When shooting the wrong group is not a foul

     Another Colorado incident. There will be more. Snooker and Carom, two old dogs who play each other often, have both had too many beers and are not paying attention to their game. Snooker is breaking and makes a solid on the break. Snooker shoots again at a solid but misses. Table is open. Carom comes to the table and shoots a stripe into the side pocket. However, the stripe hangs up in the pocket and does not go down through the mechanism. Carom has established her group of balls - stripes. Carom shoots at another stripe but misses. Snooker in his “condition” comes back to the table and asks: ‘what do I have?”. Carom looks into the ball return, seeing only a solid ball, and knowing that she has just pocketed a ball, tells Snooker that he has stripes. Snooker then makes a stripe in the same side pocket that Carom had previously made one. When Snooker does this, the stripe which was hung up before, now comes dislodged and both stripes (the one Carom made and the one Snooker made) goes through the mechanism and down to the ball return. Now both Snooker and Carom realize that Snooker had solids and NOT stripes. They both are friendly drunks at this point, but they call you to the table nonetheless. You make the call!!!! You cannot switch groups.

    Snooker has solids but has shot a stripe. Of course, Carom cannot lie to Snooker about what balls he has, but this was a good faith response. Carom was not trying to deceive Snooker since Carom looked at the ball return and did not realize her stripe had “hung up” in the side pocket. Snooker relied on Carom representation that he had stripes when in fact he had solids. Should Snooker be punished?

    Obviously, neither shooter is paying any attention to the game or this would not happen. Of course when you mix alcohol with pool, things like this can happen. The correct call is to allow Snooker to continue to shoot and not call a Foul; however, Snooker must shoot solids since that is his group of balls.

by Fred A. Johnson

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