Another piece on the Foul and a Miss Rule...
Posted in the tournament banter:
You all know that I don't post very often and I don't tend to spend much time in the banter topics. This side of the pond, it is difficult to follow the game live; streams are difficult to come by and shaky at best in integrity, and I simply can't devote too much time to trying to keep up. Occasionally, when something interesting appears to have happened, I generally rely on YouTube to be able to see it with my own eyes.
It turns out that I had some spare time and coincidentally, I happened upon a good stream and I was actually watching this live as it happened last night. And I thought to myself that it demonstrates the basic trouble with the FAAM rule but for his part Terry Camilleri did as good a job with it as can be expected.
The biggest problem with this one is technology. As they are attempting to implement this Rule, the use of technology is still poor after more than twenty years now. As I have said many times, the Rule was written as it is for use on the professional circuit but as with any good rule set, of course, the Rule should also apply at the amateur and even simple social and recreational level. But that is not the case with FAAM. I have known so many amateur players who wish to follow this Rule within their own game, but they simply do not understand it properly, and of course complete lack of technology at the Club level makes it a joke to attempt to implement FAAM anyway.
There was a poster on Snooker Island a few years back...Biskit Boy I think he went by...who created a concept to alleviate this problem at all levels of play. It was sheer genius. I thought it should have gone straight to the top and it should have been implemented as an immediate and important rule change after review by the powers that be. The solution was useful and understandable for all levels of play and would actually leave the Professional game virtually untouched to continue play virtually identical as current. I wish someone in charge would be smart enough to take note of that concept and take whatever steps necessary to implement it into the Rules of Snooker.
Now about this particular "impossible" snooker in which Mike Dunn found himself. You should open the video to refer to while reading this post. You can see the ORIGINAL ball position following Wilson's trap at 2:15. Analyzing that, Dunn had two possible paths to play....1) the very difficult one that he chose, and 2) another very difficult three cushion escape kind of paralleling the Pink to Black line....Black cush, side cush, Baulk cush near Yellow. The second choice also left the real possibility of White in off the Red even if contact were made. To be clear, Kyren played his stroke with very specific purpose...it is no coincidence that the Red is sitting there right in the jaws of the middle pocket. Kyren wished to lay a devious snooker, expected that Mike Dunn would fail in the escape, and Kyren would pounce on the duck of a Red in the jaws. That is important to understand for what is to follow...
First failed escape: very narrow gate between Brown and cush with extremely precise spin control and of course, Mike struck the Brown and the balls bounce away, Red never moving so the resulting position meant the Red was unpottable for Kyren. Why did Mike Dunn choose this path over the other? They were both incredibly difficult no matter what but if path #2 were tried, success of contact with Red probably would have meant an in off foul anyway. With path #1, success (while not at all likely) nearly certainly would have resulted in POTTING the Red, let alone just making contact. It was the correct choice. And Camilleri CORRECTLY called FAAM because if there is more than one option, the referee should expect that the player will try other options.......if a player has half dozen options, five of them easy, but instead chooses a nearly impossible path, should the Ref NOT call "miss" because the escape was nearly impossible for the path chosen? He can and should call FAAM all day long.
Camilleri attempted to put the balls back into position. Sadly, he failed miserably. If you stop video at 3:30 and compare it to the original snookered position, path #2 is now clearly not even an option anymore for Mike. This is embarrassing for the controlling body of Snooker in my opinion. It is more than twenty years now guys, if you cannot implement this correctly, then you must consider scrapping it. Let's be clear....while extremely difficult, this was NOT an "impossible" snooker to escape. In fact, there HAD BEEN not one but two clear possible paths to attempt the escape. Kyren was not at all "lucky" that the snookered position turned out exactly as it had; it was very well planned and executed.
Second failure: Pretty much the same as the first failure, not much to talk about here.
Again, Camilleri attempts to put back the balls.....and now we have all the relevant balls in yet another NEW position unlike the position of the two earlier attempts. Stop video at 5:20 and compare that the the stop video at 3:30 and at the original 2:15. If this doesn't give one pause to think that SOMETHING has got to change, then you are simply not paying attention. The "gate" between Brown and cush was actually opened up quite a bit making that third and final attempt quite a bit easier. And the result of course was different. Part of the problem I think (but certainly not all of the problem) is that it appears that resetting the balls for the third attempt, they were referring to the stop video of the ball position of the SECOND ATTEMPT! Instead of the correct stop video of the original position as at 2:15. You will note that the position of balls in Attempt # 3 is quite close to ball positions of Attempt # 2. The big deviation that occurred was between Attempt #'s 1 and 2.
After the third failure (and with the advantage of the Brown being further away from cushion), Dunn did manage to hold the cue ball on a straight enough path that it did in fact contact Red but of course contact was with Brown first, much thinner contact with Brown than the first two attempts. Wilson obviously expected that Referee Camilleri would be calling FAAM all day long but Mr. Camilleri was exactly correct in has assessment that Mike Dunn has made the best possible attempt to contact given the circumstances (that being that there was no longer even a second path that might be tried). Dunn played the stroke with the clear effort to move the Red ball without regard to the resulting position he would leave for Wilson and that satisfies the FAAM Rule requirement. Referee Camilleri invokes the Fair Play clause and calls a simple "Foul!". Kyren Wilson seemed a little surprised by this (he probably doesn't understand the Rule correctly either....it seems that nearly no one does), but of course he didn't complain about it.
This Rule mostly works at the professional level. It is utter crap for amateur play without technology. After all this time at the professional level, they STILL cannot get their technology correct. Almost no one properly understands the implementation of this Rule. Somebody in charge of these decisions really, really needs to give this a good think.
Ash147 wrote:Ash147 wrote:This is where the miss rule becomes silly. This snooker is such a difficult one for Mike Dunn to escape from.
This is what I was referring to last night.
https://youtu.be/BJqEAjEG3Wc
You all know that I don't post very often and I don't tend to spend much time in the banter topics. This side of the pond, it is difficult to follow the game live; streams are difficult to come by and shaky at best in integrity, and I simply can't devote too much time to trying to keep up. Occasionally, when something interesting appears to have happened, I generally rely on YouTube to be able to see it with my own eyes.
It turns out that I had some spare time and coincidentally, I happened upon a good stream and I was actually watching this live as it happened last night. And I thought to myself that it demonstrates the basic trouble with the FAAM rule but for his part Terry Camilleri did as good a job with it as can be expected.
The biggest problem with this one is technology. As they are attempting to implement this Rule, the use of technology is still poor after more than twenty years now. As I have said many times, the Rule was written as it is for use on the professional circuit but as with any good rule set, of course, the Rule should also apply at the amateur and even simple social and recreational level. But that is not the case with FAAM. I have known so many amateur players who wish to follow this Rule within their own game, but they simply do not understand it properly, and of course complete lack of technology at the Club level makes it a joke to attempt to implement FAAM anyway.
There was a poster on Snooker Island a few years back...Biskit Boy I think he went by...who created a concept to alleviate this problem at all levels of play. It was sheer genius. I thought it should have gone straight to the top and it should have been implemented as an immediate and important rule change after review by the powers that be. The solution was useful and understandable for all levels of play and would actually leave the Professional game virtually untouched to continue play virtually identical as current. I wish someone in charge would be smart enough to take note of that concept and take whatever steps necessary to implement it into the Rules of Snooker.
Now about this particular "impossible" snooker in which Mike Dunn found himself. You should open the video to refer to while reading this post. You can see the ORIGINAL ball position following Wilson's trap at 2:15. Analyzing that, Dunn had two possible paths to play....1) the very difficult one that he chose, and 2) another very difficult three cushion escape kind of paralleling the Pink to Black line....Black cush, side cush, Baulk cush near Yellow. The second choice also left the real possibility of White in off the Red even if contact were made. To be clear, Kyren played his stroke with very specific purpose...it is no coincidence that the Red is sitting there right in the jaws of the middle pocket. Kyren wished to lay a devious snooker, expected that Mike Dunn would fail in the escape, and Kyren would pounce on the duck of a Red in the jaws. That is important to understand for what is to follow...
First failed escape: very narrow gate between Brown and cush with extremely precise spin control and of course, Mike struck the Brown and the balls bounce away, Red never moving so the resulting position meant the Red was unpottable for Kyren. Why did Mike Dunn choose this path over the other? They were both incredibly difficult no matter what but if path #2 were tried, success of contact with Red probably would have meant an in off foul anyway. With path #1, success (while not at all likely) nearly certainly would have resulted in POTTING the Red, let alone just making contact. It was the correct choice. And Camilleri CORRECTLY called FAAM because if there is more than one option, the referee should expect that the player will try other options.......if a player has half dozen options, five of them easy, but instead chooses a nearly impossible path, should the Ref NOT call "miss" because the escape was nearly impossible for the path chosen? He can and should call FAAM all day long.
Camilleri attempted to put the balls back into position. Sadly, he failed miserably. If you stop video at 3:30 and compare it to the original snookered position, path #2 is now clearly not even an option anymore for Mike. This is embarrassing for the controlling body of Snooker in my opinion. It is more than twenty years now guys, if you cannot implement this correctly, then you must consider scrapping it. Let's be clear....while extremely difficult, this was NOT an "impossible" snooker to escape. In fact, there HAD BEEN not one but two clear possible paths to attempt the escape. Kyren was not at all "lucky" that the snookered position turned out exactly as it had; it was very well planned and executed.
Second failure: Pretty much the same as the first failure, not much to talk about here.
Again, Camilleri attempts to put back the balls.....and now we have all the relevant balls in yet another NEW position unlike the position of the two earlier attempts. Stop video at 5:20 and compare that the the stop video at 3:30 and at the original 2:15. If this doesn't give one pause to think that SOMETHING has got to change, then you are simply not paying attention. The "gate" between Brown and cush was actually opened up quite a bit making that third and final attempt quite a bit easier. And the result of course was different. Part of the problem I think (but certainly not all of the problem) is that it appears that resetting the balls for the third attempt, they were referring to the stop video of the ball position of the SECOND ATTEMPT! Instead of the correct stop video of the original position as at 2:15. You will note that the position of balls in Attempt # 3 is quite close to ball positions of Attempt # 2. The big deviation that occurred was between Attempt #'s 1 and 2.
After the third failure (and with the advantage of the Brown being further away from cushion), Dunn did manage to hold the cue ball on a straight enough path that it did in fact contact Red but of course contact was with Brown first, much thinner contact with Brown than the first two attempts. Wilson obviously expected that Referee Camilleri would be calling FAAM all day long but Mr. Camilleri was exactly correct in has assessment that Mike Dunn has made the best possible attempt to contact given the circumstances (that being that there was no longer even a second path that might be tried). Dunn played the stroke with the clear effort to move the Red ball without regard to the resulting position he would leave for Wilson and that satisfies the FAAM Rule requirement. Referee Camilleri invokes the Fair Play clause and calls a simple "Foul!". Kyren Wilson seemed a little surprised by this (he probably doesn't understand the Rule correctly either....it seems that nearly no one does), but of course he didn't complain about it.
This Rule mostly works at the professional level. It is utter crap for amateur play without technology. After all this time at the professional level, they STILL cannot get their technology correct. Almost no one properly understands the implementation of this Rule. Somebody in charge of these decisions really, really needs to give this a good think.
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