A common question that comes up at tournaments is what to do when the ball goes off the table.
When a ball is determined to have gone off the table, it is put back into play by the team who originally served that ball. Typically, this is done by serving the ball back through the serving hole; however, there is one exception to this: If the goalie on that serving team was the last person to have made a controlled hit of the ball before it left the table, then the ball returns to that goalie position, and must be put back into play just like a dead ball in the goalie area (touch two men, stop for one second).
Obviously, there may be some controversy over who hit the ball last, and whether or not it was a "controlled" hit... but it's normally pretty clear what transpired.
There are other things that can complicate this rule (such as in 2-Ball or Goalie War), but I'm not going to muddy the water with those things here right now.
One thing that does often come up in tandem with this rule is a question of when the ball is deemed to be "off" the table. If the ball touches anything outside of the inner play area of the table (including a player, the light, the scoring markers, or the black surface around the top edge of the table), it is out of play. Most of the controversy here comes from when the ball hits the corner edge of the play area and bounces back into the play area; unless the ball clearly hits on top of the black surface or touches another part of the table (such as the scoring markers), it should be considered to still be a live ball, and play should continue as normal.
Jeff
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