Let's face it "Slop or Luck" is, in some way, in most facets of life! Pool is certainly no different! If it isn't a matter of "slopping" in a ball, it's going to be something else like a funny roll, your opponent making an uncharacteristic error, the breaks, or even the draw in a tournament! There is always going to be a certain degree of luck in the sport of billiards and I think it is counter productive to try to "rule" it out! Some of the "luck" factor is what makes the game take on a certain excitement! Let's face it, if there were no luck involved, it would get boring very quickly!

      Another observation I've made over the years, is that almost without exception, when you hear someone complaining about playing "slop pool", it's one of the worse players in the room! The only pro player I ever heard profess that nine ball should be played as a call shot game was a contributor here, Grady Mathews, and it's one of the only issues we disagree about!

      Funny story ... (and I hope Grady reads this and remembers) I believe it was 1985 at the Clyde Childress Memorial Tournament in Richmond Kentucky. I was on the road with my buddy, the late Gary Spaeth. There was a nine ball division and a bank pool division. I'm happy to say Gary won the bank pool division but when he had one loss in the nine ball division and came up to his "money match" he played Grady "The Professor" Mathews. At this point in his career Grady was a "jam up" nine ball player as well as being one of the top one pocket players in the world! He was also very vocal about his idea of changing pro nine ball to a call shot game! Well Gary was playing very good pool and it came down to a hill-hill match. Grady broke the balls on the last and final game and didn't make a ball on the break! Gary had a clear shot on the one ball but there were a couple of clusters and the two ball was in a tough place to get on with the angle he had! Gary chose to play a "lock up" safe, banking the one ball three rails, to the end cushion and freezing the cueball behind a ball and frozen to the opposite end rail and the ball! It looked like Grady was in "Jail"! Well, before the Filipino invasion, I had Grady picked as one of the top "kickers" in the world. He not only hit the one ball, but the cue ball then hit the nine-ball which was in the middle of the table, and naturally, made it in a pocket! Grady was very apologetic and I believe he'd had rather played the game over than taken the "slop shot", but the rules are the rules! Grady had won fair and square! Even though that "slop shot" personally took money out of MY pocket, I think, the excitement of seeing something like this happen in a pool match, is a PLUS!! Just like making the nine on the break, bank shots, jump shots, masse's, and other areas of the game that are not necessarily "cut and dried"!

      In my opinion, you're every bit as lucky, in a situation, where your opponent, hangs a ball in the pocket, that he was probably supposed to make, as when _you_ "slop" the ball in a completely different pocket! What's the difference??!! You're still at the table because of something you had no control over! When you try to legislate luck out of the game of pool with rules, all that is accomplished is that you have much more areas of contention! Things to argue and yes, even fight over! As I recently read in another thread, most pool is played in the proximity of alcohol! Why in the world would you want to give people using alcohol another thing to argue about! Having been a bar and pool room proprietor for over 20 years, I find the idea ridiculous! In my bars, I had signs up proclaiming "slop" as the "house rules" so as to cut down on the arguments!

      I guess in closing, what I'm trying to say is that, with all of the areas of the game, that luck completely uncontrollable, why try to regulate one small part of it? In the grand scheme of things, the better player, will win most of the time anyway, and way, way more matches have been won by breaking in the nine-ball, than on slop shots!

Just some more of my hot air!

Sherm

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sherm@shermcue.com

Sherm