Sham, of a Scam, of a Travesty!

[Gerry]

I don't care what the rules are!.....if you break a rack in 9 ball and make a ball with shape.....and THEN!....turn the table over because a certain # of balls didnt get up table!?......ugggggg


I can only think of the poor souls who are watching this for the first time saying WTF? why are they giving the table up?



anyway.......good luck Saturday team USA.....oh, and the guys from over the pond!



G.

 

[ball-banger]

I can understand the three balls past the headstring rule. But you're right, how can you make someone give up the table after making a ball on the break? As someone said to me earlier, if you want them to break hard use a radar gun and have a minimum speed. Four balls past the middle of the table would be better, and if you make a ball, it shouldn't matter where the other balls go.

 

[brechbt]

Yeah, I understand your feeling about this rule, and share it to some extent. But wasn't this rule instituted solely because fans (and some players, such as Earl) raising a stink about the soft break taking something away from the game? I don't think the rule makers are trying to institute their own personal biases, I think they are attempting to be responsive to what they perceive as "the will of the people". You can't have it both ways.

 

[Gerry]

Yeah, I understand your feeling about this rule, and share it to some extent. But wasn't this rule instituted solely because fans (and some players, such as Earl) raising a stink about the soft break taking something away from the game? I don't think the rule makers are trying to institute their own personal biases, I think they are attempting to be responsive to what they perceive as "the will of the people". You can't have it both ways.

yea....BUT!....Earl.....is home in the Carolinas.


you can kill the soft break, AND not penalize a dude for bereaking AND making a ball.....

G.

 

[ShootingArts]

for starters

yea....BUT!....Earl.....is home in the Carolinas.


you can kill the soft break, AND not penalize a dude for bereaking AND making a ball.....

G.

Just for starters it is time to play ten ball in the Mosconi Cup. Then they can start addressing issues. Very hard to find a way to reasonably control break speed.

Hu

 

[morthnrdy]

I agree but?

i don't care what the rules are!.....if you break a rack in 9 ball and make a ball with shape.....and then!....turn the table over because a certain # of balls didnt get up table!?......ugggggg


i can only think of the poor souls who are watching this for the first time saying wtf? Why are they giving the table up?


Anyway.......good luck saturday team usa.....oh, and the guys from over the pond!





g.

they still got the point, "one-plus-one" baby...thats justice...but i agree that ain't right especially when he pockets a ball, and the odds just went down cuz he only has 8 balls to pass down table...bs rule but 7-2 baby...the "underdogs" up on the "dreamteam"??? Mika was pretty cocky in his preview interview...go team usa!

 

[brandonspitler]

yes...

I don't care what the rules are!.....if you break a rack in 9 ball and make a ball with shape.....and THEN!....turn the table over because a certain # of balls didnt get up table!?......ugggggg


I can only think of the poor souls who are watching this for the first time saying WTF? why are they giving the table up?



anyway.......good luck Saturday team USA.....oh, and the guys from over the pond!



G.

i agree 100%, if you make a ball on the break, you should be shooting!

GO TEAM USA!

 

[pt109]

10-ball

Just for starters it is time to play ten ball in the Mosconi Cup. Then they can start addressing issues. Very hard to find a way to reasonably control break speed.

Hu

I agree.Go to 10-ball and forget about mickey mouse rules.

 

[Jason Robichaud]

they have a rule for soft break, 4 balls hit a rail! To say 3 must cross a line is BS. Too many times players hit the balls hard, something hits a side pocket point and back down to the rack area (with a ball dropping). Now they turn the table over??? I hate to be the one to inform these clowns, but it takes skill to hit these breaks soft with cueball control. Go get a club player to soft break and park CB middle everytime... they can't! Soft break with pattern is the killer. Anyways, if they turnover the table after making a ball, the ball should spot.

Now, if they limit slow, they need to cap hard. Everyone has the ability to hit a ball easy, not all can crush balls with control. Why give this group the advantage over another?

 

[Gerry]

Just for starters it is time to play ten ball in the Mosconi Cup.

Hu

yea Hu, that goes without saying! I feel we are in a transitional period in the pool world going from 9 to 10 ball. Shouln't be too much longer til 9ball is dead and buried!

 

[Roger Illinois]

Never never

Shame on you 9-Ball rules

 

[sfleinen]

9-ball's been on life support for many years

I agree.Go to 10-ball and forget about mickey mouse rules.

"Mickey Mouse" rules for 9-ball is RIGHT!! I just shake my head at some of the ridiculous things our pool industry will think of for 9-ball, to keep it on life support:

- Racking the balls with the 9, not the 1, on the foot spot
- "Breaking from the box"
- Mandating that a certain number of balls must pass the head string
- ...and any of a number of other ridiculous things

Folks, it's long been time to move to 10-ball. Ever since Corey patented and trademarked the soft break, the death knell for 9-ball has been ringing like church bells in the distance.

Ted Lerner's AZB front-page article describes this perfectly:

"Is 10-ball the Perfect Game?"
http://azbilliards.com/heyjoe/heyjoe6.php

While I whince my eyebrows at the "valley girl cheerleading" title of the article (there's never a such thing as a "perfect game" so the question shouldn't even be asked), I do agree with much of the content of the article as it relates to 9-ball. I encourage everyone to read it -- it is very well-written, includes interview excerpts from players like Ralf Souquet who are very unhappy with the game of 9-ball as it's played today, etc.

9-ball is starting to look like an old quilt that's been handed down from generation to generation, with patches, diaper pins, staples, tape, and bunched-up-fabric stitching repairs all over it.

I say, if we're going to have a rotation game be our mainstay of the sport, let it be 10-ball.

Thoughts?
-Sean

 

[Dan Harriman]

!0 ball vs soft break nine ball (uhh lets see I like ten ball)

I agree.Go to 10-ball and forget about mickey mouse rules.

The more you ask for the rules to be changed to ten ball the tighter the good ol boy crowd will grip to what they know. 'The good ol boy' committee is anyone or group of peolpe who like to keep things fixed and or broken. I played in a format like this once and what a joke it was, when I broke soft just like the rest I made a ball and the one ball caught the lip of the side pocket. Then they hollered soft break and we had to argue about how far a ball must pass the point of the side pocket in order for it to be considered a legal break. I was asked once to represent my Country in the Masconi Cup and I competed, what a great venue it was, to bad they don't wake up from their deep traditional sleep and just play Ten ball so as to stop all the soft break nonsense and believe me it's nonsense. I can show you many trick shots where a ball is wired (14.1) that are more interesting to look at and not as obviouse as a nine ball rack. Plus it is much easier to cheat on then in say ten ball, anyone who will not play u ten ball that will play nine is a rack mechanic guaranteed, that is not where I want to spend my energy while at the table (near the rack area.)

 

[Cheez Dawg]

"Mickey Mouse" rules for 9-ball is RIGHT!! I just shake my head at some of the ridiculous things our pool industry will think of for 9-ball, to keep it on life support:

- Racking the balls with the 9, not the 1, on the foot spot
- "Breaking from the box"
- Mandating that a certain number of balls must pass the head string
- ...and any of a number of other ridiculous things

Folks, it's long been time to move to 10-ball. Ever since Corey patented and trademarked the soft break, the death knell for 9-ball has been ringing like church bells in the distance.

Ted Lerner's AZB front-page article describes this perfectly:

"Is 10-ball the Perfect Game?"
http://azbilliards.com/heyjoe/heyjoe6.php

While I whince my eyebrows at the "valley girl cheerleading" title of the article (there's never a such thing as a "perfect game" so the question shouldn't even be asked), I do agree with much of the content of the article as it relates to 9-ball. I encourage everyone to read it -- it is very well-written, includes interview excerpts from players like Ralf Souquet who are very unhappy with the game of 9-ball as it's played today, etc.

9-ball is starting to look like an old quilt that's been handed down from generation to generation, with patches, diaper pins, staples, tape, and bunched-up-fabric stitching repairs all over it.

I say, if we're going to have a rotation game be our mainstay of the sport, let it be 10-ball.

Thoughts?
-Sean

I agree. Time to switch to 10-ball.

 

[sfleinen]

The question is NOT placing a cap on break speed; rather the shape of the rack itself

they have a rule for soft break, 4 balls hit a rail! To say 3 must cross a line is BS. Too many times players hit the balls hard, something hits a side pocket point and back down to the rack area (with a ball dropping). Now they turn the table over??? I hate to be the one to inform these clowns, but it takes skill to hit these breaks soft with cueball control. Go get a club player to soft break and park CB middle everytime... they can't! Soft break with pattern is the killer. Anyways, if they turnover the table after making a ball, the ball should spot.

Now, if they limit slow, they need to cap hard. Everyone has the ability to hit a ball easy, not all can crush balls with control. Why give this group the advantage over another?

Jason:

Respectfully, I disagree with the comparison. To compare a pro with a "club player" (as you put it), is like comparing any of a number of professional golfers with your average duffer. It's a silly extremist comparison conveniently used to back up one's point -- and it doesn't, really.

Is the soft-break a skill? Yes it is -- I think we can all agree on that. Not everyone can just walk up to a table, tap the cue ball into the head ball, and exercise control. However, it *IS* a learned skill, and virtually all of the pros have learned it. "Learn the skill or be beaten by it." (Which reduces the game to a coin flip, really.)

The mere fact that the 9-ball rack itself is VULNERABLE to a soft break -- with the wing balls going into the corners and the 1-ball going into the side pocket (almost every time with the proper speed and hit), is justification itself to re-examine the "professional feasibility" of a game that implements a diamond shaped rack.

Hitting the rack hard, with control, is also a skill -- and yes, it can be learned! One doesn't need to be genetically built like a house to do so. We have female pros who have a fine 10-ball break -- XT Pan is a good example.

What moving from 9-ball to 10-ball does, is to move to a different-shaped rack that removes ball-pocketing predictability. I'm sure many pros -- Ralf Souquet being a good example -- would rather the game NOT be based on learning a skill that "almost guarantees" a ball pocketed on the break. A hard break doesn't "almost guarantee" a ball pocketed on a triangular shaped rack; it only gets more balls moving quicker, to increase the "possibility" that a ball might be pocketed. There is a difference.

Respectfully,
-Sean

 

[Roger Illinois]

9-Ball

9-Ball is a great game.

It is how the rules have changed that is the problem. The changes in rules over the past 20-25 years are to create a more equal field. I call them SISSY RULES.

Don't confuse the rules with the games. The issue here is the rules, not the game.

9-BALL IS A GREAT GAME, IF YOU CAN PLAY!!

 

[sfleinen]

9-ball's prophylactic rules are there for a reason -- to Band-Aid the diamond rack

9-Ball is a great game.

It is how the rules have changed that is the problem. The changes in rules over the past 20-25 years are to create a more equal field. I call them SISSY RULES.

Don't confuse the rules with the games. The issue here is the rules, not the game.

9-BALL IS A GREAT GAME, IF YOU CAN PLAY!!

Roger:

While your dedication to the game of 9-ball is admirable, I think your "reasoning" for much of the populace's dissatisfaction with it in a professional setting is a little too simplistic; it doesn't go the next step into WHY the rule changes were/are placed into effect. Sure, the change from "push-out 9-ball" to the Texas Express rules many years ago was merely for TV to make the game quicker. But the rules pertaining to the break WERE NOT -- they were implemented for a different reason.

These changes/additions/Band-Aids to the rules for breaking were done to combat a technique that Corey Deuel invented -- the soft break. Corey, being a very smart guy, found out that the 9-ball diamond-shaped rack was extremely vulnerable to a special type of soft hit on the head-ball, where the wing balls would go sailing to the corners and the 1-ball would either pocket into the side, or else rebound out to the middle of the table somewhere, almost guaranteeing a shot on it if one exercises control of the cue ball to locate it in the middle of the table also. (This is something that the world-beaters at the time of "push-out 9-ball" -- e.g. Buddy Hall, Keith McCready, Earl Strickland, et al. -- did NOT know. This knowledge of the vulnerabilities of the diamond-shaped 9-ball rack did not exist at the time. Otherwise, if that knowledge existed at the time, you can damn sure bet that *someone* would've exploited it with the soft break, and these talks about 9-ball's deficiencies as a game would've been discussed l-o-n-g ago.)

Corey demonstrated this -- resoundingly thumped it into the heads of the 9-ball crowd -- by executing the only complete wash-out of an opponent in U.S. Open 9-ball history, when he handed Mika Immonen an 11 - 0 bagel in the 2001 U.S. Open 9-ball Championship. Although Corey didn't execute an outright 11-pack, he did string together some very big packages by executing his soft-break almost perfectly, pocketing a wing ball and parking both the 1-ball and the cue ball in middle of the table for an easy opening shot at the 1-ball in the side pocket.

If these [admittedly Band-Aid] breaking rules were to be completely removed, we'd have continual repeats of Corey-esque shutout performances all over the place. And that wouldn't be fair. Sure, one may argue, "well, it's your own fault -- work on your lag to ensure you get the opening break!" But that essentially reduces the game to a coin-flip -- whoever wins the lag is the one that gets to string together some big packages, perhaps even run the entire set out without the opponent ever having an opportunity at the table? Come on! What kind of competitive game is that?!?

I agree with Jerry Forsyth -- 9-ball's "Use by:" date has long been exceeded. It's time to replace it with a game that doesn't have the same vulnerabilities.

Respectfully,
-Sean