes a 1-9 combo to win the $1000. After shooting great for the entire set, I didn't shoot for 5 games!


The best part of the story was earlier, the guy who was going in with me was already talking about paying for all my drinks and where we were going to eat breakfast. (This was when I was up like 9-5 or 10-6) When I lost, I looked at him and said loudly, "Looks like were not getting that breakfast after all!"
 
Hey pool bum

I said winner breaks and looser racks in the first post and in my second post I said I racked as tight as I could. Don't know how else to say it. Sorry if it was confusing and I was just sharing info on a wild and crazy match I had with a friend.
 
tashworth19191 said:
I once made 7 9-ball breaks in a row in a race to 2 tournament. This was against 4 different players (rackers), so luck has a lot to do with it.
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The only time it's really "luck" is if the 9 does not go right into the corner pockets. The luck part if it would be that they happened to leave the right gap on the right side for you to make it in.

If you make the 9 in 4 different pockets 7 different ways, that is luck.

If the 9 goes out of the rack right for the corners, that's just a bad rack. That is why in many rack your own tournaments the 9 does not count as a win on the break, either at all or in the lower two corners. The issue with that is that you can still send the 9 to the corner without making it and just leave it there for an easy combo, providing you can sink another ball. There was a guy doing that in a tournament I was in, I told him to cut that shit out and rack it tight, he knew that the 9 did not count on the break but there is no rule for it not to be hanging in the pocket waiting for a combo.

When using the magic rack, or a similar tight rack, the 9 likes to go in the side after being kicked up-table by one of the corner balls going around and hitting it. That is a bit of luck there for that to happen, but if you break a few times, you will see it happen. Either the 9 sits in the center of the rack or it gets kicked towards the side pockets.
 
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Keeping me humble

I fixed the spelling errors, I think. I don't ever want to get to a point in my life where I;m not humble and can't laugh at myself. I should probably spend more time on learning the rack. I believe the break becomes more important if the players are very good shooters, Most of the guys in my hick town are not run out shooters. I struggle with it too.
 
Ak Guy said:
I fixed the spelling errors, I think. I don't ever want to get to a point in my life where I;m not humble and can't laugh at myself. I should probably spend more time on learning the rack. I believe the break becomes more important if the players are very good shooters, Most of the guys in my hick town are not run out shooters. I struggle with it too.
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As you found out, the rack is just as important for people that can't run 3 racks also. Just like good tires are good for not just race car drivers, people just are not aware of that till they try to drive through rain puddles or steer around a box in the road.

The difference is that the bad players don't know why they are losing, the good ones do. "dude, that guy is so lucky, he made five 9 balls in a row on me" quickly changes to "crap the 9 went in the corner, I need to setup the rack tighter". The real difference between the top players and all their precision with racking and shooting is that if they happen to give up a game by not racking well, they can lose a tournament and $30,000, a bar banger may loose a beer and one or 10 mistakes in a race to 5 to them is nothing since they will have multiple chances. But why give up even that one error when you don't have to.
 
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