Just trying to get the pulse of the community.
Playing in a league singles regional qualifier. Top bracket (NAPA 100+). I'm nervous and down 2-0 race to 6, been in my chair since racking game 1. Get to the table, run 2 thru 5 and for some reason didn't see the 6. My pattern just didn't include it. I shot the 7 out of sequence - my opponent immediately calls a foul, since he standing near the table watching.
I'm not judging , just curious as to how many folks would have said something before I shot?
I would say that in any kind of important situation, most people that I know wouldn't let you know and would call a foul on you after you shot the wrong ball. Some would even "pretend" that they didn't notice until after you made contact with the 7 ball. I'm not sure what I would have done in that situation.
Once I was shooting my third to last ball from all of the way at the other end of the table playing 8-ball. It was hill-hill and the winner of that game would be in 3rd place and get $80 (with obviously a chance to place higher). My ball was near the pocket and the 8-ball was just to the left of my object ball. I slow rolled the cue ball and made my ball. However, I noticed that the 8-ball had moved. It was so close to my object ball that I wasn't sure if I hit the 8-ball first, hit the two balls at the same time, or hit my ball first.
I got up from the shot and just starred a while, listening to hear if my opponent called a foul. I slowly walked toward the cue ball for my next shot. No foul was called. I proceeded to run the rest of the balls and win the game. However, when I was running the remaining balls, some other player on the next table saw the hit and had told my opponent that I had hit the 8-ball first and fouled. So my opponent walked up to me and instead of shaking my hand, he said something like, "If you really want to win that way!...."
I then asked a friend of mine that was watching and he confirmed that I had indeed hit the 8-ball first. The guy that was running the tournament came over and asked my opponent if he wanted to play the game over, and he refused and just left. That seemed a little odd too.
But the bottom line is, in your situation, you had nobody to blame but yourself. If your opponent was extremely honest, he could have warned you before the foul. But the fault was squarely on you. The rules don't require him to do that, so he didn't.
In my situation, my opponent needed to call a foul if he thought that I fouled. If he did, I would have given up the table, since I wasn't sure what had happened. Unless I'm positive that I really did foul, I'm not going to call one on myself with third place on the line. That was my opponent's role. But I should say, that before the tournament was over, the story had spread around that "I had cheated"! I mean, if I was up close to the object ball, I obviously would have known if I hit the 8-ball first, but from all of the way on the other end of the table on the rail, I just wasn't sure. But the price that I paid for not paying enough attention myself, was that some other players concluded that I had cheated. Actions do have consequences for sure, intentional actions or not.
