I used to own Royal Family Billiards of Oakley (Better know as just Oakley) in Cincinnati. It was an "old school" pool room as John Brumback will attest. It was the action room in Cincinnati from the time Merguards closed down until I closed it and opened
Beechmont Billiards on the east side of town. It was full of hustlers, con men, "ne'er do wells" and the top players in the area. When this situation first arose while I was there I asked my right hand man, Joey Spaeth, what the rule was on a situation like
this. Clem Metz was also there at the time and they both were adamant that the player was responsible for knowing his ball count and if he continued shooting after he was out and scratched, he was no longer out! It was probably something that was
just customary in the area but I ran into the same scenario in Columbus one time and asked the house man there what was customary there and he told me the same thing! But as Johnny Brumback mentioned, in our area unless it was specified in advance
everyone also played "sleepers" where if you _forgot_ to spot a ball you owed and your opponent didn't remind you, it was forgotten and lost with the exception of balls that were to be spotted due to a handicap there it required spotting balls so that
there were enough balls for each player to have a chance to reach their out ball. (Like if the game was 10-8 or something in excess of 16 total). I'll admit that my first inclination was that if a person reached his out ball, the game was over and whatever
happened after didn't matter, but the people in my area were accustomed to playing that way so I didn't interfere.
I gotta chuckle about John's comment about marking the pockets and "putting keys in your pocket" when you owed a ball as a reminder. I know where that stems from. LOL It was when John played Mark Masden one pocket and they played "sleepers".
Mark had a huge ring of keys he'd throw in Johnny's pocket whenever he owed a ball. When John made a ball in the pocket is sounded like an alarm with the keys jingling, so Mark would grab the ball and the keys out of Johnny's pocket to make sure he
didn't forget to spot the ball!
After I posted this I called Danny DiLiberto and asked him about this situation and he also said that when the 8th ball went into the pocket the game was over and that it didn't matter what happened after. It pays to know how they play in a certain area
because the rules aren't really universal everywhere.
Just more hot air!
Sherm
Sherm Custom Cues
Cincinnati, Ohio