26. PLAYING A WRONG BALL

1. GENERAL
   1. Subject to Law 26(c), if the striker plays a wrong ball and the error is discovered before the first stroke of the next turn (but see Law 37(c)(3) for handicap play) to be started by playing a correct ball, the error is rectified and the turn ends.
   2. If the error is rectified and was committed in the first stroke of one of the first four turns of the game, the correct ball is placed on any unoccupied point on either baulk-line as the striker chooses. That ball becomes a ball in play and the turn ends.
   3. A ball wrongly played into the game becomes a ball in play only if the error is not rectified.
2. PLAYER UNABLE TO PLAY CORRECT BALL
   The game is restarted if the player of the fourth turn of the game discovers, either before or after he plays a stroke, that both his balls have been played into the game in the first two turns of the game.
3. EXCHANGE OF COLOURS If it is discovered after the first stroke of the fifth turn of the game that both players have played a wrong ball in the first stroke of every earlier turn of the game, the choice of balls under Law 8(a) is reversed and play is deemed to have proceeded from the start of the game accordingly.