Here is a nine-ball situation that came up in a recent match of the WPBA U.S. Open 9-ball Championships, Iris Ranola vs Sarah Ellerby, 6-2 in a race to 7. Iris Ranola was running the table against Sarah Ellerby and in the process of making the 6 ball, accidentally also made the eight which she was going to use later in the run to get on the nine-ball. With the eight off the table, this left her in the above precarious situation. What would you do here?
Ewa Lawrence was commentating the match and made a suggestion (shown below) of making a bank safety on the seven ball, sending the seven off the bottom long rail up to the middle of the right hand short rail in this diagram. Since this would require hitting on the right side of the seven ball, the cueball would travel up table to the right hand short rail and back down again to sit on the same rail as the nine. I like this suggestion alot.
What really happened? Iris chose to try to make the seven by cutting it up to the corner pocket. However, she missed it. If she had made it, she would have left herself an extremely difficult cut on the nine-ball anyway as there was no easy way to get back down for the nine. Sarah got up to shoot next, but stroked the cueball poorly jumping it off the table. Iris was lucky enough to step back to the table and run the seven and nine out with ball in hand. Luck was definitely on her side.
The Lesson: If you are going to shoot one hard shot that will leave you another hard shot, look to see if there is a better safety option instead. I think Ewa's shot would have been the correct choice here.
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