Need Help from Programmers and Breakout Masters

Nukey Shay posted how to hack Breakout, so you can just sit back and watch the ball bounce, but I'm still having a hard time figuring out when the game decides to ignore a brick. When and why does the game let the ball go through a brick sometimes? It seems to usually happen when the ball goes up and hits a brick that is in a concave area, the y coordinate reverses, the x coordinate stays the same and the ball goes through a brick on the way down instead of knocking it out.

Does anybody know the internal brick-breaking 'rules' of the game?



Thanks.