One of these products that comes to mind is the Sardo Tight Rack. This machine allows you to place the balls under it and upon pressing down on the handles, it aligns the balls tightly. Releasing the pressing down force, the balls stay racked allowing you to slide the machine away from the rack, supposedly producing a tight rack of pool balls consistently. I have never used this device, but would see it used at professional tournaments. The downside to this device is that it is quite bulky...not to mention expensive.
And along comes the ultra lightweight Magic Rack...
The set I bought are made by Cue Sports International and came with both a 9/10 ball rack and a 8 ball rack. This product is made of very thin plastic with precision-cut diamond shapes where the balls are to be placed. These cutouts allow a perfect rack of balls with minimal effort. The thin plastic will not affect the path of the balls, unless the ball is rolling very slowly and catches an edge just right. Even a fairly slowly rolling ball will not change course in most cases. A medium to fast rolling ball will not be affected at all, no matter where it comes in contact with the magic rack.
I have been using my Magic Rack on my newly recovered table. So far I like the consistency of the racks and the ease of placing the balls. Sometimes the balls don't all touch, but usually a tap with my fingers on either side of the balls not touching will make them fall into place for a very tight rack.
When playing 9-ball, breaking the balls from the side with a medium-firm hit will consistently pocket a ball. I usually get a wing ball to fall, with the 9-ball sitting within the Magic Rack. One complaint I have heard is this fact. Because the balls are racked virtually perfect every time, it's an unfair advantage, especially in 9-ball since a ball will fall pretty consistently. This, of course, allowing the pros to run out racks. A simple solution to this is to rack the 9-ball rack with the 1-ball off the spot or the 9-ball on the spot.
Another great feature of this Magic Rack is because the plastic surrounds the point of contact with the cloth, table wear is next to nothing.
Here is a picture before I recovered my table and before I started using the Magic Rack.
As you can see, without using the Magic Rack, having the balls placed directly on the playing surface will result in spots being worn on the cloth. Had I kept playing, racking the balls directly on the cloth, I would have at some point actually worn holes through the cloth.
This is a picture I took after recovering my table and exclusively using the Magic Rack for games of 9-ball and 10-ball. I have probably played somewhere between 100-125 games of 9 & 10-ball up to this point.
There are some burn marks on the cloth, probably where I either jumped a ball or dropped a ball on the table. Other than that, there is no visible wear from breaking the balls like you would normally see about this time on a newly recovered table. Note: Keeping your cloth and balls clean will help reduce table wear.
Pros:
- Inexpensive
- Lightweight
- Easy, consistent tight racks
- No table wear (yet)
- Portable
Cons:
- Slowly rolling balls will sometimes be affected when rolling over the Magic Rack
- The Magic Rack cannot be removed after racking the balls, so occasionally after the break, a ball will fall on or within the Magic Rack.
Final thoughts
Overall, I like using the Magic Rack since it does give me tightly racked balls consistently and easily. I also like the fact that so far there is no table wear. I hope this continues to be the case. I will also look forward to seeing how this thin piece of plastic holds up over time.
