free ball question

[alabadi]

I was wondering if anyone can help with the following situation.

a mate was playing a game and came up against this situation, he asked is it a free ball and the player he was playing against at the time said no, he was adamant that its a free ball because he can't hit the extremes of the red without hitting a colour.

I have looked at it and myself thought it was a free ball however there are a few who weren't sure either. I would appreciate any help.

free ball.jpg

PS: the colours should be same distance from the red, when I created it couldn't get the yellow close enough

[AzureFlyer]

I was wondering if anyone can help with the following situation.

a mate was playing a game and came up against this situation, he asked is it a free ball and the player he was playing against at the time said no, he was adamant that its a free ball because he can't hit the extremes of the red without hitting a colour.

I have looked at it and myself thought it was a free ball however there are a few who weren't sure either. I would appreciate any help.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]15845[/ATTACH]

PS: the colours should be same distance from the red, when I created it couldn't get the yellow close enough

I would have said thats a free ball. Although looks like there will be some tip tapping coming up :P

But yea, If a foul had been committed before hand then this should be a free ball.

[tedisbill]

----------

[cantpotforshíte]

Assuming your mate was on a red and this was the only red on the table:
In the picture that you provided, it's very close to being a free ball, but it's not clear enough to say either way.
And of course, it depends on how faithful this picture is to the original scenario. It's all down to millimetres; if the cue ball was only a couple of mm from the red, then it would certainly not be a free ball.

[sfmcar]

if the white is close enough to the red,no free ball hard to say from that picture though

[tedisbill]

----------

[alabadi]

yes I forgot to mention a foul was committed and he was on the red which was the only one. according to my mate he said the two colours either side were very close probably a few mm and the white possibly a couple of cm away from red. I wasn't there so I can't be exact.

I told him as well it depends how close the white was to the red because if it was almost touching or just mm away it couldn't be a free ball. however he said it was a bit away from the red by how much hard to say.

[cantpotforshíte]

----------

It depends on what you're calling 'sides'. If the cue ball is only say 1mm from a red then the 'extreme edges' of that the red that the cue ball can hit are only about 15mm apart, and not what you might think of as the 'sides' of the red which are actually 52.5mm apart.
Or, to put it another way, even if there are no obstructing balls, from any one position on the table, you can never actually hit two points on any one object ball which are diametrically opposite.

[SnkrRef]

This is NOT a free ball. For a free ball to be called, the striker must be unable to play both extreme edges of at least one ball on from the position left, or from every position in the D.

From the length of the table away, the extreme edges will be the extreme left and right hand edges of the ball on at 90 degrees to the centre of the ball. However, as the distance between cue ball and object ball gets closer, the extreme edges will get closer and closer to the part of the object ball directly in front of the cue ball. Basically if the cue ball and object ball are almost touching then it is very unlikely to be a free ball, as all you need to do is simply play to the left and play to the right just skimming the object ball in each case. It stands to reason that you can't have a free ball if the cue ball comes to rest touching a ball on.

Statman produced an illustrated explanation of how to determine if you have a free ball, if anyone wants to search for it!

[finabb]

no free ball, if the white was another 6 inches away then I'd say it was