Wowwwww!!!!!!

[hang-the-9]

If there's a ref, which does he have to go by?

For that matter, if the letter and the spirit are different, the law needs to be fixed. But in the mean time, it's the law.

But the intent of the rule is only to prevent accidental shots from counting, not just to make someone call the pocket. Which is why I shake my head at the whole marking pocket thing some leagues do, it's only there because of a few players who are asses and want to eke out a win by any means outside of just playing better.

Same thing for the break rule to send 3 balls past the string, it's intent is to prevent soft breaks, not to just have 3 balls go past the string. So now we have hard breaks where with a bit of bad luck end up with an illegal break, because of the letter or the rule not the intent of it.

What is that law quote, "I'd rather see a dozen guilty men go free than see one innocent man imprisoned" or something like that. I'd rather see a questionable soft break than a clear hard break be punished by a rule. Same thing for a "called shot" where a player mistook one ball for another but clearly aimed and made the ball he was aiming at.

 

[acesinc1999]

I find this topic very interesting....and I might not win this in a formal debate.

I knew a ref who had been certified in Britain a long time ago.....
...and he was going by the old Billiards and Snooker Control Counsil rules.
He would always warn a man with color blindness about the brown for a red.

However, the professional side of the game started to deviate from those rules as early as
the '30s....they brought in the 'shoot again after any foul' option....
....which the BS and CC finally adopted.

So I'm not sure how the WPBSA looks at this situation....
...but if they will penalize a man for being colorblind...I disagree with them.

I ran a lot of snooker tournaments in the 80s...I had three or four regular players that had
this problem....I let everybody know that if they called a foul for them shooting the brown
out of turn that I would respot the balls and the shot would be played over.

I adhered to that thinking when I was gambling, also....
...penalizing a player for being colorblind is cruel and unusual punishment.

I think numbering the colors like American snooker balls would solve the problem....
...but I've never seen numbered snooker ball that were the official size and weight.

Heresy! Burn the witch!

But seriously, nobody is penalizing anybody for being colorblind. I have played several colorblind players in the past and there have been a few instances in friendly social games where of course, I corrected his stroke if he was lined up on the wrong ball. But, professionally, it is a different story. It is very simple....it is INCUMBENT UPON THE STRIKER to ask the question. If he asks, "Is that a red ball?", the referee will answer. If he asks, "Where is the brown ball, please?" (snooker players tend to be courteous, saying "please" and "thank you" a lot, perhaps another anachronism), the referee will clearly indicate which is the Brown.

Try putting the shoe on the other foot. In a professional match, say the striker is lined up on a Red which is very close to Brown. His opponent from his angle can't see the Red and thinks the striker is lined up on Brown so he is a nice guy and says, "Hey, that's the Brown there." The striker had a plan ready to execute and was interrupted potentially changing what would have been the outcome. The opponent was trying to be a nice guy, but he was wrong.

Notice the Rule I quoted said the Referee can answer any question that is authorized by the Rules, he is not required or in fact he is not supposed to answer any other questions. Questions that he cannot answer for instance are the ones in which the player demonstrates that he obviously doesn't even know the rules of the game he is playing or questions of opinion instead of fact, such as, "If I pot this Black, where will it spot?", or "Can I play a Free Ball Yellow to plant onto that Red on the pocket?" The Rules do not penalize anyone unfairly; on the contrary, they go out of the way to treat players equally and not give any advantage of one over the other. Having to tell a player the rules for a game that he is SUPPOSED to be proficient at would certainly be giving an unfair advantage. The way you are stating it is seeming to say that we are actively trying to keep the information of which ball is the Brown away from the colorblind player and that simply is not true. It is just up to him to ask. Same can be said of a person with a 5 second attention span, which is all too common these days. So if he pots a Red, then forgets and lines up again to pot another Red and he does this constantly, are you saying that it should be incumbent on us, everyone else, to correct him every time? People need to be responsible for themselves. (As an aside, in my Referee Training, that exact example was used.....if a player asks, "Did I just pot a Red?" then yes, the ref is authorized to answer because it is a matter of fact, not opinion.)

By the way, the oldest Rule Book I have is B&SCC from 1988. The Rules I quoted above are EXACTLY the same verbatim in that edition, and very probably for a very long time before that.

 

[acesinc1999]

Surely, many reading this thread are asking, "Why does this ayy-whole keep bringing up snooker?" and the answer is that a pool player (who presumably watches snooker on occasion) innocently and erroneously brought up several snooker incidents which he believed to be similar to the Strickland/Shaw situation. The posited scenarios are nothing at all like Strickland/Shaw and are adequately covered by the Rules of Snooker, therefore, I simply leap to the defense of the rules of the game I love.

However, there have been several parallel Snooker situations in which the "letter of the law" rules say one thing, but in the interest of fair play (which is what this thread is really about...what is "fair play" in this situation?"), the referee/players have acted outside the "letter of the law" and rather they acted in the "spirit of the game".

Since Snooker is an international sport, English has been adopted as the "official" language so that players must make their colour calls in English. Sometimes this causes problems for non-native speakers. I know of two cases, both Chinese players who played the wrong colour from what they had verbally nominated (simply spoke the incorrect English word). In one case, the on table Referee was older and experienced, in the other case, younger and inexperienced. In both cases, the Referee called "Foul!", the Chinese player was confused but immediately accepted his fate for the wrong call. In both cases, the opponent refused to get out of his chair to take the table. In the case of the experienced referee, he went back to the "fouling" Chinese player and said something like, "your opponent will not accept the penalty as it was only a verbal mistake. Will you continue to play?" and of course, the break continued exactly where it left off. Took thirty seconds or a minute to resolve. In the case of the young, inexperienced referee, the opponent did exactly the same thing and refused to step the table. She (the referee) insisted that a foul had occurred, therefore a penalty must be enforced. The opponent, after some debate finally said, "Fine. But I do not want this shot so I am putting the fouling player back on the table." (That is always an option after foul in Snooker. Also, obviously, I am assuming the words here; I cannot read lips and there was no audio.) So the Chinese player was put back in to play the next Red which of course, he had previously left in perfect position. All told, this took about three minutes. You can actually view this event here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNFHD9XFqSA

My point is this: when Snooker faces a situation of fairplay, it is resolved immediately by the on-table referee in real time (not an off-table "head referee" or "tournament director"), or failing that, the situation is properly resolved by the integrity of the players themselves.

All you players who post about "What is wrong with Pool today?" should think about that a little bit.

 

[Valiant Thor]

Earl is greatest pool player ever

 

[AlienObserver]

Earl is greatest pool player ever

"Location: Venus"
Enough said.