Spot on the Wall... for the Win

Yesterday I was in a 10-ball tournament, a monthly "tour" tournament hosted by the local Vegas Billiards Buzz. I drew a very solid competitor in the first round, the winner of the previous month's tour event, so I knew I'd have my hands full. In one of the early games of the match he didn't have a very good shot on the 8-ball so he banked the 8 around the 9, freezing the cue ball to the back of the 9-ball. A damn nice lock-up safety, leaving me with the approximate layout shown:

Obviously no direct shot at the 8-ball. The 10-ball took away the natural one-rail kick and even minor variations that might have been available with English (and of course being frozen to the 9-ball complicates the whole English proposition in the first place). I considered a two-rail kick off the head rail, but awkwardly bridging over the frozen 9-ball? Ummm... no. I considered a two-rail kick just past the 10-ball, but I wasn't crazy about that option because it was one of those just get a good hit and hope for the best options... and my opponent was very capable of running the remaining three balls unless I got really lucky with the final positions after the shot. The natural angle for that two-railer was flirting with the point of the corner pocket as well.

I didn't see any reasonable options for tying up balls with an intentional foul.

WTF.

I did NOT want to give this one up without a fight.

At some point I noticed that even though the 8-ball was a fair distance from the corner pocket, it was either on or near the natural three-rail kick line... so I started to consider a three-rail kick. Like many people, I've played with three-rail kicks from time-to-time, so I had a reasonable feel for them - especially on tables like the Diamond bar-box I was playing on. I don't recall ever trying one from this shallow of an angle before, though.

Enter the "spot on the wall" or "distant point" method. I have no idea who first came up with this, but it's been discussed by numerous people including Dr. Dave Alciatore, Bob Jewett, Robert Byrne, and others. One of Dr. Dave's write ups on the technique can be found here.

I've only casually experimented with the technique, but I knew this was a golden opportunity to try it out for real. I called the 8-ball in the corner (due to the handicap against this opponent, the called 8 was a money ball for me). I picked a line that I felt was a good "known" three-rail line for me... looked up to find a spot on the line (the edge of a chair back on an empty ball stool by the bar). I side-stepped over to lock in on the line-of-aim through the center of the cue ball, approached the table and got into my stance on that line. I stroked through the cue ball with slight running English and watched as it came around three rails to hit the 8-ball perfectly, dropping it near center-pocket below me. For the win. Booyah!

As you might imagine, this generated quite a buzz from the bystanders... I was able to pull out isolated comments like "wow, did you just see that?" One person I didn't know even came up to me after the end of the match (several racks later) to tell me it was the best shot he's seen in a long time.

It always feels good to hear comments like that of course, and I suppose that's why some people watch pool - to catch the occasional thriller; somewhat like watching hours of cars going around a track waiting for an occasional exciting wreck.

8-ball endgame

Here's a situation I ran into about a month ago in league play, and I ended up blowing it. It was one of those times where a good solution just didn't come to me in the heat of the moment. I made what I thought might be a reasonable play and it turned out not to be - I left my opponent an open shot on his ball and as a result, I lost the game.

Interestingly, I saw someone else get handed pretty much the same exact situation at the APA Regionals in Phoenix last weekend... and he, like me, seemed to struggle a bit coming up with a good play. To his credit, he did better than I originally did and won the game.




An alterior motive for this entry is for me to go through the paces of recording & uploading a video from a new camera I got recently. It's one of those simple "shoot and share" type cameras that I mainly got so I could use it to evaluate myself during practice... but I think it'll also come in handy when I want to show a quick clip like I'm doing here.

Caroming to Regionals

I qualified for the APA 8-ball Classic Spring Regionals today, after losing in the finals in previous qualifiers more times than I would have liked. The final match was a tough one - I wasn't shooting particularly well, and my opponent was a worthy one. I survived mostly on strategy and some reasonable safety play... but nevertheless, he was on the hill and I was playing catch up.

I don't think it was an intentional safety play, but my opponent left me in the position shown (layout is approximate - I doubt I have the angles right, just trying to get the general point across). We both had two balls remaining, his were in better position, I didn't have any decent offensive shots available and didn't really see any great defensive possibilities either (my best thought was to thin the 13-ball and leave the cue ball down on the end rail).

Anyway, given the overall situation, I decided to carom the 13 off the 7 and into the corner. I figured best case I'd make the 13 and worse case there was a decent chance the 13 would at least block the pocket... and the 7-ball would end up at the other end of the table. The complication with this carom (as if caroms aren't complicated in the first place) was that the 13 would have to make a fairly full hit on the 7 to get the proper angle which means most of its energy would be transferred to the 7. The 13 had a reasonable distance to go after the carom, so I knew I'd have to hit it firmly for the 13 to have enough energy to get to the pocket.

Well, I'm happy to say I ended up with the best case scenario. The 13 dropped, the 7 cleared, I was left with good shape on the 10, and had a fairly easy run out to get on the hill.

The final game was even uglier... lousy layout from the start, a massive cluster of stripes (my balls) along the long rail, and rolls simply weren't going my way. I was frustrated for sure, but stayed patient. My opponent put together a good run or two and before I knew it he was on the 8-ball and I still had all my balls on the table. Of course, that's not always a bad thing! I slowly but surely kept improving my position while waiting for a good run out opportunity. I hooked him very effectively at least three times on the 8, forcing him to kick at it and never really gave him a good shot. There was actually a point in the game that I wondered if I could win without sinking a single ball! Not wanting to push my luck, I finally started sinking some balls and ran all but two out and left him with yet another hook, forcing him to kick the length of the table (his 8-ball was on the short rail about a half-diamond away from the corner pocket).

He came up short on the kick, the cue ball rebounded off the near end rail and headed back towards the far corner with plenty of steam to get there on the fairly fast table. Then, he did something I doubt he'll ever do again. He scooped up the rolling cue ball and gave it to me. I looked at him in disbelief, and the referee (rightly) gave me the game. If a player is on the 8-ball and disturbs the path of the cue ball or the 8-ball in a losing situation, it's a loss of game.

To be honest, it was a lousy way to end an otherwise great match... but as I mentioned to the referee, the lesson at this level was far less costly than it would have been at regionals or even nationals. There are several qualifiers left, and I'm fairly sure my opponent will qualify in another one.

About the Three Foul Rule...

As mentioned in a previous post, I fell prey to the three foul rule at a local 10-ball tournament a few months ago. I'm glad it happened when it did and in the manner it did, because it raised my awareness to the rule in general. It was a "learning experience" that really wasn't too harmful in the end... I won the overall match anyway, and ended up finishing in the money in that tournament. But any time I run across something "new" like that I do my best to learn from it.

The three foul rule wasn't entirely new to me. I was aware that it existed in some leagues and some formats but given that my (relatively short) pool career had been sheltered in a single league that did not enforce the three foul rule, I'd never really seen it in action. I breezed over it in the book(s) and at the time didn't appreciate that it could be used as a pretty deadly weapon. To his credit, my opponent exploited my naivety at the time with a very good play. There was a nice wall of balls that he hid behind and it didn't occur to me that the right answer was to just take a foul and blast the balls apart to reduce the possibility of a subsequent (fatal) foul.

Knowledge is power, of course, and I'm fairly sure the same thing won't happen to me again... at least in the same manner it happened last time.

I recently ran across an outstanding video showing the three foul rule in action. There is a ton of good knowledge throughout this short clip with both players showing aspects of three foul rule play as well as some very good and informative commentary. Enjoy...

Hindsight

I participated in a smallish local unhandicapped tournament last night. I was playing well, and found myself in a semi-final match against a very good player (rated significantly higher than me). In this tournament, the matches were 8-ball race to two on the winner's side of the bracket and 9-ball race to two on the one-loss side of the bracket.

Anyway, we each won a match and were hill-hill. He was on the 8 and I was at the table with two balls left. He had played a so-so safety and left me with a long shot on only one of my balls from near the rail. I had a tough cut on my object ball, but the long bank seemed to be close to dead on. Further, I realized I'd leave the cue ball in a safe position if I played a stop shot on the bank... so even if I missed it, I should be safe. It seemed like a good way to go, so I went for it. Unfortunately, I didn't put a lot of thought into the "what might go wrong" part. It requires a firm stroke to execute an effective stop shot at that distance (probably close to 5 feet). You also have to hit it dead-on (or at least close). Missing the dead-on part of the equation with a firm stroke tends to get real ugly in a hurry, and that's exactly what happened. I missed the shot and lost control of the cue ball and, of course, it ended up in good position for his shot on the 8-ball.

In hindsight, I did have a much safer, higher percentage defensive shot available... and that's the way I should have gone. I saw the possibility at the time, but dismissed it in favor of the more risky, more aggressive offensive/defense shot and paid the price.

One of these days I'll learn... hopefully  ;)

There Just Might Be A Future In Defense

I'm at the stage of my game where I'm having to pay more attention to defense. Instead of just "sinking balls faster than the opponent does" or "oh my gosh I missed, but I'm not playing against someone who can run out" I'm having to work defense into my game more and more.

I knew the time would come... and thanks to my voracious appetite in reading, I have a pretty good handle on strategy and defensive theory but I've often fallen short on the execution side. Of course, many defensive shots are very difficult to pull off... often more difficult than a typical offensive shot because you need the softest of touch at times, or very VERY fine control of cue ball position because there's such a small window in which to hide it. And, as I'm sure many of you out there know, bungling a defensive shot sucks. Sucks really bad. When I choose a defensive shot over an offensive shot that I felt I had a 50% chance of making and then screw up the defensive shot I find myself regretting the choice even if it was "the right thing to do." The answer of course is practice, but how many people spend much time specifically on defensive shots? How much time do you spend on defensive shots?

Up until recently, I admit I have spent very little time on my defensive skills. Sure, like I said earlier, I study the theory... and I'll try defensive shots in practice games... but as hinted at before, I've often shied away from taking a defensive shot in an important match when I probably should have because the confidence simply wasn't there. Give me a tough offensive shot with a true 30% chance of making versus a semi-tough defensive shot and I tend to bite on the offensive shot more often than I should. Why? Well, there's the whole confidence factor in defensive shots because I haven't been practicing them until recently... but I've also been guilty of being over-confident on my chances of making the offensive shot. See, most of us tend to inflate our chances of making a tough shot because we haven't actually documented past results on paper and we're better at remembering our successes on similar shots than our failures. It's human nature. How many times have you said to yourself "I know I can make this shot - I've made it before!" when it's some kind of crazy kick-off-the-tip-of-the-pocket-corner kind of shot? Never mind the twenty times you missed it... you remember making it that one time so you know you can make it! So the 30% shot I mentioned a bit ago was maybe built up as a 60% shot in my mind because I didn't know any better... the odds seemed decent, so I took the shot... and missed. Don't get me wrong, confidence is good... and I'm definitely not suggesting that you should drive yourself crazy ruminating over whether you can make a given shot. It is possible to be confident in knowing "I can make that shot 40% of the time" because you've tested it and you know that's your percentage. If that's the best shot you have, by all means give it your all. If there's another option with a better percentage, consider taking it (depending on other consequences such as position and so on).

What should we take away from this?

1. Build your confidence in defensive shots by dedicating quality practice time to them. Set up common defensive scenarios and patterns and work on them! If you see a good defensive shot in a match on ESPN or YouTube or whatever, try setting up the initial conditions and duplicating the shot. The more confidence you have in your defensive abilities, the more likely you'll use them when you SHOULD use them.

2. Know your shot percentages. I mean, really know them. Set up some of the more difficult shot scenarios like a tough cut or kick or whatever - try it several times and record the results. Having an honest idea of your percentages will help you make better choices in the heat of a match (and it'll allow you to track progress as you improve over time).

This topic came to mind for me today because I have been thinking about and practicing defensive shots more lately, and I actually had a few defensive successes this morning. I was in two tournaments - one was a qualifier for 8-ball Doubles at APA Team Nationals this August, and the other was a qualifier for 8-ball Regionals (leading into APA Singles Nationals next year). I/we didn't qualify for either, unfortunately... but I was extremely pleased with a few of the defensive shots I made today, which is something new for me! In the past, killer offensive shots were always in the headlines of the "highlight reel" bouncing around in my brain after a match... but today, although I did make a few very good offensive shots, I'll have to say the defensive shots made the headlines. In fact, my doubles partner commented on one of my defensive shots as being "an ESPN shot" - and that has definitely never happened with me before! It was a tricky shot with a small window for success and I nailed it! I even intentionally chose the defense over an offensive option - so there's hope for me yet!