Rack your own balls in tournaments?

[gromulan]

No, we don't specify any particular order of the balls, except for the 1-9. We play to the BCA World Standardized Rules and stick strictly to those. There is one rule in there about the balls other than the 1-9 having to be "randomly" placed, but that rule is vague and would be impractical to enforce all the time. For instance, does it mean the balls have to be racked differently every time, or does it simply mean the rest of the balls are not placed in numerical order? That is open to discussion.

Racking your own balls is best not just for speed concerns, but also for the nature of the competition. It's simply inappropriate to have the person who is trying to beat you as the one racking the balls for you.

I do agree that the 2-ball should be placed at the very back of the rack - most tournaments everyone puts the 2 and 3 right behind the 1 ball, which is not that big a deal if everyone does it 'cause at least the playing field is level.

The main rule change I would like to see is that the nine on the break should not count as a win (espcially when we're racking our own balls). Spot it up and play from there. It's too easy for the nine to go in on an imperfect rack, and in just about every case where it does go, it's only because the rack is imperfect and not because of any particular skill on the part of the breaker.

 

[Shorty]

I think we should just switch to 10-ball. That'll do away with 98% of this crap.

Tap tap tap

Shorty

 

[Joe T]

Racking your own balls is best not just for speed concerns, but also for the nature of the competition. It's simply inappropriate to have the person who is trying to beat you as the one racking the balls for you.

I do agree that the 2-ball should be placed at the very back of the rack - most tournaments everyone puts the 2 and 3 right behind the 1 ball, which is not that big a deal if everyone does it 'cause at least the playing field is level.

The main rule change I would like to see is that the nine on the break should not count as a win (espcially when we're racking our own balls). Spot it up and play from there. It's too easy for the nine to go in on an imperfect rack, and in just about every case where it does go, it's only because the rack is imperfect and not because of any particular skill on the part of the breaker.

You're right on track but with the higher level players not only do they worry about the 9 ball going straight in but you can also rack the corner ball dead. And in many cases that's almost as good as racking the 9. As a matter of fact if I had a choice to try and rack a 9 ball or a dead corner ball for myself, I would rack the corner ball because it's much more predictable. So if we don't switch to 10 Ball we'll have to switch the 9 on the break rule and then the non racking player will still have gripes about how the balls are racked and the corner ball is going. As stated, 10 Ball solves a lot of problems and creates less conflicts amongst players. Which in turn might help to improve our sport as well as our image.