Run This (37)

[Dan White]

I guess the kissing only happens when the cut is so thin that the tremendous energy going into the rack causes the corner ball to bounce off of the rail and into the dribbling break ball, as Dan suggested might happen on extremely thin cuts. Sorry.

It's a good question, though, as to whether there are specific combinations in the rack that cause a collision with the break ball. I've always figured it was just random collision between balls coming off the foot rail and whatever other balls happen to be flying by. The problem with racked balls is that there are always minute gaps between different balls everytime you rack them. As Bob J. says, these gaps change what happens every time you break them.

 

[CueAndMe]

It's a good question, though, as to whether there are specific combinations in the rack that cause a collision with the break ball. I've always figured it was just random collision between balls coming off the foot rail and whatever other balls happen to be flying by. The problem with racked balls is that there are always minute gaps between different balls everytime you rack them. As Bob J. says, these gaps change what happens every time you break them.

I even tried misracking the balls to see if gaps would cause a ball to get in the way, but I couldn't make it happen. The energy, except for the corner ball, just seems to go to the other 2 sides of the rack. I didn't spend a lot of time on this, but it's pretty encouraging nonetheless. It seems that unless you have a pretty steep angle, you'll make it, no matter how close to the rack you are.

And two good things about being close to the rack are, one, the pocket is bigger the further away from the side cushion you get, and two, you can see very clearly where you'll contact the stack, so you can adjust spin on the cueball to account for glances.