Dennis "Whitey" Young
Verified Member
Steve to piggy back off of your comment: I believe their are a lot of members that do not know about the 'frozen ob 3 shot rule', for it is little known outside of the 14.1 world, and currently the rule has been dropped by those with tinny minds that are in power, and now it is all but lost to history. I'll briefly explain;A three shot limit — or make it two like the three foul rule and must warn if on two — but a third would be considered a foul; that might work instead of worrying about whether a ball is frozen or not.
thinking out of the box again. ...
When the ob is frozen to the rail and the shooter shoots and either touches it or not but does leave the cb in front of the ob without the cb contacting a rail, it is a foul (IMO a chicken shit play). Thereafter if the players continue to tap the ob, and if it stays within 1" of the rail the rule still applies whether a legal shot occurs or not. On the third tap shot (by the chicken shit shooter who initiated this fiasco) the rule requires that either the ob contacts another rail or the cb contacts a rail. Then if this legal shot is not accomplished it goes into the 14.1 penalty phase.
The penalty IMO for OP would be an option to have BIH-BTL. To Steve's point, yes you would declare the player is on their 3rd shot before their shot.
I witnessed a Skylar match in which his lesser skilled opponent initiated rolling up on a ball and the tapping began for about 10 minutes on the side rail past the side pocket, it eventually crossed the side pocket and Skylar hooked him behind another ball on the end rail, and the opponent kicked at a the same ball on the side rail and slightly caught the rail first, thus no rail, and Skylar called a foul in which the player did not except., and Skylar let it go. What a fiasco, and sadly Skylar lost the match to this weasel. A fiasco from start to end. Skylar would of loved the frozen ob 3 shot rule in this match.
The incidents of nursing an ob along a rail in OP does occur, but when the ob is frozen then I can imagine that the 3 shot rule would then be of significance. We currently have alternative playing rules within our Official rules, and this could be considered also. One goal of OP.org is to preserve the historical way one pocket is played, and for this reason we have alternative ways to play, such as opponent racks, ob jumped off table is not a foul. Plus OP.org considers adopting new rules such as; a ball made on the break, which IMO would be also an alternative game rule. So it is very viable to consider this frozen ob 3 shot rule as an alternative game rule.
One historical general rule we really need to adopt and preserve is our American way of playing BIH-BTL. To do this we need to strongly place this within our OP official rules. This is the only way of preserving it, outside of developing our own general rules. Whitey
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