I thought I might weigh in on the topic du jour — racking in 9-ball.

So much has been written and debated when it comes to racking and breaking in 9-ball. Watching players take advantage of the rack is one of the things that drove me from competition. I knew something wasn’t right, but I will admit that I didn’t know exactly what was being done.

Then, for Christmas last year my wife Gail got me a few hours with rack master Joe Tucker. A two-hour lesson turned into five-plus hours of information and education that simply blew me away. I learned more in those hours than I’ve ever learned in a single lesson.

The main takeaway I got was that it is in a player’s best interest to know how to look at a rack and how to “read” how that rack is likely to react on the break shot. In some instances, this knowledge will alert you that your opponent is either rigging the rack in his favor, or racking the balls for you in such a way that making a ball and/or running out will be problematic. Clue: When someone is consistencly making the corner ball while breaking from the center of the table, something is up!

In other instances, this knowledge will help you make smart decisions on normal racks. The truth is that getting a perfect rack is very difficult on some tables, even if you are racking for yourself. In some cases it can be the table or the cloth or the rack itself. In those instances, you need to know what options the rack has left you.

What Joe does, and what you can do too, is place small, folded pieces of paper between balls to create gaps. Then he experiments with cue ball placement for the break and observes how the balls react. By doing this he can learn how those gaps affected where the balls go.

You have to experiment to gain the proper knowledge. You cannot simply see that there is a gap and say, “Okay, I’ll break from here.” You have to practice to the point at which you can see the way the table is racking and know where to place the cue ball. If the corner ball is missing the pocket high, you may have to move your cue ball placement further left, and so on.

Reading the rack is important, not so that you can cheat to your advantage or to your opponent’s disadvantage, but so that you can recognize cause and effect. There will be cases in which you see what looks like a bad rack, but your knoweldge alerts you that the corner ball will still go in if you break from a certain spot along the headstring.

This is a touchy subject, because I would never encourage a player to cheat to his benefit. But you should know how to read a rack and, in some cases, how to protect yourself.