Last night in league one of my teammates was in kind of a safety battle with his opponent. There was each a solid and a stripe still on the table and they were both tied up a little with the 8 ball. His opponent had ball in hand and here is the layout of balls that he had.

What he was trying to do was skim him 4 ball and leave my teammate safe. I watched as he nudged the 8 ball on the way by and claimed this was a good hit. Of course I thought he had some integrity as I like to think of this game as a gentleman's sport where you call bad hits yourself as the shooter. I believe he was a good shooter who tries to play with integrity and maybe he didn't pay enough attention to the hit but even after being called out on it he still thought it was a good hit. So as no one was at the table watching the call went to the shooter.

After the match was done I set up the shot that he had and asked him to hit it again and make sure he didn't hit the 8. Sure enough the only two balls that moved where the stripe and solid balls, 8 ball didn't move. I then set it up again and asked him to just skim the 8 and it was then sent directly into the rail. I setup the shot a few more times and sure enough only the stripe and solid balls moved every time.

Afterwards I thought about it a little. The only way you could of gotten the 8 ball to move was if you skimmed the 4 ball so much that it would kick off of the stripe and back into the 8 ball but then the 8 ball would of headed towards the back left corner pocket and would of been the last ball to move instead of the first ball to move.

So this match taught me once again that even if you think a player has the same integrity that you do you should still have someone watch the hit. I have even seen 7s at a national tournament claim a good hit when there was no way that it was.

Forever Learning the Art of Pool.