Re: Push shot or not?
Johnny Bravo wrote:Then this means that the snooker push shot rule was made up by an utter RETARD, thus the rule must be abolished. It is basically forbidding snooker players from playing a certain type of shot even though from a ball contact point of view there is nothing wrong with the shot they are playing.
Ummmm, .... okay. I will work on that.
And I think that should be end of discussion. As for anyone who would like to better understand why the Rule in fact evolved (, not was "made up",) to be this way, read on.
As Iranu stated, part (b) of the definition of Push Stroke means that all three: the tip of the cue, the White ball, and the object ball, are in contact with each other at the same instant in time. Of course, and obviously, this will NOT occur over a long-ish distance. There is only danger of a Push Stroke when White is very near the first object ball. Personally, I say about 3/8" (10 mm or so, about the same distance as the diameter of the tip) between them and it is very difficult (though not impossible) to remove your cue tip from White before White contacts object. Cut that distance in half, say, 5 mm, and it becomes impossible, you WILL commit a Push Stroke, unless you follow the Push Stroke exception guideline laid out in the Rules of Snooker.
(By the way, for anyone interested, part (a) of the definition says it is a Push Stroke if you touch your tip to the White, then sort of shove the White along its line. Think of pushing a shuffleboard puck along a line on the floor with its paddle. Sounds very odd to us today, but going back hundreds of years in the history of Billiards, this was one of the ways to propel the White...this is why there is a flat edge on the butt of your cue stick. Flat edge laid on table near White, one hand on what is today the "tip" end of the cue, and the White was simply shoved instead of stroked. So this Rule was written in part to end that method of propulsion. (Some may find it difficult to believe that Snooker and the other cue sports have a storied history since long before Ronnie O'Sullivan entered the scene in 1992.)
Now,...to understand the Push Stroke exception, part (b), first begin by understanding the Touching Ball rule. We all know it. You must play away from the ball that is Touching so that the Touching Ball may not be moved directly by the action of White. Simple. It is a big advantage to the incoming striker if balls are Touching rather than just very close to each other. Why is that? Let's do a hypothetical....
One of the few remaining Reds it comes to rest just about 16 inches away from one of the Black corner pockets, let's just say the Yellow side (Top Right corner pocket,) while other Reds are tied up near cushions. Sounds rather similar to the Mark King situation so far. All colours are on or near their natural spots. Then the White comes to rest just a few millimeters away from Red directly in line with that same corner pocket. If White was a couple inches away (I can work in any measurement system you like despite being a "dumb American" that "doesn't understand the metric system"; I will convert to Smoots if anyone here prefers that system though it would require quite a few decimal places), then the pot would be obvious and incredibly easy. The incoming striker, let's call him, "Kirk Mang" (standing away from the table) should hope that the balls came to rest Touching. Why? Because if the balls are Touching, the incoming striker has complete freedom to do anything he wants with the White. He must play away from the Red giving him a full sweep of 180 degrees toward which he can direct White. He CANNOT do anything about the Red ball; it will still be a duck sitting there being just 16 inches away from a simple pot (not exactly true of course, he could play off a cushion to move that Red, but that would be a great risk to do so). But he has freedom to play any convenient direction to hide the White behind any convenient ball so that the stroke to follow his will require escape from a snooker giving him the big advantage.
But it wasn't a Touching Ball; White came to rest just a couple millimeters away from object. The Push Stroke exception is very much like the Touching Ball rule except that contact must occur. (With Touching Ball, contact is already considered to have occurred.) So NOW, what are Kirk's options? No matter what the striker does, no matter how careful he or she may be, by the precious laws of Physics so beloved by our own JB, when the White is struck IN ANY WAY toward the Red ball, whether thin, thick or anything in between, then the PUSH definition will be fulfilled that the cue tip, White, and object will all be in contact with each other at the same moment in time. Despite apparently being written by an utter RETARD, the Rules of Snooker are at least smart enough that they do realize that they are not strong enough to supersede the immutable Laws of Physics. The simultaneous contacts WILL occur. But the Rule says that this is acceptable as long as a "very fine edge" of the object is struck. As some have said, perhaps the wording could be better and I agree. I liked it better when "finest possible edge" was used even though it is subjective, exactly as "to the best of their ability" is also subjective regarding the Foul and a Miss rule, depending on the actual talent and ability of the striker at hand. Ahh, but I am a product of another millennium, when singulars were singulars and plurals were plurals, and we liked it that way. I still use the phrase "finest possible edge" when I am explaining this to anyone who is intelligent enough to listen. So in our hypothetical above, unlike a Touching Ball situation where Kirk Mang could select any shot choice within a 180 degree sweep, THIS time, with the two balls only so near each other, Kirk's only choices are to either very finely graze the left edge of the Red to leave White on the Black cushion or to very finely graze the right edge to leave White near the side cushion. Any other choice will either be a foul stroke (Push) or else leave that sitting duck of a Red pot if he were to attempt to get White back to the Baulk area (because in hitting a "very fine edge", the Red simply will not move very far).
And that is it. To finish our hypothetical, our Kirk Mang selected to graze the left edge and leave Red on the Black cushion, that being the safest option without committing the foul of a Push stroke. After all, Kirk is known to be a pretty smart fella.
Thank you to any who may have read all or at least most of my musings here. We laughed, we cried, we laughed some more. And I hope there may have been a tidbit of information that one or two of you perhaps had not known before.
- acesinc
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