Balls on the rail

[Forman]

I'm with the doubters.. they might have shown in ultra slow motion minute amounts of side transfering from ball to ball... but in practical terms its not going to effect the shot. As has been said here, get a striped pool ball and have a go yourself, I think it's one of snookers urban myths.

I think when people claim check or running side helps, it's psychosematic(sp?) You feel it helps, play the shot more confidantly and it drops in. I also think a lot of players have a natural tendancy to hit the shot thick, so when they hit with running side the throw on the white corrects their dodgy aiming a little.

Plain ball every time for me.. hitting the object ball correctly is much more important than trying to spin it in off the jaws.

its like you got inside my head and typed out my thoughts on this, my opinion is exactly the same

[Marlboro]

Running side does help and its not because of transmittal of spin to the object ball.
If you play running side you have more margin of error with your aiming. Why?
If you aim wrong by hitting the cushion just before the OB, the running side will help the CB come off the cusion at a shallower angle thus hitting the OB at the correct spot.

Or maybe its because people tend to pot better when applying running side rather than check side. It feels more natural to push the cue towards the pocket than away from the pocket