The False Positives of 8-Ball

THE FALSE POSITIVES OF 8 BALL AND OTHER NON-ROTATION GAMES.

Often we see the good 8 ball player study hard and make some adjustments to their runout and pocket the 8 ball to the joyful hoots and hollers of their team. The player did achieve their goal and won and it feels like hard work. Thinking and mapping out the rack can be quite a chore! But often unnoticed by most is the player could have chosen to run out several other ways as well and still achieved the same goal.

In rotation, the table tells you what to do and requires you to have the ability to use crazy spins and run the cueball when needed. 9 ball is much more position sensitive and demands having mastery of the cueball simply because you can’t switch to another ball. This is not to say there is not tons of knowledge to be learned in 8 ball. But if you want to improve every game you play, practice rotation (10 & 9 ball)

Great 8 ball player playing a great 9 ball player and the game is 8 ball. 9 ball player will probably still win.
Great 8 ball player playing a great 9 ball player and the game is 9 ball, the 8 baller better have his checkbook.
I have witnessed this for 40 years although there has been a few exceptions but it always turned out the 8 baller did play a good bit of 9 ball as well.

In rotation many players focus on them running 8 balls and then they miss the 9 and say it’s not fair!
Keep in mind, maybe play good position so you don’t miss the 9. Don’t push your mistake on the opponent. 😝

THE TAKE AWAY: No matter what you hear about rotation being lucky, DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE VALUE of 9 ball and 10 ball in teaching you shots that you will use in EVERY game.

TEST: BALL IN HAND. Place the 8 ball in the middle. Shoot 8 ball last. Put 4 balls up and run in any order.
Now do the same only this time run them in numerical order. Very quickly you will find how hard rotation is compared to 8 ball. Enjoy!