HomeBrewer said:
After Falcon runs three and then misses in the first several minutes of the video it looks like Ceulemans maybe pulled an intentional safety in which an attempt to score was not made. Does it look like that to anyone else? If not, maybe a miscue?
I'm too young to know if such attempts at safety were ever allowed. Someone please educate me.
That was definitely a miscue.
The second question is rather more complicated. As Robert stated, in the days of Hoppe and Cochran deliberate safeties were very much part of the game. At some point (in the 60's?) the official international governing body (the UMB?) made a rule that forbid intentional safeties. For a while there were two competing organizations in the United states: The Billiard Federation (BFUSA) allied with the UMB, and the American Billiard Association (ABA). Roughly speaking these were the amateur branch and the professional branch. The BFUSA went along with the UMB forbidding safeties, but the ABA allowed them -- no limit on how many per game, but not allowing two in succession. The ABA ceased to exist around 1980 (?) and the BFUSA morphed into the USBA (about the same time?).
The problem always was, what constitutes an "intentional" safety and what should the penalty be for commiting this "foul". One very well-known American player (let's call him #######) was famous for miscueing at strategic times, and the US three-cushion community coined the phrase "a ####### safety" to describe this occurrence -- a miscue that results in a safe leave.
About a decade ago the UMB removed all reference to safeties from the official rules. The reasoning was that with player averages creeping up toward 2 billiards per inning in three-cushion, and with players capable of running out entire matches in the smaller games, there was little or no advantage for a player not to try to score; and it had always been such a gray area.
My understanding is that at present there is no prohibition against intentional safeties in any official rule set.
There may very well be factual errors in my statements, and I welcome any and all corrections.
Mark
