My straight pool partner is cleverer than me

F

Fastolfe

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I was at the pool hall this afternoon (these good folks stay open and do those like me who don't care much for Christmas a great service) and my usual straight pool partner and I played some. As always, we tried to rack the balls as best we could, and as usual the balls wouldn't stay put. There is just no way to get a good rack on these table; it's marginally better with my personal, well-maintained set of balls, but I don't like lugging them around.

I lost the lag and won the privilege of breaking. Just looking at that sorry excuse of a rack, I just knew it was going to fly apart. So instead of breaking, I rolled the cueball near the apex ball, took -2 points and cheerfully told my friend "there, work on that". I figured it was better to start at -2 than let my friend do at least 5 or 6 points, if not run the entire rack or more.

Guess what he did? he rolled the cueball almost on the headline, near the usual opening break spot, took -1 point and said "lucky you, there's a good safety to play from there". Damn him :)
 
Rules of 14.1

Sounds like you two had a good friendly game of straight but what you did on the break is not the correct way to play the opening break.
On the opening break if two balls to not make contact with the rail, it is a 2 point foul "But" your opponent has their choice to either accept the table as it is "Or" re-rack & make you break again. This goes on until you make a legal opening break.
I hope this helps in the future.
 
14-1StraightMan said:
Sounds like you two had a good friendly game of straight but what you did on the break is not the correct way to play the opening break.
On the opening break if two balls to not make contact with the rail, it is a 2 point foul "But" your opponent has their choice to either accept the table as it is "Or" re-rack & make you break again. This goes on until you make a legal opening break.
I hope this helps in the future.
Click to expand...

Sounds to me like his opponent elected to accept the table as is, and play the neg 1 safety just to ruffle the op.

Was a rule broken, or just interpreted differently than you would expect. As I read the rules this exchange is legal.

:cool:
 
DelaWho??? said:
Sounds to me like his opponent elected to accept the table as is, and play the neg 1 safety just to ruffle the op.

Was a rule broken, or just interpreted differently than you would expect. As I read the rules this exchange is legal.

:cool:
Click to expand...

I think it was legal but I don't think his opponent played it smart.

Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think that the initial 2 point foul when you don't make a legal break counts towards the 3 fouls in a row penalty. if that is true then the opponent put himself in a trick bag and is on the first regular foul.
 
Absolutely correct, I think.

And when I was a kid the room I played in opened at 8:00 AM every day, including xmas and New Years.

Dave Nelson
 
dmgwalsh said:
I think it was legal but I don't think his opponent played it smart.

Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think that the initial 2 point foul when you don't make a legal break counts towards the 3 fouls in a row penalty. if that is true then the opponent put himself in a trick bag and is on the first regular foul.
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Yes, and the "correct" shot for the OP would have been to roll the cue ball even closer to the head rail without hitting any ball.
 
Bob Jewett said:
Yes, and the "correct" shot for the OP would have been to roll the cue ball even closer to the head rail without hitting any ball.
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Interesting, so you are saying the op puts himself on 2? If his opponent then takes his second foul isn't the op then forced to open the rack?

:cool:
 
Now I see it.

DelaWho??? said:
Sounds to me like his opponent elected to accept the table as is, and play the neg 1 safety just to ruffle the op.

Was a rule broken, or just interpreted differently than you would expect. As I read the rules this exchange is legal.

:cool:
Click to expand...

Yes you are right. His opponent accepted the table and just took a foul.
You are never too old to learn something. I will keep that move in my play bank but I think it would be best to make a legal safe, instead of a foul b/c of the "three foul rule". Thanks.
Breaker: would be on -2 b/c of the illegal break but that does not count toward the "3 foul rule:
If the opponent takes a foul by shooting up table, then he is on one foul and then the breaker is at the advantage.
It is best to take a safe or make him rerack if you don't have a good safe. If he breaks again like the first time, you might have a better safe to send him back up the table. Make him do it over & over until you do have a good safe shot. His -2's will add up.
 
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Hehe, yes you guys are right, I forgot he could have told me to break again. In fact I asked him tonight and he didn't even know that rule. I also didn't know an opening break foul didn't count in the 3-foul rules.

This said, I was teasing him and he teased me back. We had a laugh and then we carried on playing. It was no tournament, nothing serious :)
 
What I'm wondering is why you didn't just break normally from the beginning. You said the balls won't stay put in the rack and then say that you knew that the balls would fly open on the break. Why would they? If it's a bad rack the balls won't move half as much as they would if they were all touching.
MULLY
just a thought:grin:
 
mullyman said:
What I'm wondering is why you didn't just break normally from the beginning. You said the balls won't stay put in the rack and then say that you knew that the balls would fly open on the break. Why would they? If it's a bad rack the balls won't move half as much as they would if they were all touching.
MULLY
just a thought:grin:
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Actually, when the rack is perfectly tight, almost only the wing balls move - they go to the rails and back into the rack ideally. With bad racks such as the ones we get at out local pool hall, if I break on the right side for instance, the right wing ball goes up the foot rail but also veers wildly to the right, the left wing ball won't move enough to come back fully into the rack (else I need to break fuller, which means the right wing ball ends up being a great break ball) and some balls fly away from the left side of the rack.

It's really annoying. When either of us breaks, it's almost certain that the other will get either the right wing ball as an almost perfect direct break ball, or the left wing ball to pocket and then hit the foot rail with the cue ball and back into the rack for a nice spread. And there's nothing we can do about it: the balls just won't stay tight on any of the tables in the pool hall, including the ones with newer cloths.
 
Thanks Dave!

Dave's posted reminded me of the poolroom when I was a teenager - Charlie Latorre's in Pittston, PA. Opened at 8:00 am 365 days a year and throughout the Christmas/New Year holiday there would be a gallon of white, a gallon of red, and a fifth of Black Velvet on the counter. Free of charge, of course. Boy I miss that place.

Ron F
 
Ron F said:
Dave's posted reminded me of the poolroom when I was a teenager - Charlie Latorre's in Pittston, PA. Opened at 8:00 am 365 days a year and throughout the Christmas/New Year holiday there would be a gallon of white, a gallon of red, and a fifth of Black Velvet on the counter. Free of charge, of course. Boy I miss that place.

Ron F
Click to expand...

Ah yes... Pittston Recreation/Billiards. A true "poolroom" if there ever was one. Smoke filled, pool out front, cards in the back, old guys sitting around with nothing better to do, etc., and the original home of "Machine Gun" Lou Butera. I miss that place, too - especially the $2 an hour table time. It only had 2 tables, but both were antique Brunswicks. Even though it was the 80s, when you were in there, it felt like you walked through a time warp back to the 1950s/early 60s. It was like something straight out of "The Hustler".
 
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