Quote:
Originally Posted by Cueball
Yellow is the play here in IMO. I would open with the far left yellow and play into the black immediately. You would have be extremely unlucky to come away with no shot or tied up balls if you had the proper pace on the white.
Red from this position has big issues with the black and no easy access to move it, yellow has that problem solved with the first shot and no other balls tied up.
I agree with your pattern on a regular pool table, but on the English tables with the snooker pockets the shot down the rail to open the black is no good. You'll miss it a high percentage of the time, I think.
By the same token I'm never taking red on this layout. Not only is the black/yellow cluster a big problem, but on the tougher pockets the reds in the lower right-hand corner are also going to cause big problems. You can't really play the combination like you would on a normal US table, and there's not really any good key balls to land the cueball between them, so I think they've clearly got to be moved. Now you could do that by starting with the the red to the left of the upper side pocket, playing a little high left english and going one rail between the reds and the black, but that's a fairly difficult shot to both execute properly and develop the reds to end up with a shot, since there's no real insurance ball AND you still have the problem of the black later in the game.
So with that, I'm taking the yellows, especially since the way I see it, all the balls go to a pocket.
To start with I'm going to shoot the straight yellow to the side, and walk the cue ball forward to play the two balls in the upper right to the lower left hand corner. That should be fairly easy to execute.
After clearing those three balls, I'm going to leave myself a thin angle on the yellow by the upper right hand pocket, maybe a quarter ball or so, and then float down near the side pocket to try and land straight on the yellow by the black to the lower left corner, and favoring staying above straight as opposed to going to far - that would be death.
If I end up straight on that yellow, then I'm going to roll through to leave a straightish angle on the yellow on the left-hand rail, planning to land on the last yellow to the side pocket. Make that, draw back slightly, and shoot the eight in the same pocket and we're out.
If I end up slightly above straight (or to the right as we look) then I'm going to play the shot slowly and try and nudge the yellow/black cluster loose, running through to the ball on the rail. This will be the key shot, but if I leave a good angle and don't hit the cluster too hard I should have that yellow in open play and a good angle to play on it, and the eight should be in relatively close proximity as well. From there we just count the money.
NOTE: next time you poast a problem at English pool, you should diagram it using numbered balls. It makes it easier to discuss if we can refer to the 1 ball, 4 ball etc