Snooker World Championship

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mikeIow

Guru
Location
Leicester
A game of many halves 🫣
Utterly dominant in the afternoon, then looking like he was gonna crumble after taking the first frame in the evening. Nice fella (met him briefly in the bar after a tournament in Leicester a few years back), I was glad he did it 💪
 

Chromatic

Legendary Member
Location
Gloucestershire
Not sure controversy is the word, just incredible sportsmanship and fair mindedness. Agree the ref was correct though. He should have invited Selby to look at it with the other ball in position.

Remarkable sportsmanship by Selby. Trump on the other hand, unless something has been said behind the scenes that we don’t know about, has appeared to get away scot free with refusing to accept a referee’s decision, a decision that by general consensus was the correct one. Of course he was entitled to ask the ref to check it, which he did, and he may of course have eventually accepted the referee’s decision, that we will never know, but he didn’t seem to be ready to accept it.
 

figbat

Former slippery scientist
Remarkable sportsmanship by Selby. Trump on the other hand, unless something has been said behind the scenes that we don’t know about, has appeared to get away scot free with refusing to accept a referee’s decision, a decision that by general consensus was the correct one. Of course he was entitled to ask the ref to check it, which he did, and he may of course have eventually accepted the referee’s decision, that we will never know, but he didn’t seem to be ready to accept it.

I’m still not convinced it was the right decision; there really ought to be better technology available to assess these close calls. But even so, the ref relented when Selby said he could see it all; so that was two professional players at the highest level agreeing that they could see the whole ball.

Placing extra balls to make a visual assessment is fraught with errors - the extra balls weren’t actually touching the balls in play, the incident angles have to be precisely perpendicular, and so on.
 

Beebo

Firm and Fruity
Location
Hexleybeef
I’m still not convinced it was the right decision; there really ought to be better technology available to assess these close calls. But even so, the ref relented when Selby said he could see it all; so that was two professional players at the highest level agreeing that they could see the whole ball.

Placing extra balls to make a visual assessment is fraught with errors - the extra balls weren’t actually touching the balls in play, the incident angles have to be precisely perpendicular, and so on.

Pros will also slightly swerve the ball to create an angle, so they both thought they could hit the ball, and I don’t doubt them, but they would have probably bent the cue ball a little to avoid the yellow.

As I said up thread a basic laser pen would solve this.
 

N0bodyOfTheGoat

Über Member
Location
Hampshire, UK
Pros will also slightly swerve the ball to create an angle, so they both thought they could hit the ball, and I don’t doubt them, but they would have probably bent the cue ball a little to avoid the yellow.

As I said up thread a basic laser pen would solve this.

But freeball isn't about swerving, you have to be able to hit the ball on through its entire normal shot range, without another ball preventing options.

Marginal cases like in the final are rare, but it was a freeball IMO and I'm not sure why Selby disagreed with the ref.
 

mikeIow

Guru
Location
Leicester
I love the idea of a laser pen! You’re right, it would solve it!
Selby was, I think, wrong - he didn’t get the middle ball added. When the ref checked that earlier, I felt (hard to tell, of course) that it proved it was a free ball.
 

figbat

Former slippery scientist
As I’ve said, neither of the ‘check’ balls were touching the balls in play, and this small margin can be significant with such small margins and using only visual perception. And I can’t be sure that either or both were perfectly perpendicular to the notional cue ball line of travel.
 
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