Chalk Up Another Trial

My daughter had a hair appointment today - way up on the other side of town at Platinum Hair Studio. Great place, friends with the owner, blah, blah... but it is a long drive! She had a ride up there, but the deal was I'd go pick her up.

No problem.

Let's see... between here and there happens to be The Riviera. At The Riviera happens to be the 2011 APA Team Nationals. At the 2011 APA Team Nationals happens to be several pool vendors selling cool pool gear.

Yes!!! I'll be happy to head up that way to pick her up!

Parking at The Riv was seriously weird because what used to be the entrance to the self park garage at The Riviera is now a wall. WTF? I've been parking there for years! It's gotten so automatic that I damn near turned and ran into the new wall! I'm halfway ashamed to say that I had to circle the building twice just to figure out what was going on and how to get in! The old exit is now the entrance. The old entrance is now a wall. The new exit is around the corner from the old entrance (the new wall). Whatever.

This is the second time in less than a week that my feeble brain has been messed with like this. Earlier in the week I had APA 8-ball league playoff matches at Blue Hawk Tavern. It's never been a 'home bar' for me, but I've had numerous matches there so it's a very familiar place. Got there Wednesday night early to warm up... reached down to get balls out of the table... and saw nothing but the side of the table. WTF? They turned the tables 180 degrees around!!

I thought to myself: OK, I guess they decided they preferred us breaking towards the stained glass windows over launching cue balls into the people space of the bar below (which made me recall an incident when yours truly hit a Blue Hawk waitress in the ankle with a cue ball last year). So it made sense... kind of. I reached for balls on the wrong side of the table several times that night, but it made sense.

But here's the kicker - the very next night, they turned the tables around again!!! Oy! And this time they (whomever 'they' are) were clearly conflicted. The tables were physically rotated 180 degrees back to the original direction they had been for years. But... it appeared that they still wanted us to break towards the stained glass windows, because they moved the spot to the head of the table - haha! Whatever. Anyone with a quarter of a brain would know that the simple act of moving the spot sticker is not going to change where we break on a ball return type table. Fail.

But it didn't fail to get me reaching down on the wrong side of the table again after finally getting myself adapted to the other orientation the previous night - LOL!

Their mind games didn't work. I won and we won both nights... taking first place in the division Wednesday night and third place in Thursday night's division.

Anyway, back to something more important - cool pool vendors at The Riv. My list was simple (but rarely stays that way). Joint protectors for my shiny new Venom VX Blackbelt Jump Cue was the #1 priority. If I happened to see it, I figured I'd grab a copy of the new Mastering the Jump Shot DVD that Bebob Publishing sent me an email about a few days ago. That was it. Honest!

The joint protectors were easy. I dropped by the Predator booth with sad puppy dog eyes and bam they hooked me up with freebie leftover Predator Air joint protectors. Check.

No luck with the DVD. Didn't see it at any of the general cue stuff peddlers like Pooldawg, Omega, Mueller... and didn't see a Bebob booth. OK, struck out on the DVD.

Then I found myself face-to-face with Kamui's John Bertone, who had set up a somewhat make-shift looking shop at the far corner of Lucasi's booth. Below the Kamui banner, he was armed with a lone display stand loaded with product and brochures and his iPad 2 point-of-sale device. Oh, and he was wearing an official looking Kamui shirt.

I thought to myself that I'd be doing the world an injustice if I didn't give him crap about the price of their chalk. But then I decided to ask if he had a way to let me compare the Kamui Black Soft tip (which I'm using) to the Black Super Soft. I wanted to get the more important question (to me) out of the way first. Unfortunately, he didn't have any cues or shafts set up with the different tips like I hoped he might.

So I gave him crap about the price of their chalk... and he took it in stride (gee, maybe he's heard that one before?) He asked me to get my cue out of the case and proceeded to give it the Gator Grip treatment. Then, he chalked it up and told me to go run a rack of balls without any more chalking.

And so I did. I actually ran two racks.

I had great cue ball control throughout the shooting, all the way to the end. Not a single miscue. In fact, I got more than table length of draw on the very last shot of those two racks. Looking at my tip, there was still chalk on it after running two full racks! And with me, that's more than 30 shots - ha! Actually, I only missed a couple shots out of the two racks, and I believe I can attribute that to having better control over the cue ball which gave me more confidence... which, well you know.

You probably know where this is headed, don't you?

Yeah, I ended up getting some Kamui chalk. I still don't like the price, but I'll give it a try for awhile. It's definitely different than any chalk I've used before, and I believe I've tried all of the others at one time or another.

I'll keep you posted!

Oh, and now for an exclusive KBCNC newsflash: If you want the ebony version of the Kamui Gator Grip, get one now from whatever source you can find. Supposedly the price of ebony has gone up dramatically, so I'm guessing Kamui will either raise the price or drop the item altogether. John was only selling the boxwood version. It looks like some online suppliers still have them in stock at this point.

PoolSynergy: Pool Mecca

Welcome to the May edition of:

PoolSynergy is a blog carnival where several pool bloggers collaborate each month to write about a common topic.

This month's topic, brought to you by John Barton, is Pool Meccas. This was another topic I struggled a bit with, partly because I think I was being too narrow with my definition of the term "mecca" and partly because I am still fairly new (relatively speaking) to the world of pool and simply don't know everything that's available out there.

With the PoolSynergy deadline looming, I chose to write about a subject I'm familiar with: Las Vegas.

Why do I consider Las Vegas a pool mecca? Well, I can't say it's about the permanent facilities... it's more about the temporary ones that pop up on an annual basis that attract thousands of cue toting pool enthusiasts from across the country and even around the world... and to me, this was a perfect fit for the term "mecca" being used to describe a place many people flock to. I've got to say, walking into one of the big ballrooms to see literally hundreds of tables lined up is awe-inspiring!

Indeed, as I write this, thousands of players and dozens of vendors are in town at the Riviera for the BCAPL Nationals. This is a HUGE event held every year in the month of May. To clarify a bit, it's not really a single event... more of a gaggle of events held in close proximity both date-wise and location-wise for the convenience of the attending pool enthusiasts. There are numerous divisions of competition, and I'm not even going to attempt to list them all. Connected events also include the 2011 US Open One Pocket Championships (in progress as I write) with match-ups such as Cory Deuel taking on Efren Reyes (playing on Table 8 right now). Also in town this month is the 2011 US Open 10-ball Championships. Although I don't compete in the BCAPL events (yet), I always make an effort to spend some time there because there's a lot of great pool to watch and tons of vendors to check out.

Last week was the ACS Nationals. While I'm aware of this event, I have to admit that I haven't participated or even peeked in on it yet, so I don't know a whole lot about it. I do recall seeing that it generated some controversy in the last year in a couple of ways: they moved to the Tropicana this year (used to be at the Riviera) and the dates for this event overlapped somewhat with the BCAPL Nationals listed above. Apparently, there was potential for conflict if someone wanted to compete in both events. My understanding was that they were going to do their best to reduce/eliminate any conflict, so we'll have to see how things worked out.

Last month was the APA Singles National Championships. This is an event that I personally competed in both this year and last year. Like the events above, the APA Nationals is a huge event that draws thousands of players from all over the country. There were also some competitors from Canada as well as Japan. Getting to the APA Nationals is a bit of an accomplishment in itself since you have to qualify for it through local and regional qualifier tournaments. The APA Team National Championships are help later in the year around the August time frame.

Besides these major league championships, there are several other events that pop up in town from time to time, such as the Mosconi Cup. I missed it last time I was in town due to some other commitments I had, but I'm going to make every effort to make it this year.

Be sure to check out the Pool Mecca posts from other PoolSynergy authors as well!

Cue Abuse

Wow, just wow.

Player, mentor, friend, and cue mechanic Ron Worley (to whom I've previously credited the name of this blog) passed along  a photo to me that's just hard to believe... so you're going to have to see it for yourself:

Behold the wonder tip!

I couldn't even imagine playing with this thing - surely just about anything other than a center-ball hit led to miscues? Hmmm... maybe it's a top secret training device for enforcing center-ball hits!!??

Anyway, I'm sure I'm stating the obvious when I say "don't do this!" Your equipment is a partner in many respects - it fearlessly goes into battle with you night after night... but if you let it down, it'll let you down. I can't imagine anyone being competitive with this stick in the condition shown. Not only is the tip obviously worn well beyond the point of needing replacement, but overzealous shaping (and chalking) damaged the ferrule on the tip as well as the side - leading to much more costly and time-consuming repairs.

Changing the subject now that I'm a little sick to my stomach, this week was the first week of playoffs for the local APA league. All three of my teams made the playoffs with the Monday night 9-ball team ending up in second place in the season's point race, while my Wednesday and Thursday night teams ended up in first place in their respective divisions. Unfortunately, we didn't fare so well this week. We lost Monday and Wednesday to tough teams. On Thursday, however, our opponents didn't even show up!!?? How weird is that? Since we were in first, we were supposed to play the wild card team. They didn't show, didn't call, nothing so we'll be playing for first place next week against the winner of the other playoff match... and playing for third place on Monday and Wednesday night.

Dishwasher - Fail

I have a confession to make: I have dirty balls. Mine are nowhere near the worst case I've seen or heard of, mind you... but they're dirty nonetheless and I'm looking for a good solution.

Surfing around the Internet a bit, I ran across some promising home-built contraptions like this one and added building such a thing to my "to-do" list:



The problem is, my "to-do" list is huge and growing... and with various other things on the near horizon for me, I don't see it getting much smaller anytime soon. I needed an interim solution. So I pondered and pondered... and the thought of putting my balls in the dishwasher kept coming to mind.

I didn't act on that thought right away. I asked a few friends if they ever tried putting their balls in the dishwasher. I got some strange looks and wisecracks from that question, but the answer was generally the same - that they hadn't and they never heard of anyone attempting to do it.

I searched a bit on the Internet, but didn't really find anything on the subject. I admit I didn't dig really deep -  mainly because some of the links that were coming up were a bit disturbing, to be honest.

So I thought about it a little more - what's the best case scenario? Well, my balls could come out nice and shiny clean and I'd be all happy that I found an easy, readily available way to clean my balls for years to come.

Less than best case? Well, I suppose it just wouldn't work. Dirty balls in, dirty balls out. Back to waiting for the YouTube solution to bubble up to the top of the "to-do" list.

Worst case? I figured worst case would be something like my balls exploding in the dishwasher or something, I dunno. That was the best I could come up with anyway. Now, I honestly didn't think exploding balls was a likely scenario, but it's not like the balls are stamped "dishwasher safe" yanno? Even if they didn't explode, I figured there might some possibility of them warping or the core shifting in some way or something. All of my balls (at least the ones I'd consider putting in the dishwasher) are good quality Aramith balls, so I had more confidence in them surviving the process than I would have if they were made out of other materials like polymer or polyester.

After the APA Regionals in Phoenix, I had a test subject. I bought a magnetic Aramith cue ball some time ago so I could spend some time practicing with it prior to competing in tournaments that would use that type of ball (like APA Nationals, or in this case Regionals, based on my previous experience at the same venue). Practicing with the ball prior to Regionals, I discovered that it seems to have a higher affinity for chalk than the other cue balls I normally use (Aramith Pro Cup and Aramith Red Circle). With the cue balls I usually use, it's pretty easy to wipe the chalk off with a towel or whatever. With the magnetic version, not so much. At least that's been my experience. I'm not sure why... the balls are made by the same company and supposedly out of similar materials... maybe the surface treatment is slightly different.

Anyway, after a couple of weeks practicing with the magnetic ball before Regionals, I ended up with a thoroughly spotted ball desperately needing a good cleaning.

I loaded it into the dishwasher (top rack) and ran it through a normal cycle. I'm happy to say it didn't explode, warp, or anything like that. Unfortunately, it didn't get clean either. Some of the surface grime might have washed off... but as you can see, there are plenty of chalk marks left on it.

I wish I had taken a 'before picture' for comparison purposes, but I honestly don't think the 'before' and 'after' pictures would have been very different. Both pictures here are 'after' pictures taken from slightly different angles.

I'm not sure if you'll be able to tell from the pictures, but there are spots from at least three different types of chalk on the ball. The bright blue spot near the top of the ball on the upper picture as well as the bright blue spots at the 11 o'clock and 5 o'clock positions in the lower picture are from NIR Super Professional Chalk. The black spots near the 1 and 2 o'clock positions are from Black Master Chalk. I use the black Master Chalk when I'm breaking with one of my standard 'house' cues (as I often do when I'm too lazy to pull my break cue out of my bag). If I'm using my regular break cue, I normally use NIR on it as well. Most of the lighter blue spots are probably NIR too, although there might be some Blue Diamond mixed in here and there.

So there you have it. If you ever wondered whether your dishwasher might solve your dirty ball woes... chances are it won't.

When NOT to ask about someone's equipment

Being proud pool athletes, most of us like to talk about our equipment... but, yes, there are times when it's just plain not appropriate to ask!

This is a true story from earlier today! I was playing at a large tournament at the Riviera in Las Vegas (APA 9-ball Southwest Challenge). After a decisive win in the first round, I went to the restroom to ummm... well... do restroom stuff.

As I stood at a urinal with my cue case slung over my shoulder, an older gentlemen walked up to the urinal right next to me and proceeded to ask me what kind of stick I had.

That. Is. So. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

Never mind that he violated the first cardinal rule of urinal etiquette "Thou shalt not occupy a urinal immediately adjacent to an occupied urinal if space allows" as well as the second cardinal rule of urinal etiquette "Thou shalt not strike up a conversation with another urinal user especially if he is unknown to you."

I hereby nominate this incident for entry into Samm's next volume of You Might Be a D Player If (along with the camera dude incident from last weekend).

PoolSynergy: What's Inside My Case and Why

So I got home on a Friday night (after starting off the Fall APA season on a new 8-ball team with a nice win over a higher SL player, thankyouverymuch) to find a message in Facebook from some chic in Denver who wanted to check out my equipment...? I didn't even know her! Not only that, she wanted me to put it on display for the whole world - photographs, descriptions, the works!

Needless to say, I was thrilled and honored to get a note from Samm Diep @ The Tip Jar inviting me to join this month's PoolSynergy. I've long enjoyed PoolSynergy articles and look forward to reading them every month. It's a great way to bring the community of very talented pool bloggers together, and I'm happy to now be a part of it!

I must say our dear Samm picked one heck of a topic for my maiden voyage. With dozens of photographs to take and lots of writing to do, I knew I'd have my hands full to get it done on time. It's always fun to talk about your equipment though - and as usual, I did my best to weave in some nuggets of info I've picked up along the way. Be sure to check out all of the other authors contributing to this topic! Keep in mind you can click on any of the below images to get a closer look.

The Case

My case is pretty much your run-of-the-mill production case. I was running lean in the discretionary funds department when I bought it, so decent functionality on a budget was my primary concern. I chose a fairly basic 2x4 (two butts / four shafts) Joe Porper case that has a decent amount of additional storage, so it gets the job done nicely for me for now. By the way, I chose the green felt of my pool table as the background for this picture because I'm green with envy after seeing and hearing about Samm's new case. I'm predicting a Murnak outbreak after hearing some comments from other PoolSynergy bloggers.

The Cue
Like a master chef's knives or a samurai warrior's sword, a serious pool player's most prized possession is usually his cue; and so it is with mine. I'm not the type to go for a lot of 'flash' in my cue; I've chosen to spend my money on function and a solid balanced feel rather than fancy inlays and such so far. For my current cue, I had the opportunity to "try before buying" at the 2010 BCA Nationals. I'm very fortunate to live in the Las Vegas area, so it's easy for me to drop in on the major tournaments to watch the action and check out the exhibitors when they're in town even if I'm not directly involved. Being on a fairly tight budget, my ORIGINAL plan was to buy a low-deflection shaft for my existing cue, but I think we all know how original plans tend to work out. After trying several shafts and cues from different suppliers I ended up at the demo table in the Tiger booth. After shooting a rack or two with some Tiger cues, I came to the very logical and sane conclusion that I needed a new cue more than my kids needed back-to-school clothes. I settled on a limited edition model (TPC6) from the Tiger Professional Series. It had their X-Ultra shaft (which is what I mainly wanted to check out in the first place) and the Tiger Sniper tip, which I'd already been using for some time on previous cues. The cue also featured their Stack leather wrap - I really REALLY liked the feel of it, and still do. Sometimes the cue just seems like it's on autopilot, sinking ball after ball on its own.

Of course, solving one 'problem' sometimes creates another and so it was with my new cue purchase. I no longer had a spare shaft! Yeah, yeah, I know a lot of players out there survive just fine without a spare shaft, but I had grown accustomed to having one available with previous cues and my background in submarines and nuclear power firmly ingrained the value of redundant systems into my head. I honestly felt a little naked without it, and knew if I let it fester long enough I would have woken up in the middle of the night from some nightmare about having to finish a hill-hill finals match of some huge tournament with a wobbly bar cue because something went wrong with my tip or ferrule or shaft. I immediately checked my budget, and worked out how many lunches my kids would have to skip in order to pay for it... and at the last minute my girlfriend swooped in, wiped tears from their eyes, and offered to buy me a spare shaft for my birthday - yeah!

She said I'd have to help her with the details and that it obviously wouldn't be a surprise and so on, and of course I agreed to all of that. I gave her the relevant specs and told her who to call and so on. A couple of days later, she called me to explain that it wasn't so simple. She had talked to Tiger's President, Tony Kalamdaryan, and he explained to her that Tiger would be releasing brand new shafts and a new type of tip a week before my birthday - so I had more choices to make! After some discussion with the folks at Tiger, I decided to go with the new X-Pro shaft (fitted with their new Onyx tip). In my pictures, the X-Pro is shown on the left and the original X-Ultra with a Sniper tip is shown on the right. What really stood out to me on the X-Pro was the size of the ferrule - it's only 1/4" long! The X-Pro is also tapered differently, is thinner and therefore lighter than the X-Ultra. My cue weighs in at 18.2 oz. with the X-Pro shaft and 18.8 oz. with the original X-Ultra shaft. I've been using the X-Pro shaft as my primary shaft ever since I got it, and love it!

My girlfriend lied to me about the "it won't be a surprise" detail. I unwrapped it and went through all of the obligatory "thank-you-even-though-I-knew-what-it-was" motions... and proceeded to check it out as she smiled at me... I marveled at the tiny ferrule, checked out the new Onyx tip, the joint, the X-Pro logo engraved at the base... then rotated it to see "G-Shark" engraved on the side opposite the X-Pro logo! She had somehow convinced the awesome folks at Tiger to custom engrave the shaft with the nickname she had coined for me a few months prior. To be honest, I was a little amazed that she pulled that off!

And it gets better. A couple of months later, I again visited the Tiger booth (this time during the ACS Nationals) in search of a few minor odds and ends (mainly a joint protector for my new shaft). I was chatting casually with Tony, and happened to ask him if they had or were going to come out with joint protectors with the X-Pro logo on them. He began to explain to me that they decided to use a generic Tiger logo on all joint protectors because they were getting too many different shafts in their product line and it just wasn't cost effective to have so many logos... which made sense, of course. And then he shocked the heck out of me, stopping in mid-sentence to exclaim "hey, I know you... you're G-Shark!" and that's exactly what he wrote on my invoice when he filled it out.

To be honest, I tend to be pretty humble and I'm not entirely comfortable with the nickname at this point in my pool "career" but I'm warming up to it and it definitely gives me incentive to continue to improve my game as quickly as possible to grow into it. I admit it's a cute nickname, and I think I'm just going to have to get used to it... I get the feeling it's going to stick.

Break/Jump Cue

I played for several months before getting a break stick. Initially I used my regular cue for breaking, then decided that wasn't such a good idea so I borrowed break cues from teammates and/or used a house cue for breaking. This gave me the chance to experiment with a few different cues, but all of my friends and teammates subscribed to the heavy break cue school of thought and after reading various articles I discovered that there was an alternate school of thought for break cues.

This other school of thought, I discovered, was the use of a lightweight cue for breaking - the theory behind this is that you can accelerate the cue faster since it is lighter. I was intrigued by this approach, it seemed to make sense, and it also seemed to be fairly popular amongst the pros. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find anyone who had this type of break cue, and also wasn't able to find it in a physical store here in the Las Vegas area, and i didn't want to wait several months for the next major pool even to come to town.

After doing some brand research online, I took a leap of faith and ordered a Fury Jump/Break stick with a phenolic tip. It definitely took some getting used to - but once I got it dialed in I've been very happy with it. I'm generally able to get a lot of action on the break, dropping a ball (or often multiple balls) the majority of the time (I haven't tracked exact percentages - but as I write this, I'm thinking that would be a good thing to do). In the year or so that I've had this cue, I've sunk five balls on a 9-ball break on at least three occasions that I can recall (twice on a 7' Diamond table) and once at home on my oversize-8 table. I've dropped the 9-ball on the break numerous times, and have even managed to string together multiple 9-ball snappers on successive breaks on more than one occasion (as you can imagine, that can and has turned around a match in a hurry). As I mentioned earlier, my break stick is a light one, it's 17.7 oz. configured as a break cue and 8.7 oz. configured as a jump cue.

Jump cues are not allowed in APA play other than Masters so I don't use the cue as a jump cue very often, but I've practiced enough to be reasonably dangerous with it and have used it a few times in competition (with reasonable success, by the way). I personally don't think jump cues are a magic bullet and would rather spend much more practice time working on my kicking game... but on the other hand, I've noticed opponents treat you a little differently once they find out you have a jump cue and know how to use it.

I recall one recent handicapped tournament in particular where I was on the hill against a very good opponent (much better than me) and he was obviously frustrated with my level of play. I heard a friend tell him to play more safeties against me, and he did. I kicked my way out of a couple of them, but he persisted for a few innings and finally hooked me really well (for kick shots, anyway). I'm guessing his satisfaction turned into surprise when I, without hesitation or comment, configured my break stick for jumping and proceeded to make a nice jump, nearly sinking the object ball (rattled it in the pocket). I will now state for the record that I probably couldn't have shot it that well more than maybe two or three times out of ten... but he certainly didn't know that. I don't think anyone at that tournament had ever seen me jump or even knew that I had a jump cue... but there is no doubt in my mind that one shot changed his strategy for the rest of the match. It probably affected the strategy of some of my subsequent opponents in that tournament as well - word tends to get around. And yes, I beat him ;)

Tip Tools
Proper care of your cue tip is incredibly important - and like most serious players, I keep several tools dedicated to that purpose handy. Think of it, your cue's tip is what transfers everything you do to the cue ball. If your tip is screwed up, it really doesn't matter how beautiful your stroke is because it's not going to get properly transferred to the ball. Referring back to my master chef and his knives, I'll further point out that the best chefs are absolute fanatics about the quality of the edge on their knifes. Similarly, a top pool player (or one who wants to be) should be a fanatic about the shape and condition of their tip.

I've tried a few different tip shapers but the ones I've settled on is Willard's, which are the metal disks shown in the upper right and left of the picture. These come in different sizes for nickel and dime radius tips, and I have both sizes in my bag. I use the nickel shape on my break cue and the dime shape on X-Pro shaft.

While the Willard shaper also does a pretty good job of roughing up the tip (enabling it to hold chalk better), I also carry another popular tool called a Tip-Pik (shown in the picture below the shapers). As you can see, the Tip-Pik is a cylindrical tool with numerous sharp points at one end. Luckily, it comes with a cap to cover the points (I've got the tool propped up on the cap in the picture). Poking my cue tip with the Tip-Pik makes me think of aerating my lawn... again, the effect is that the tip is roughed up a bit and able to hold more chalk.

Shaft Smoother & Burnisher
A smooth shaft goes a long way towards a smooth stroke, improving both your accuracy and speed control. This Tiger Shaft Smoother and Burnisher is the handiest tool I've found for putting the final touches on my shafts and/or addressing rough spots as you feel them in a game. It's got two sides, the red side is coarser and the white side is for the final finish. I tend to touch up the finish on my shaft regularly, every few matches or so. Of course, it should go without saying to be nice to your shaft in the first place! Tapping your shaft on the edge of the table after a bad shot or knocking your cue over is a good way to put a dent or nick on it, yet I see people doing it all the time.

Talc Bag
No, this did not fall out of a blond celebrity's Coach purse on the Las Vegas Strip... it's a talc bag, and although I don't need to use it very often in the dry air of Vegas, it's handy to have "just in case." I prefer a bag like this over the bottle of powder I used to carry in my bag. The bottles tend to be messy... leaking in the bag as well as spilling all over the place when applying the powder. With one of these bags, all you do is rub it on your hand a bit to apply the powder. It comes in a zip lock bag, so no mess in your gear bag.

Shooting Glove
As you can see in my picture and may have read in previous posts, I used to use a shooting glove. As mentioned more recently, I've reverted back to my wild commando ways of shooting without a glove. So far I'm liking it, but I still keep a glove in my bag for the time being just in case. As recently as a week or two ago I had two gloves in my bag, so progress is definitely being made.

Extra Chalk
You can't see it in the picture, but I swear these little cubes of chalk have feet on them! I'm constantly replenishing my supply. At least chalk is cheap. Related, I've cycled through a couple different types of chalk holders but haven't really found one I like. I normally use whatever is available on the table if it's decent, but always have some available in my bag as well just in case there isn't any on the table or I don't like what's there (I really dislike it when the hole gets too deep).

Pocket Marker
In the APA league, 8-ball rules require that you physically mark the pocket with something rather than just call it. Obviously, that's not such a bad idea as it reduces the chance of contention over whether the pocket was called or which pocket was called and so on. I've seen a lot of different things used for pocket markers - small toy figurines, patches, cell phones, cigarette packs, lighters, keys, it often tends to be whatever is in a person's pocket. I even saw a guy use a condom once (unused and still in the wrapper, thank goodness). I tended to be the "whatever is in my pocket" type, but was pleased to find a nice commemorative coin in my goody bag at the APA Singles Nationals and have been using that as a marker ever since (unless I forget to dig it out of my bag before my match).

Mechanical Bridge
I'm tall enough that I don't have to use a bridge very often on bar-sized tables, but the occasion rises at times and I'm not the type to shy away from using one if I need it. I've seen pros use them, and I figure if it's good enough for them it's good enough for me. Unfortunately some bars don't have bridges available, so I've found that it's a good idea to have a bridge head like this tucked away in your bag. It fits over the tip of another cue such as your break cue if you have one or a house cue. The one shown here is called a Moosehead for obvious reasons. I chose it because it has a lot of different options for cue placement that should handle just about any situation.

Cue Stick Holder
Many bars and even some pool halls do not have good places to put your pool cues, which results in sticks getting knocked over and so on. Referring back to my "fine instrument" comparison earlier in this article, bad things can happen when a cue gets knocked over - the shaft can get dinged, ferrule broken, whatever. To minimize this possibility and to present a bit more of a professional appearance, I pack a Q-Claw cue stick holder. I've seen and checked out several different styles of holders before settling on the Q-Claw and feel this one is one of the more versatile designs. It's heavily weighted and simply sits on top of the edge of the table, which to me is an advantage over the clamp types because there's so many different types of tables out there, The tops of some are too thick or otherwise shaped in such a way as to thwart clamping efforts. I've run into very few situations where the Q-Claw didn't work.

Rule Book
People never argue about rules, do they? Hard to believe I know, but I've run across a player or two who just doesn't quite have a handle on the way things are laid out in the rule book so I bring an abbreviated version along to help them out. I've considered bringing the full sized one, and may end up doing that one of these days, but the coverage in this one has been sufficient for most situations that have come up.

The Cry Towel

Useful for many, many things - sometimes for me to cry in after a match... hopefully more often to offer to my opponent after a match. Sometimes my hands or brow need to be wiped, sometimes the restroom is out of paper towels, who knows? I even used it as the background for the majority of pictures in this post. A towel is always a good thing to have.

For Emergency Use Only

When dealing with a really tough situation, it's nice to have my trusty pitching wedge handy. Settling into a good stance on the table can be a challenge though. It might seem easier after several drinks - but trust me, it's not. Beware of low hanging lights and ceiling fans. Most bars frown on the use of golf shoes on the tables, and be sure to replace all divots.

Shooting Naked

I shot naked last night, for the first time in over a year... and I did it at a Mini-Mania tourney at the APA Team Nationals amongst thousands of other pool players. And no, I didn't get arrested. I'm talking about shooting without a glove, of course.

I started shooting with a glove a little over a year ago. I was shooting with a fairly inexpensive Cuetec cue at the time... not one of their high-end models or anything, just a standard run-of-the-mill mass-produced one. While I don't recall the details of the shaft construction on that one, it's obvious that the shaft is sheathed with something... a fiberglass-like material, I believe. They advertise the design as reducing warpage and so-on and I will say it's a decent cue (it took me to APA Singles Nationals, so it can't be all bad). I never really liked the feel of the stroke against my skin though... I had to use quite a bit of powder, and then found it all getting gummy on me in fairly short order.

I noticed several teammates and others in the league were using gloves, so I decided to give it a try. I liked it for the most part... it certainly solved the smooth stroke / powder / gummy situations. I used a glove for quite awhile, even after I got my new Tiger cue a few months ago.

Recently, however, I've been doing some drills intended to work on my stroking... trying to get a nice smooth stroke in general, and also trying to improve my fine speed control. It was during those exercises that I realized I was giving up something wearing the glove... I didn't have the full 'feel' of the shaft sliding across my fingers, and I believe it makes a difference! Taking the glove off made me much more sensitive to minute changes in the speed and direction of my stroke, allowing me to fine tune things to the point that I was performing the drills better without question!

So, if you're using a glove "just because" - put some thought into why... if you're shooting with some sort of composite shaft like I was, maybe it is the best overall solution for you... but if you have a silky-smooth maple shaft, try taking the condom off and experience the feel of the shaft sliding between your bare fingers - you might like it! Try some fine speed control drills with and without the glove and see if you notice a difference like I did. To me, it really was pretty dramatic.

Happy Birthday!

I haven't posted in a few days so I wanted to get a quick note in here to outline what I've been up to since the 4th. It's amazing how time flies when you get busy, and I've certainly been that.

7/11 is my birthday - so part of the reason I've been AWOL was centered around that. I had some company in from out of town, and spent some quality time with them. Sunday morning, they dropped by to see me play my APA Masters match. I set their expectations a bit during dinner the night before, explaining that the Masters format was not handicapped, and that pretty much everyone in the Masters league had a higher skill level than I did, and that I was mainly there to learn and any games I won were icing on the cake... yada, yada.

We started with 8-ball, and after a few very close games I found myself down 4-1. You may recall that I've been in this exact same situation before, so it was familiar territory. I fared even better than last time though, and swept six straight 9-ball games to win the match 7-4! I won two of the games (in a row) by sinking the 9-ball on the break, so needless to say my opponent was a bit stunned by the time the dust settled.

Monday night was my normal (APA handicapped) 9-ball night, and I had a severe case of "aim-itis" where I was missing shots, even easy shots, by just a little bit. It was ugly, and it's extremely frustrating when it happens. Figuring this out and improving my consistency is top priority for me. When I figure it out, I'll share for sure! My leading theory at the moment is that it could be vision-related. I usually wear glasses during matches because the smoke in the bars irritates my eyes too much when I wear contacts. With glasses, I believe, there is better potential for parallax errors to be introduced into the aiming equation. I've been thinking more and more about getting lasik surgery lately, and the more I run into problems with my glasses, the sooner it's going to happen I think.

Wednesday night is my normal APA 8-ball night. I was put up against our division's "Top Gun". The Top Gun listing keeps track of the number of victories as well as the aggregated skill levels of the defeated opponents, so the person with the highest score typically has several victories against higher skill level opponents. This gentleman leads the category in our division by a comfortable margin; he's only lost one match all session. Well, after last night, he's lost two matches. After starting the match off with one of my worst lags ever, I buckled down to business to sweep him in straight games.

Wednesday night was the first I used my birthday present (a new Tiger X-Pro shaft with their new Onyx tip), and it definitely came through for me! I'll write more about it in the near future when I get a few more matches with it under my belt.

My Equipment

Given that I'm still very much in the "lay out some background" phase of this blog, I felt it'd be a good time to give some details about my equipment... what I'm using now as well as how I got here.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I've only been playing consistently/seriously for about a year and a half now. There's a minor sidebar to that detail: I played fairly seriously for a period of time (about a year) some 25 years ago while I was in the Navy. I was in Orlando, FL at the time, attending the Naval Nuclear Power School (NNPS). I bought my first cue back then, and remember marveling at the silky-smooth feel it had compared to a standard bar cue. I don't recall many details of that cue, other than it was simple but decent maple one and fairly heavy: 21 oz. Like NNPS in Orlando (and the entire base, actually), that cue disappeared... it was stolen during my move from Orlando to my next stop in the Navy's nuclear training pipeline: the S1W training reactor in Idaho. The loss of the stick, along with a change in venue and the appearance of other bright shiny objects (I really got into pistol shooting in Idaho) put my pool shooting days on the back burner for, well, 25 years or so.

Fast forward to the new millennium. I met a girl at work... cute brunette, sassy attitude, gorgeous doe-like deep brown eyes, and we seemed to hit it off pretty well. I remember one conversation with her in particular - at a company-hosted party at the Moon Nightclub here in Las Vegas. We were out on the balcony at the top of the Fantasy Tower of the Palms Casino with the lights of the Vegas Strip sparkling below us. As I gazed into her eyes, she stated quite matter-of-factly that she "could easily play all night with me" and I felt something stir deep down inside. She was talking about her passion for pool, of course, and it brought back memories of the good times I had in Orlando some 25 years prior. She told me that she was playing in a league (APA) and encouraged me to check it out. I hung out while her team played a few times, then decided to dive in. I literally bought my 'first' cue the day of my first match as an APA member.

As you might imagine this first cue was pretty much an impulse buy, although it turned out to be a fairly decent one. I walked into a smallish billiards shop less than a block away from my team's home bar (The Brewery) to see what they had. Having been away from pool for so long I really had no idea about brands and so on, so I just focused on something that had a good feel to it, looked decent, and was priced reasonably. I settled on a 20 oz Cuetec. I have no idea what model it is, but it's a fairly standard mass produced one... as I recall, I paid somewhere in the ballpark of $100 for it. I've already run into a couple of people with very similar models (similar enough that we've accidentally swapped cues at times). It doesn't have any of Cuetec's higher-end shaft technologies, just a basic fiberglass-sheathed shaft. This cue worked well for me, but it didn't take very long to realize there was some room for improvement on the tip. Doing a little research online, I decided to go with the Tiger Everest tip. The Everest was a notable improvement over the stock tip in terms of being able to move the cue ball and at least attempt to work on better position play. Somewhere along the way, I picked up an extra shaft for this cue and decided to try out the Tiger Sniper tip on it. In comparing the two tips over time I developed a preference for the Sniper and have since standardized on it. This is the cue setup that took me to the 2010 APA Singles Nationals, so it could obviously get the job done.

Next up was a break cue. Again, doing a little research online, I found that there were two very different schools of thought in a break cue. Some prefer a heavy "power" stick that weighs 21 oz and beyond (a friend has a modified Predator break stick that weighs in at 23 oz) while others prefer a lighter "speed" stick that (in theory, at least) allows you to stroke the stick at higher speed prior to impacting the cue ball. This latter school of thought really intrigued me, but I unfortunately didn't have any immediate means of trying before buying since I didn't know anyone with a light break stick. So I went on faith based strictly on several online reviews and bought a Fury Jump/Break stick with a phenolic tip. I ordered an 18 oz stick, but it actually weighs in at 17.6 oz. I'll admit it took a little getting used to... and I still miscue every once in awhile (luckily not a big deal in the APA)... but I have to say I've been very pleased with the results. I dropped the 9-ball on my very first league break with it... my opponent re-racked, and I dropped the 9-ball again on the very next break! I've dropped as many as five balls on a 9-ball break, and I've done that three times now in the time that I've had the Fury (less than a year). I've also used it successfully as a jump cue. Needless to say, I'm quite pleased with that purchase. The only unfortunate thing is I found out about the BCA phenolic tip ban after I bought it... but given that I'm not in the BCA yet, I'll deal with that when the time comes. I've noticed that some cue manufacturers have offered replacement shafts for their cues to help deal with this issue, but I haven't specifically checked whether Fury does this yet or not.

More recently, I went to the BCA Nationals here in Las Vegas to check out the vendors. My original mission was to get an advanced shaft for my cue. I tried out several advanced shafts at the vendor's booths; including the Cuetec R-360, the Predator 314², and the Tiger X-Ultra. I have to say that I really fell in love with the Tiger. To me, it had the best feel and feedback, and it already came with the Sniper tip that I was accustomed to. After talking to the crew at the Tiger booth about what it would take to get an X-Ultra shaft for my existing cue, I decided it would be a bit more hassle than I really wanted to deal with. Don't get me wrong, they were very helpful and very willing to help me out... but they didn't have a shaft on-hand that would fit the Cuetec, they wanted me to bring my butt in so they could measure it and I didn't have it with me (my cue butt)... and I wouldn't be able to walk out the door with it... they'd have to ship it to me. Thinking through all that, I decided to get a whole new Tiger cue that was all designed to work together from the start, and I'm absolutely loving that decision! I bargained with them a bit and got a good deal on a limited edition 19 oz TPC6 Professional Cue with the X-Ultra shaft, their killer Stack leather wrap and of course the Sniper tip. I used it the very next day at an un-handicapped APA Masters match and won, so I was off to a great start with it right away! If you've been keeping track, you'll notice that I went lighter with each successive playing cue that I've purchased. I definitely think the 19 oz cue gives me a lighter touch on the table, and that was one area that I've been working to improve.