Racking the Balls

I just wanted to take a few minutes and talk about racking the balls for yourself or your opponent. This actually came up tonight and several times before and I feel like I should talk about it to help my fellow APA pool playing friends to improve their game.

Tonight I was playing an opponent and I won the lag. He proceeded to Rack the balls and I always check the rack to make sure that I'm getting a good rack. I think very important that you have a good rack to ensure that you have a better chance to make a ball on the break. If you make a ball and get a good layout at the table you possibly can run the table and win. So I looked at the rack and the top ball had a 1/4 inch gap between it and the ball next to it.
I asked him if he can tighten the rack for me. Apparently he didn't like that. But what you have to understand is that it's very important for the three balls have to be touching and the balls surrounding the eight ball should be touching the eight ball. This will ensure that you'll have a greater chance making balls on the break. Of course you can look for gaps in the rack as well but I'm talking about racking for yourself and others. Give your opponent a good rack and he will give you one too. It will only improve your attitude and game. I'm gonna post some videos and instruction below for you to watch so you can understand what inn talking about. Hope this helps your game.
This "Razor" Ray Schultz on the APA Website answering a question from a fellow APA player.
Can you tell me what to look for to see if the balls are frozen or not in the rack so I can get the most out of my break? – Golden, MS
Check the rack after the person racks the balls. You might have to shadow the balls with your hand to see if the balls are frozen. Most of the time it is impossible to freeze all the balls so look for the head ball and then look for the eight ball or nine ball to see if they are froze to the two balls behind the head ball. – Ray
Here is one of my favorite proffessional pool player and instructor Max Eberle talking about inspecting the rack and making sure it's tight.
Max's 8 Ball racking instruction
This is another great video of why you don't want your opponent to give you a loose rack. Because the looser the rack the balls won't spread as far giving your opponent an edge.
How to rack eight ball
So as you can see sometimes understanding why we rack the ball the way we do gets better results. I think a lot of amateur players forget to make sure the rack is tight. So they can make more balls on the break. I just keep getting attitudes from players that want to give me a loos rack and to be honest it's really not fair. So I hope this helps and if you want to find out about more about the rack you can get Joe Tucker's " racking secrets"
Joe Tucker's Book
it's a great book and I recommend it. I'm always trying to improve my game and yours.
- Posted by John ferguson