Thoughts on Pattern Racking/Rack Manipulation?

[InsertCleverNameHere]

I have never been good enough to manipulate gaps in the rack, without it being obvious. I have pattern racked. I have also watched players pattern rack against me. I also have ways to decoy the pattern. I would be surprised to find out that other, competitive/gambling, players haven’t done it also. If you know how to pattern rack, hard to believe you haven’t done it.

That being said, yes it is cheating. It shouldn’t be done and is against all rule sets, whether it is enforced or not. Anytime I’ve done it in competition, I felt like I was doing something wrong and hoped I didn’t get called on it.


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good for you for admitting it. Personally I've never used it in competition but I have experimented with it in practice as well as learning all I could about it just to be able to spot it and protect myself against others....one time playing the ghost they explicitly said I could "rack em however I wanted" so I obviously did it there(still lost lol).

 

[King T]

They let Josh Roberts get away with any and everything he wants in all the Aiken tournaments. Have no idea why but I have some theorie$.

Anything and Everything?? So Josh needs to cheat to win now, has his game has fallen off that much????

 

[King T]

So is it the pattern racking or the soft break that really matters? I mean if either opponent can rack however he or she wants to will there really be an advantage?

 

[straightline]

If you play enough, how you gonna not pattern rack; especially 9 ball? 1 and 9 are fixed. The remaining 7 spots are fixed. Unpattern attempts are bound to be pattern - ic, ish, al
lol.

 

[Fatboy]

Josh won a couple days ago.

I don’t know about his racking. He plays solid, does great commentary.

I can’t knock what he’s doing cause I don’t know and won’t guess about it.

Fatboy<———just a fly on the wall in another building

 

[InsertCleverNameHere]

Anything and Everything?? So Josh needs to cheat to win now, has his game has fallen off that much????

Yeah just whatever he wants.

Dumbest part is he's the best player in basically every event held in South Carolina and needs absolutely 0 "extras" but yet he can spend 5 minutes getting that rack just right and nobody dare says a word.

 

[InsertCleverNameHere]

Anything and Everything?? So Josh needs to cheat to win now, has his game has fallen off that much????

No he doesn't need to. He's as good as he's ever been. He's the best player around by a good margin. He wins at a crazy rate in these open events and rightfully so because he's the class of the field.

But yeah he takes many liberties with the rack, and he's not the only one in these fields doing it but he's the one with the results so. Tournament directors are clueless or complicit there's no real in between.

 

[skogstokig]

If you play enough, how you gonna not pattern rack; especially 9 ball? 1 and 9 are fixed. The remaining 7 spots are fixed. Unpattern attempts are bound to be pattern - ic, ish, al
lol.

by placing the balls randomly, top to bottom. you can swap the 1 and 9 last

 

[straightline]

by placing the balls randomly, top to bottom. you can swap the 1 and 9 last

That might give you patterns beyond the typical pool nut (don't actually know what that might be) but you're still stuck to the one, nine, and possibly the two balls.

I think a better thing would be to free the one and nine and work out the rules from there. Phone app would be perfect as well. I might've posted that in this thread already. I for sure bring it up every chance I get.

 

[Zerksies]

Anyone that is taking more then a few seconds in my opinion to me is pattern racking.

 

[Z-Nole]

There’s a local guy where I live who sets the standard for rack manipulation. I’m not going to call him out but if you know where I live you know exactly who I’m talking about.

Sportsmanship aside, and I do think it’s cheating, the way he manipulated the rack is amazing. I’m not a 9 ball player anymore but the few things he showed me about the rack blew my mind. The ability to be so precise with the layout of the balls after the break is just spectacular. It made me understand why the top one pocket players spend so much time analyzing the rack before the break.

 

[Swighey]

Yet we still have top pro players complaining that refs don't know how to rack .... which actually means that they just rack and some racks are a bit sluggy and others are a bit tight, which sounds good to me.

 

[MmmSharp]

interesting, have never heard of that before. I have played a lot of tournaments where the 2 behind the 9
Is mandatory with the assumed goal to make it less likely to have a run out with a slow break.
I admittedly don’t know enough about the split of the balls after the break, to know which method would be more advantageous to the breaker.

@FastManners when you say 2 behind the 9, do you mean between the 1 and nine, or the nine and back rail ? If the 2 is between the 1 and 9, it give a 2 9 combo to a back corner pockets often for an early out. Which is considered pattern racking.

I feel you might mean 2 between the 9 ad back rail. Which doesnt give the early combo out.

 

[FastManners]

@FastManners when you say 2 behind the 9, do you mean between the 1 and nine, or the nine and back rail ? If the 2 is between the 1 and 9, it give a 2 9 combo to a back corner pockets often for an early out. Which is considered pattern racking.

I feel you might mean 2 between the 9 ad back rail. Which doesnt give the early combo out.

Yes, I mean in the back row behind the 9, closest to the cushion. It is a rule in a lot of tournaments that I have played in, in the US and abroad.

 

[sudocrushms]

Adjacent question: Does anyone know if the racking widget SVB and Fedor were using in their $$$$$$$ match is/will be published?
I've found that especially with ball return tables it can be tough to randomly rack everything (humans are inherently not random).

Plus it's a cool concept.

 

[skogstokig]

That might give you patterns beyond the typical pool nut (don't actually know what that might be) but you're still stuck to the one, nine, and possibly the two balls.

I think a better thing would be to free the one and nine and work out the rules from there. Phone app would be perfect as well. I might've posted that in this thread already. I for sure bring it up every chance I get.

there is a method to random racking. see my previous post. it's not complicated

 

[Sheldon]

I played in a $1K entry tournament and the rules were that the 2 has to be behind the 9, and no soft breaks. It seems pretty common now for the bigger tournaments to have this rule. I do like rack your own 9 ball, as long as 9 ball breaks are not counted. Mainly because I never want anyone to be able to say I gave them a bad rack.

I've also heard from a friend that was told by a top pro that gapping the 1 ball in a 10 ball rack was very common.

 

[Black-Balled]

At the pro level, a no-no.

For the majority of competitors, a non-issue.

 

[MitchAlsup]

Anyone that is taking more then a few seconds in my opinion to me is pattern racking.

We had a guy at the local bar last night take 5 minutes to put the rack together--most of it talking to his opponent ...

 

[Cameron Smith]

The other tricky part to this is that once you understand which balls go where depending on the break, you may not be explicitly pattern racking but will stop and think “nope I don’t want to put the 3 ball there if the 4 ball is here“. It takes honesty to place if somewhere that you know could be problematic.

But I agree, that for the majority of us, unless we are getting out a high percentage of the time, consistently controlling the 1 and the layout may be a disadvantage lol.