NH Steve
Administrator
...And I suspect that you are the kind of guy that is used to having his pronouncements accepted without question, being eminently qualified as a TD and all.
I was having a very civil and informative discussion with NH Steve back in post #15, when I invited anyone to provide a reasoned argument in support of Steve's interpretation, or conversely against mine. You jumped in, in your post #16 with your proclamation as to how things in fact are. I guess you didn't read the reasoned argument part?
Subsequently, I have just tried to point out the several problems with your position, to which you appear to have taken some kind of offense.
Fact is the verbal description in rule 6.1 of the 1P. rules makes no sense. It totally ignores "path of ball" and completely omits movement of a second ball, and therefore it cannot provide a basis for what should be done when these things happen.
You have also referenced WPA 6.6 at least twice which is not the appropriate WPA rule for cueball only fouls. That rule is rule 20 in the Regulations section.
As a suggestion, someone in authority in 1P.org should correct the verbage in rule 6.1 so there would not be so much confusion.
Meanwhile, you may take your ball and go home; I have no doubt you have come as close to admission of error as you are going to come. Hopefully, you will be a better TD, and the rest of us will be less confused as a result of these discussions.
Rules are not perfect, and even if they were, the people policing them and the players involved are certainly not perfect. Therefore there will always be issues with rules. I know the 1P org rules are not perfect, and certainly the WPBA rules are also not perfect. I have no control or input beyond anyone else regarding the WPBA rules. The WPBA rules were changed after 2005 when we adopted ours so the reference to their rule in ours does need to be updated.
For Doc to say you were being contentious is not "name calling". I do not see anything about Doc's posts or anyone else's that are any more opinionated than your own. Rules are obviously something you care a lot about.
The section 20 WPBA rule is -- this is something we agree on I think -- not well written. As I read it, it is no where near as clear as it should be if they intend any touch of a second ball to be a foul. The problem that I see with it is that the first part of section 20 says not a foul "unless it changes the outcome of the shot". Because simply touching a second ball does not necessarily change the outcome of the shot in the slightest -- unless the cue ball or object balls pass too close to the disturbance such that the disturbance might have effected the outcome of the shot, as the rule goes on to say -- to me it does not seem clear that they intend the simple involvement of a second ball to be a foul, unless it changes the outcome of the shot or at least could possibly have changed the outcome.
The problem I see about arguing over the semantics of this rule is that it all comes back to the fact that the rule itself is poorly written, which we both agree on. Hence any reading of it kind of fails to clearly prove a point either way. You can't have it both ways -- either the rule is clear and one of us is right and the other wrong because it says so, in which case the rule is a rule and we can like it or not but it is tough to argue the interpretation because it is CLEAR. Or the rule is not clear, which means to me it does not prove either point exactly because it is not clear, and that is where I think we are at, lol.
I believe the most important thing in the section 20 regulation is the spirit of it -- "If there is no referee presiding over a match, it may be played using cue ball fouls only." When there is no referee, essentially it is up to the players to agree on what is a foul and what is not, much like in gambling. If they agree, then fine, let things continue. If they cannot agree, the TD or area ref is going to come over and make a ruling. Who knows how they would interpret section 20 Personally, I don't care if touching a second ball would be a foul or not, but I certainly would prefer the rules to be clearer!!
Our rules are due for an update -- we should make that a goal for the next year, which would make 10 years for those rules. Since our rules became "the standard" for One Pocket, they should be the best that they can be.
Again, I like the idea of "One touch warning" along with all ball fouls when there is no ref involved. And I have no objection to all ball fouls if there is a ref. But that's an argument/discussion for another day