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touching ball

Postby hutchy1951

please can anyone tell me, if you play away
from a touching ball, and it rebounds off the
cushion and hits the ball you have just played away
from is it a foul shot.
Hutchy1951.

Re: touching ball

Postby HappyCamper

Only a foul if the touching ball moves in the action of striking the cue ball from my reading of the rule. So I'd say no foul.

Re: touching ball

Postby acesinc

hutchy1951 wrote:please can anyone tell me, if you play away
from a touching ball, and it rebounds off the
cushion and hits the ball you have just played away
from is it a foul shot.
Hutchy1951.


HappyCamper wrote:Only a foul if the touching ball moves in the action of striking the cue ball from my reading of the rule. So I'd say no foul.


Hi, all. It has been quite a while since I have seen a Rules post on which to pontificate.

For hutchy1951, by your description, there is no foul. That is assuming no other possibly related infractions....double hitting tip of your cue, knocking the touching ball with your cue stick, brushing some other arbitrary ball with your sleeve, or any of a myriad of other fouls you may have committed within the course of the stroke. The Rule is simply that in the event that the cue ball comes to rest touching another ball, the striker MAY NOT play through that ball or it is a push stroke. The striker must play away as you said you did so you complied with the Rule. Once the cue ball has moved away from the Touching Ball, it is no longer a Touching Ball situation so that the cue ball is now free to contact any Ball On there is on the table including the Ball On away from which it was just struck.

For HappyCamper, your reply is mostly accurate, but not quite thorough. There is a situation that quite commonly occurs on club tables, much less so on professional tables, at which I have seen players get quite worked up on several occasions due to lack of understanding of this Rule. The cloth on a club table is generally quite a bit thicker (for durability) than the fine cloth of a professional table. This means there are many surface irregularities in the thick nap. Think at the microscopic level of the snooker balls touching the cloth like they are footballs (soccer balls) resting on tufts of grass. Often on a thick napped cloth, balls may come to rest against each other, pushing against each other because each of them would like to come to rest nestling a little deeper in a "divot" of the cloth. But it is propped up by the other ball. Therefore, when a touching ball is properly and legally played away, you will sometimes see actual, discernible movement of the touching ball as it nestles itself down into the cloth simply due to gravity. THIS IS NOT A FOUL! As long as the movement was not caused by a direct action of the striker, it is a fair stroke. It has happened to me perhaps three or four times in my life, and I do recall once seeing a YouTube video that a Referee called a foul on Alex Higgins in a Touching Ball situation. Alex argued exactly the above that the ball moved of its own accord, but the Referee ruled that the ball moved as a result of Alex's action about which you can imagine his reaction.

At a tournament, I once had an opponent call a foul on himself for this reason. I was watching and I did not see a foul so I asked, "Did you touch the other ball with your cue?" And he said, no, the ball just moved after he played away. I told him, that is not a foul, it happens, and we continued.

Re: touching ball

Postby SnookerEd25

Nicely posted Ace :hatoff:

Always good to hear you pontificate on a rules query <ok>

Re: touching ball

Postby chengdufan

SnookerEd25, are your snooker places still closed? We're still waiting for your semi final result!

Re: touching ball

Postby SnookerEd25

Yes, everything is still closed other than ‘essential’ shops.

Long since given up listening to those responsible for such things but word on the street is they’ll be opening things in phases over the next couple months.

Not holding my breath that snookering holes will b high on the list of priorities though :irk: