In the last issue, we ran out a rack of 9- ball. I was surprised to find that it only took two diagrams to run nine balls. However, I did make a big assumption when playing position on each ball. I assumed that the cue ball would fall in perfect position on each shot. More often than not, though, this doesn’t happen in real life. Most runouts require mid-rack adjustments. Your original plan will have to be altered, and you will have to change and recover. It is the rare runout indeed that goes perfectly. You will feel great on some position shots, but not so good on others. Hopefully, you won’t get snookered, because it is usually the end of your run. You might recover with a good kick or jump shot, but it is better to err on the side of caution by avoiding the snooker in the first place.

     Now let’s analyze and plan the rack in Diagram 1. Last month, we ran it perfectly; I showed the best position for each ball. You must always have a plan of attack before you pocket the first ball, and last month, we followed our plan to the letter. This month, we face the same table but, as you’ll see in a minute, things aren’t going to go quite so smoothly. I’ll describe some of the possible pitfalls, how to avoid them, and how to recover from them if you can’t avoid them.

As you are planning any runout, you will develop some key things to focus on — a sort of running list of things to avoid. I’m going to call these things your “focus points.” Analyzing this rack, my first thought is that when sinking the 1 and playing position on the 2 ball, I need to avoid running into any balls. The 8, 6 and 3 balls all pose a threat. So that’s one focus point: Avoid running into balls when playing position on the 2. I’m going to assume that we make this shot okay.

     When sinking the 2 and playing position on the 3 ball, your focus point is to fall full on the 3, at position C-1 in Diagram 1. Position C-1 is good, because you don’t have to contact a rail or draw back very far to get position on your next ball. You can just sink the 3 and draw back to position C- 4 for the 4 ball.

     But what if things don’t go according to plan? It’s all too easy to end up at C-2 or C- 3 after you sink the 2 ball. Let’s start with position C-2. It’s not too hard to recover from; focus on not going past C-1 when you make the 2-ball shot, and hopefully if you make a mistake, it will be a minor one and you’ll end up at C-2. From there, the cue ball will have to travel farther for position, but it is actually easier to fall close to straight-in on the 4 ball from this angle than from C-1. The trade-off is that you end up with a slightly longer shot, which makes pocketing the 4 ball more difficult. The recovery path from C-2 is shown in blue: Go two rails to C-5 for a clean shot on the 4 ball. The good angle from C-5 makes it easier to get position on the 5 ball, and you’re back into the groove of your runout.

     On the other hand, if you end up at C-3 after the 2-ball shot, you’re in a little bit of hot water. It’s a tough place to recover from for position on the 4. From this position, you may have to try and spin off the short rail and run into the 4 ball for position, as shown by the orange line in Diagram 2. If you can execute the shot as shown in Diagram 2, you can recover and still run out. You will have to contact the cue ball below center with a lot of left side English (see cue ball inset).

     If you remember, we started our runout focusing on avoiding running into other balls when playing position. But in this case, we are trying to run into the 4 ball in order to bump it out for position. From C-3, it is the best option for recovery from a less-than-desirable position.

     You can see that it’s more challenging in this case to recover if you roll long instead of short. This is a great example of how to recover from two different bad positions, C-2 and C-3. If you can master the process of recovery, your chances for a runout increase greatly.

     The next challenge is going from the 4 ball to the 5 ball, which I’ll discuss just briefly. We want a good angle on the 4 so we don’t have to go two rails for position on the 5 ball. As I mentioned, position C-4 in Diagram 1 is ideal. Two-rail position is dangerous, because you must shoot harder and you have a thinner angle on the 4 ball, which means a possible miss. Remember that of all the mistakes you could make, a miss is the one that puts you back in your seat the fastest. Next month, I’ll show you more pitfalls and their solutions for the rest of the rack, balls 5 through 9.