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A professional foul

Postby Badsnookerplayer

I am still upset about Patsy Fagan's conduct against David Taylor, but the hurt is starting to subside.

On a similar note, how would this be dealt with:

It is my shot. I am 22 down on the yellow and snookered.

I play out of the snooker as best I can but narrowly miss it, with the white ball heading towards the black.

I realise that this will leave me requiring snookers so I 'drop' my cue onto the green and declare the foul before the white hits the black.

What occurs?

Will I be rewarded for my skullduggery?

Re: A professional foul

Postby TheSaviour

Ha haa. Don´t know mate. I would just assume a professional foul also means there´s an intention to make a foul, in order to gain an advantage of an any kind.
Last edited by TheSaviour on 30 Aug 2017, edited 1 time in total.

Re: A professional foul

Postby acesinc

Hi guys, been incredibly busy the last month, little time to post. Have been moving my shop (and my Billiards table) into a new building. Exhausting work. Now that all is moved, time to organize all. Ugh!!

I tried to answer this query yesterday. After nearly an hour crafting a response (with a couple pretty good jokes as well), my 'puter gave me an error message and all I had written was lost to the internet cybercesspool. :mood: Like Ford Prefect's "Mostly harmless." I was irked.

Badsnookerplayer wrote:I am still upset about Patsy Fagan's conduct against David Taylor, but the hurt is starting to subside.

On a similar note, how would this be dealt with:

It is my shot. I am 22 down on the yellow and snookered.

I play out of the snooker as best I can but narrowly miss it, with the white ball heading towards the black.

I realise that this will leave me requiring snookers so I 'drop' my cue onto the green and declare the foul before the white hits the black.

What occurs?

Will I be rewarded for my skullduggery?


Patsy Fagan! pmsl After 35 years, it is time to forgive and let it go!

As for your hypothetical, how delightfully deviant of you to think of such a scheme! It is nearly the same thing as the Fagan incident (seeing that a foul is going to occur and preemptively causing a different foul) except that his was so blatant, that the proper call by the referee should have been different than the call would be against you (most likely). Of course, imo, the Referee screwed up the Fagan call horribly.

In situations such as these, the first thing to understand is that the Rules of Snooker is written as a minimalist document; much is purposefully left to the interpretation of the Referee, and as a result, different referees may well interpret similar situations differently. There is no rule anywhere that says, "If you drop your cue on a Baulk colour thereby causing a foul for the purpose of preventing a different higher value foul..." If written this way, the rule book would end up a thousand pages long and no one would read it.

So to officiate, each situation must be parceled out to see which of the relatively few "rules" could or should be applied. In both these cases, Fagan and BSP, the appropriate section for guidance is Section 4., The Players, 1. Conduct:

"...
(a) In the event of:
(i) a Player taking an abnormal amount of time over a stroke or the selection of a stroke; or
(ii) any conduct by a Player which in the opinion of the referee is willfully or persistently unfair; or
(iii) any other conduct by a Player which otherwise amounts to ungentlemanly conduct
; or
(iv) refusing to continue a frame;
the referee shall either:
(v) warn the Player that in the event of any such further conduct the frame will be awarded to his opponent; or
(vi) award the frame to his opponent; or
(vii) in the event that the conduct is sufficiently serious, award the game to his opponent.
..."

So we have: (i), (ii), (iii), and (iv) are possible infractions, and (v), (vi), and (vii) are possible remedies. When (i) through (vii) are taken as whole, we can come to a conclusion that even a single, willful incident, if grievous enough, can allow the Referee to award the MATCH to the opponent by forfeit. I don't know that this has ever happened. It would need to be a pretty darn grievous act...setting the opponent's cue on fire? Murdering the opponent mid-match? I don't know what it would take for a ref to call this one but it would need to be quite serious indeed.

More likely, if the Referee suspects that a player acted in an unsportsmanlike manner (such as you dropping your cue on the Green), then he will give warning (remedy (v)). If the unfair or ungentlemanly conduct is obvious and undeniable (such as the Patsy Fagan incident), then remedy (vi) is appropriate (in my opinion) and the frame should be immediately awarded to the opponent.

Now, if you are in a match, say the Best of 35 World Championship Final, and you have received warning (remedy (v)) in the first frame, that warning will carry throughout the match. So if you try your crap again in Frame 35, the Referee will award that frame to your opponent and so de facto, you will lose the match (and WC!) by forfeit. In fact, since the Rules purposely leave so much to the Referee's interpretation, there really is nothing saying that a referee cannot call to mind a player's known past history when deciding which remedy to mete out for any particular situation. So tread lightly...your past may come back to haunt you on the baize.

If this is the way your devious mind works, Player, remind me to never have a "friendly", non-refereed match with you!

Oh, and P.S. - Re-reading above, I suppose I did not make it clear above, BSP, what the actual call against you would be. If it were me as your Referee, then the scoring would stand as you suspect, Foul and Four Away, so that you did manage to forego requiring snookers at this point. But I would give you warning that I suspect your act was purposeful, not an accident, so don't let it happen again! :stupid:

Re: A professional foul

Postby Badsnookerplayer

Thanks Ace - I am better educated once more after your post.

I would of course never dream of that sort of behaviour but the Fagan-Taylor incident does still irk me but you have explained that the referee could have (should have!) made a different call. It was a terrible injustice in my opinion.

I do have a copy of the rules, so I should have been able to deduce that answer but it did not seem obvious to me that is the appropriate sanction. I like the fact that the referee has the discretion based on a player's past conduct.

Sounds like the move was hard work but will hopefully be worth it soon! Intrigued about the jokes that are lost to the internet!