elnino wrote:The entire section that previously dealt with angled ball situations does no longer exist. If you're angled you're forced to hit the ball on indirectly.
a) If you were angled and failed to first make contact with the ball-on can the referee call a foul and a miss? Can the 3 miss rule be applied in such a case?
b) If you were angled as a result of a foul can the referee award you a free ball?
Elnino, either you are a master of the obscure thought experiment, or else you have way too much time spent on a snooker table with obscure, unusual things happening to you. Either way, I like the way you think.
As for "angled", it is a term I think from a bygone era, when I learned to play the game back in the 80's and earlier. To my knowledge, there is no longer any mention of the term "angled" in the Rule book at all. Even though the Rules are so necessarily wordy in other places, I believe that "angled" fell victim to Occam's razor and was eliminated.
And of course, it is rare to see such a situation professionally on telly. Surely, only a small percentage of the professional matches are televised and unfortunately, I can only manage to watch a tiny percentage of those, so I have not personally witnessed a proper referee's call in such a case in the modern era. By the way, Dan-cat, I love that clip of the Hurricane, have watched it innumerable times. Hurricane is always fascinating to watch....he could make shots that no one else would even think of, but then, on the flip side to keep things incredibly interesting, he might arbitrarily miss simple shots that any of us would pot 99 percent of the time. Fascinating.......
Anyway, back on topic, before coming to an answer to the questions, I think it prudent to look at what is actually in the Rules regarding what we know as "angled" and it can be found early on in Section 2., Definitions, 17. Snookered:
"...
(e) The cue-ball cannot be snookered by a cushion. If the curved face of
a cushion obstructs the cue-ball and is closer to the cue-ball than any
obstructing ball not on, the cue-ball is not snookered."
So these two sentences say a lot. Let's reverse your questions and start with "b)". Obviously, the referee will not award a free ball because, by definition, in this case, "the cue-ball is not snookered." Even if the object ball were surrounded by other balls not on so that it is absolutely snookered if the cushion weren't there, this is still not considered to be a snooker situation as the cushion being the nearest obstructing entity nullifies the possibility of a snooker.
This may seem to be very strange to think about. The way I view it is to consider the rule by which it is illegal to snooker your opponent behind a nominated free ball. Say you call Pink for your free ball, strike, and when the balls come to rest, the Pink is nearest ball to the cue ball in a series of balls not on that are blocking the line of sight to the object ball. That is a foul because the incoming player is snookered behind what had been the free ball. But...if the Pink comes to rest close to the object ball and snookering it, but there is another ball, say Black, which is nearer to the cue ball blocking the line to the object ball, there is no foul because Black is the effective snookering entity.
So in the angled situation, the cushion is the nearest "obstructing entity" so none of the other would be "snookering balls" pass muster.
As for question a), that is another definitive answer. Extracted from the specific rule concerning loss of frame following three successive misses, Section 3., Rule 14., (c):
"...when there was a clear path in a straight line from the cue-ball to a ball that was
on or that could have been on, such that central, full-ball, contact was available..."
...very clearly not the case in the event of an angled ball so there is absolutely no possibility of loss of frame with three successive misses. As for the referee calling a Foul and a Miss, he can
always call a FAAM if he believes it to be a FAAM unless the frame scoreline prevents it.
dan-cat wrote:What if you are angled after a foul, and can't see any of the balls?
As I see it then, no special rules apply. The usual options: either play it yourself or put your opponent back in. If there was a miss involved, of course you can put him back in the original position. Odd situation but no odd rules required to govern it.