Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!

So last month I talked about a new league that I joined - mainly hoping to get some experience against better players and so on...

My voodoo dolls must have worked, because enough people weren't available that I finally got the call and played last week.

Headed over to the bar (on the other side of town, so it was a bit of a drive), I put some thought into what I was hoping to get out of the match. It's a round-robin format with five players per team - so I'd be playing one game of 9-ball against each of the opponents. Not thinking negatively but rather realistically against this caliber of player, I realized that I could very well go down in flames 0-5 in my debut.

I hoped I'd pull out at least one game for a 1-4.

I was pleasantly surprised to go 2-3, even though I didn't get to break at all! Yeah!!! With this format, the initial break is determined by a coin toss, then each successive break is determined by the preceding game - so if your teammate playing before you wins, you break... if he (or she) loses, you rack.

That was last week. This week, my voodoo dolls came through for me once again and a couple of the usual players on my team weren't able to make it.

This week, the friggin planets were aligned for me or something because I pulled off a 4-1!! Woohoo!

This week, I got to break several times and my break was working fairly well so that definitely helped. In fact, I almost dropped the nine in one of the top corner pockets on one break (the 2 and 9 intercepted the cue mid-table and tried to herd it into the same corner as well... but it ended up being the 9 that rattled the pocket after being hit by the 2). The balls ended up in the position shown in the diagram (there were other balls on the table, but I'm omitting them because I only know generally where they were and these are the important ones... the 1-ball dropped in the side on the break).

I was thinking to myself, WTF do I do with this??? I didn't really see any decent safeties, and obviously the semi-hanger 9 was a concern if I turned the table over.

I elected to go for the 4 by making about a 1/8 hit on the 2. I knew that would at least ensure a good hit on the 2 and that it would clear the 2 away from the 9... hopefully putting the 2 in a tough spot. I narrowly missed the 4, but the cue came back and dropped the 9! Yah!! During the flurry of high-fives and fist-bumps back at our table, our captain asked me if I actually played that shot (he obviously doesn't know me that well yet)... and I didn't even attempt to fake it, I just responded with an authoritative "F*CK no!"

But wait, there's more...

Remember I mentioned there were pros and ex-pros like Max Eberle in this league? Well, I found out that our team is getting a pro too - how cool is that?? One of my teammates is a friend and snatched him up. My understanding is he'll be living in town for awhile in support of something big coming up with Bonus Ball. They haven't announced it yet, but they have hinted at an upcoming announcement on their Facebook page.

Since the Bonus Ball people haven't announced anything yet, I feel like maybe I shouldn't mention any names. I wouldn't want all ten of my readers blabbing about unsubstantiated rumors, right?

Anyway, hey, check out this cool shot I got of someone at the Andy Mercer tourney a couple of weeks ago... ;)

APA Singles Nationals n Stuff

Fairly short blurb to close out APA Singles Nationals last Thursday-Saturday...

As previously mentioned, I qualified for the APA 9-Ball Singles Nationals this year. Unlike some other national tournaments, it's not possible to buy in to this one... you have to earn it by winning a regional qualifier, so just making it is a pretty big deal. I've been very fortunate to qualify twice in my short pool playing career (last year I qualified in 8-ball).

Last year I was really happy just to be there and approached the whole thing as getting some much needed experience. I was extremely happy to do something better than two-and-out and knew I'd be back.

This year, as you might imagine, I had higher expectations. Now I was the one who had been there before and knew the ropes, etc, etc. Once again, I didn't go two-and-out which was good... but really I had hoped for much more. So I have to say I'm disappointed overall which in turn gives me additional incentive to work harder next time, be more prepared, learn from this year's mistakes, etc, etc. Once again, I'll be back!

Another bummer was that I got knocked out by a player from Las Vegas (ironically in the round after I knocked out another Las Vegas player). WTF? Here I am in a national tournament that drew hundreds of players from all over the country (and other countries, actually - there were players from Canada and Japan as well)... and I end up mostly playing local people I know? I've played the guy who knocked me out several times. He's not only in the same league, he's in the same division! He's a good shot, we've swapped games, etc... but it's pretty anti-climatic when in that sea of hundreds of pool tables the two of us don't even bother to put on our name tags or check IDs or chat about where we're from or whatever. Blah.

I left the Riviera on a high note though - after being eliminated, I headed over to the Mini-Mania tournament room to see what was available. Mixed scotch double 9-ball @ 1PM caught my eye - it was a 32-board; a sizable field for a Mini. A few possible partners immediately came to mind, so I figured I'd start with the one(s) most likely to be interested and in the building. I got an enthusiastically positive response to my text from Amy Encinias - bingo! She came over to the Mini registration desk within minutes and we signed up before she had to dash off to another match.

Amy and I have played against each other a couple of times and we've both seen each other play several times, but we've never played together as partners. I looked forward to the opportunity even though I knew we'd probably be up against some teams in town for the Jack & Jill competition (and therefore likely to have spent more time playing as partners). Since Mini-Mania tournaments are single elimination, each individual match was a do-or-die situation... so the pressure was on!

As with other APA 9-ball matches, this one was scored as a race to a final point count (the 1-8 balls each being worth one point while the 9-ball was worth two points). Based on our combined SLs, Amy and I had to race to 42. One of the teams we played against only had to race to 25 since they had a lower combined skill level - yikes! To make things worse, they won the lag and got a bit of a jump on us in the first rack! We managed to get our feet under us though and started piling up points and eventually prevailed.

We rolled through three other teams and ended up in the finals - yeah! The team we met in the finals was very good - we could not afford to make mistakes against them, but unfortunately we made a few. They took advantage, and defeated us. I was very happy with taking 2nd place in that field though! It put some cash in our pockets and a smile on our faces.

The Agony of Defeat

(PoolSynergy: Team Play Epilogue)

I found it interesting that the PoolSynergy "Team Play" post was released on the weekend of one of our APA 8-ball Classic Tri-Annual team tournaments.

For those who don't know, the APA has three 'seasons' per year - Spring, Summer, and Fall. At the end of each season, tournaments are held for the best 8-ball and 9-ball teams from the season. These tournaments serve as a nice close to the season and are also used as part of the qualifying pipeline to determine which team(s) will be representing a given area at the National Team Championships held in the fall. I imagine there are some regional variations on the theme, so keep in mind that I'm describing how it works here in the Las Vegas area - your mileage may vary.

As the name suggests, tri-annual tournaments are held three times a year. Each team making it to playoffs in their respective divisions earns a spot in the tri-annual tournament. The winner of the tri-annual tournament advances to the annual cities tournament, which is the tournament that determines the team(s) going to team nationals. The first place team in each divisional playoff also earns a berth in the annual cities tournament.

My Monday 9-ball team as well as my Wednesday and Friday 8-ball teams made it to tri-annuals this season. Unfortunately, all three teams lost in the first round.

My Wednesday night team (the one I'm captain of) was the most recent loss so it's freshest in my mind. It was a heartbreaking loss that literally went down to the last match, last game, last ball. My player was left with a very difficult cross-over bank shot into the side pocket. He appeared to have executed it perfectly and the 8-ball headed towards center pocket. Unfortunately, the cue ball rebounded off the end rail with perfect timing, speed, and direction to deflect the 8-ball from its original path just before it reached the pocket... resulting in a miss and leaving his opponent a fairly easy shot for the win.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this particular loss was that I honestly think we were the better team... and I'm not saying that just because it's my team. I think anyone who has been playing this game for awhile can tell the difference between flat out being out-gunned and losing a match that you really should have won. This one, in my mind at least, was clearly the latter situation. We started off in good shape with me taking one of their top two players out of the equation... and then we struggled. Scratches, poor positions at critical times, etc. Uncharacteristic things that wouldn't happen 8 or 9 times out of 10... but they happened with regularity that we couldn't overcome in the end, and all added up to an eventual loss for us.

It's human nature to walk away from something like that wondering what we did wrong - and I think it's healthy both as a team and as individuals to do a little self-evaluation to figure out where improvements can be made for next time... as long as it's done constructively. If you're not careful, you can "what if" yourself to death and lose confidence as a result... confidence in yourself, and in the team. Don't do that unnecessarily! Perhaps the worse thing you can do is to contribute to teammates losing confidence in themselves, as Melinda pointed out in her PoolSynergy post.

It's one thing to recognize and deal with a problem if you really have a problem. Yes, sometimes that's necessary, and it can be a fine line at times. But a loss doesn't automatically mean you have a problem. You will always lose... at least once in a while. Obviously, the key is to keep those losses to a minimum.

Like most sports, pool is a game of percentages. If you have the data available, you can assign probabilities to every match, every game, every shot, and every safety. I live in Las Vegas and work for a gaming company. I'm very familiar with odds making and probability. All you can do is play the percentages to give yourself the best chance of success. We've all heard it: choose and shoot the highest percentage shots, play safe when you don't have a high percentage shot. With a team, go with the highest percentage match ups (if the format allows, of course). Problem is, there is pretty much nothing in pool that carries a probability of 100% and sometimes things just don't go your way.

I had and still have full confidence in the lineup I chose today. I feel we had good odds with every single match up, and I'd be perfectly comfortable using the same lineup tomorrow against the same team. That said, this is the first time I've ever seen our opponents play so there's a possibility I'd use the newly-gained knowledge to make an adjustment or two next time around... but nevertheless I stand by my assertion that I'd be comfortable playing them the exact same way.

We have a strong team, and we'll do well in the long run as long as we keep things positive and continue to grow together as a team. We're already qualified for the annual cities tournament as a result of taking first place in our division last season, so we didn't need the tri-annual win for that reason. Sure, it would have been nice... but the tournament experience was good and I'll consider it a warm-up for the cities tournament.

Onward and upward!

PoolSynergy: Team Play

Back in September I suggested the "Team Play" theme to my fellow PoolSynergy writers after noting the dearth of instructional materials covering the team aspect of pool. I was looking for tips on team play because I had just taken over as captain of an APA 8-ball team and found, as you might suspect, that the vast majority of information in print and online focuses on the individual aspects of playing pool. A good number of players compete in a team environment, however, and I felt some coverage on this aspect of pool would be very well received... and my fellow bloggers wholeheartedly agreed!

They agreed so much, in fact, that they elected me to be the host of the theme - WTF!? So here I am, and here we are... and as usual, we have a great lineup of posts related to Team Play:

p00lriah tried to convince me that he wasn't a team player. ha! i didn't believe him for a minute of course, and he proved me right by pulling through for the poolsynergy team by once again being the first person to submit his article! way to go p00lriah! i don't know how he does it... perhaps it's the efficiency gained from not using the shift key? read on as he makes a spectator of himself.

Melinda (akaTrigger), who very modestly describes herself as "a pool player from Texas" (maybe because Texas Tornado was already taken) bares her soul with some painful memories from a BCAPL championship run long ago in hopes that she can teach what NOT to do as a captain.

Jake Dyer, our resident pool historian, dips into his substantial pool of knowledge to highlight some great players from the past (and present) who may, ummm, struggle in a team environment. He also shares a great potential future direction for team play. Check out his post here.

Gail (aka G Squared) takes on the Team Play topic Letterman style with not one but two Top Ten lists to help feed the team player in YOU. Unlike Letterman's lists, Gail's are good for much more than laughs! Join me as we take a close look at her genes to see what makes a top-notch team player tick.

John Biddle, award-winning Pool Student and our esteemed founder of PoolSynergy, shares his thoughts on the Benefits of Team Play.

St. Louis Johnny, the only person I know who has successfully launched a cue tip over 50 feet, feels team captains can take a lesson from Dalton. No, not Shannon Dalton, the "I thought you'd be bigger" Dalton, but the character played by Patrick Swayze in Road House. He has a simple but effective motto: "Be nice"

John Barton, of JB Cases, brings an international flair into the PoolSynergy fold by sharing his experiences of team play in Germany. "Despite being thought of as an individual sport, pool does provide a great binding platform for people to enjoy it competitively as a team." Check out John's experiences and thoughts here.

Billiard Coach Mike Fieldhammer lends a bit of a philosophical view to Team Play with an evaluation of intangible rewards of being on a proper team.

And wrapping up this month's collection of articles is my own contribution to the theme in which I discuss some  thoughts and observations about general team dynamics before moving on to an interview of the captain of the 2010 ACS Women's Open 8-ball Championship team.

PoolSynergy: The Making of a Championship Team

Happy New Year everyone, and welcome to my edition of...

This month, I'm the host for Volume 15!

Even as I originally proposed this month's PoolSynergy topic back in September, I knew that it'd be best to reach out to someone else who had more experience and success with pool in a team environment. The plain fact was that I didn't (and still don't) have a whole lot of experience with pool from a team perspective.

Through my own observations and experience in several other team sports, I was well aware that a coach (or captain) can make or break a team. We've seen time after time that some coaches manage to mold a group of average players into a championship team while other coaches fall short... despite having more individual talent available to them.

Being the leader of a team is more of an art than a science. You need to know the sport well, of course... the rules, the strategies, and so on but I think that's the easy part; the part that many people can learn (although it's clear some don't put in the effort to do so). The hard part, in my opinion, is to bring the players together as a cohesive unit to properly execute the strategies. This is where psychology and sociology come into play. Team dynamics.

As a coach or captain, you need to know your players' personalities, capabilities, and needs. Every player is different. Some like to be cheered on, some don't. Some perform better under pressure than others. Some play well against players of the opposite sex and some don't. Some will openly tell you when they're not confident with a situation and some won't. Some of the players who tell you they're not comfortable with a situation will kick butt in that situation anyway... while others will leave you wishing you heeded their warning. Some players need more warm up time than others. Some are fine with going up first, some aren't. These are just a few examples of the many, many factors that a good coach or captain will be 'tuned' into - and don't expect your players to tell you their thoughts or even the truth about some of these things. I'm not suggesting they'd intentionally lie to you (although some might in certain situations), but their perception can differ from reality. By all means, get their input as appropriate, but that alone will rarely be the only factor on which you base a decision.

I believe the 'art' side of coaching is very difficult to teach or learn in the usual sense, but developing an awareness of subtle factors like the ones I mention above is a good step in the right direction. Great coaches often know their players better than the players know themselves and use that knowledge to lead their team to success. The very best coaches extend this 'sixth sense' beyond their own team to players on opposing teams as well.

Anyway, back to my original point about wanting to seek out wisdom from others who have been successful with pool teams, I'm very fortunate to have access to a few folks in the local Las Vegas area that fit that description. I was extremely fortunate that a real gem amongst those folks, Sondra Friestad, agreed to spend some time discussing her thoughts on the care and feeding of a championship team:



Be sure to check out all of the other great January PoolSynergy articles!

First. Ever. Double. Carom!

League night last night; week #2 of playoffs for my Wednesday night APA 8-ball team.

As you may recall, my Wednesday night team is the one I took over as captain early in the season after the  previous captain had a bit of a falling out with the rest of the team. We rolled to a strong 3-0 victory in the first week of playoffs, so this week would determine first place in the division. Our opponents were a strong, balanced team and I heard they came back from a 0-2 deficit in the previous week to win 3-2, so I definitely wasn't going to take them for granted.

Earlier in the week I was doing a little pre-match 'homework' on our upcoming opponents, and couldn't shake my curiosity about their comeback upset victory (in my opinion, anyway, having played each team at least a couple of times during the season). I wanted to know what happened! So... I picked up the phone and made a call to someone on the team they played the previous week. I didn't know this person extremely well, but I hoping well enough that they'd be open to having a bit of a chat. I figured "what was the worse that could happen" right? Anyway, my instincts were right, and we had a very pleasant conversation. I found out how the individual match ups went and so on... and I got a critical nugget of information about a new player on the team we hadn't seen before. "The kid's rated SL 5 but played like a 7" was the comment that grabbed my attention. "I don't think he missed a single shot, and beat one of our 6's pretty badly." Bingo. I was suddenly very glad I made that phone call.

Walking into the host bar prior to the match, it was pretty easy to spot the new guy. I've seen everyone else on the team before, so he was a new face obviously. But it was more than that. It actually reminded me of a typical bar scene from "Color of Money". Young, cocky, strutting around, obnoxious. Wonderful. I'll refer to our star as Wonderboy.

I lost the coin toss, and the other captain deferred to me to put up first. Having already anticipated this possibility, I had a good idea who I was going to put up - myself, or our strongest female player. After some further thought and a quick discussion with her, I decided to put myself up. The other team matched me up for an even race. I shot quite well overall. I had a couple pocket rattlers here and there, and blew position badly on my key ball once... but other than that, I must say it was a very solid match for me. While I was shooting, Wonderboy was all over the place... checking the line on numerous shots, making loud comments here and there... fidgeting back and forth at the edge of my peripheral vision while I was down on shots, loudly cheering my opponent on, and generally being far more obnoxious than the average (or even above average) league player. I'm not sure if he was trying to shark on purpose, or if that's just the way he was. It didn't matter. I won my first two games quickly and never really felt threatened throughout the match. In the third game, I missed a tough shot on the 8-ball and my opponent was able to run out. We jockeyed back and forth a bit, but I ended up on top in the end. One down.

An observation about Wonderboy. He was the one doing the coaching during timeouts. He was new to the team and a SL 5, yet he gave all the advice while the captain of the team, a very capable SL 6 who did the coaching in the past, looked on. Interesting.

Another observation about Wonderboy... he was drinking... a lot. Both beer and shots. Interesting.

After my match, we were up 1-0 and it was the other team's put up. I already decided I'd throw off with a SL 3 if they put up Wonderboy. They didn't. They put up their captain, a SL 6, so I put our SL 7 against him. A few games later, we were up 2-0.

Wonderboy was still drinking heavily. It was our put up, but Wonderboy was up at the table already thinking he was going to play. I put up a SL 2. Their captain freaked out for a second, then realized it was our put up and he could choose someone else... so he threw up a SL 3. Our SL 2 is a methodical player and she played very well. The match went hill-hill and she narrowly missed a shot on the winning 8-ball. Slow play and a hill-hill match gave Wonderboy plenty of time to down a couple more drinks. We were up 2-1 at this point, and very much in command.

It was their put up, and Wonderboy finally got the call. Much to his chagrin, I didn't throw up a SL 6 like he was expecting. I instead threw up our strongest SL 3 (the female I considered starting the night off with). Wonderboy was not happy about that and actually more or less called me a chicken (I don't remember the exact words he used, but they were slurred in any case). Of course, I could care less. All I knew is that we had to win one more match to take first place in the division... and although I actually liked the odds of our SL 3 beating him given the handicap advantage (and his condition), I was fine with saving our SL 6 for the last match (likely against an average SL 3, which was pretty much the best they had left in the house).

Our SL 3 played extremely well. Wonderboy played surprisingly well too, it was obvious that he had skills... but as expected, his brief periods of brilliant play were peppered with careless mistakes. The match went hill-hill and down to the 8-ball for both of them. Well, almost. Wonderboy scratched sinking his last ball to give our player ball in hand on the 8-ball and the victory. We won 3-1 with a well warmed up SL 6 in ready five for the last match if necessary. It was a sweet and solid win. It was especially satisfying to take out Wonderboy with a female SL 3.

Oh, the double carom thing. Midway through one of my games, I was trying to figure out how to deal with a semi-problem ball near a corner pocket more or less blocked by a couple of my opponent's balls. I studied the layout shown... (the balls aren't perfectly positioned, just trying to give you an idea of the layout). The 6-ball could not go directly in to the pocket and there were no caroms available off of either of the blocker balls into the pocket. But then it suddenly jumped out at me that a double carom off of both balls would not only go, it seemed like it'd go pretty darn easily as long as I hit it right. I'm fairly comfortable with caroms these days and won't hesitate to use them if it's the right shot to take. But a double carom? I've maybe slopped something like that in before, but never intentionally lined up for such a shot in a match. I did a quick ego-check just to make sure I wasn't getting too cocky or something, and my brain kept telling me that it was not only the best shot, it seemed to be a fairly high percentage shot with the blocking balls perfectly positioned. So I stroked and shot it. And my ball dropped beautifully center pocket. I heard Wonderboy  mumble "not much you can do about luck like that" to my opponent... and I just smiled internally and lined up for my next shot. Life is good.

Aye Aye Captain

Tomorrow night will be my first night as the captain of an APA 8-ball team. This Wednesday night team is the one I started with when I joined APA nearly two years ago now. We've had the same captain all along... but she and the team drifted apart over the past year or so, and last week she made the decision to pursue other opportunities. We had a short team meeting after the match, and I was elected captain. It's something new for me... so we begin another chapter in the pool 'career.'

I look forward to it, actually. I've played a lot of team sports over the years, so I'm very familiar with various team dynamics. We've got a really solid team that I think can be molded into a 'contender'. The evolution actually started awhile ago, and I think that's part of what caused some of the recent tension with the former captain. We took 3rd place in our division last session, and are currently in 1st place this session. In our recent tri-annual tournament, we lost a very close match to the team that went on to win the tournament.

My first order of business with the team was to find a couple more players to round out the roster since we only had six players after the captain left, and we're now into the fourth week of the session which is generally the last week players can be added to the roster. For that very reason, every other team in the city seemed to be scrambling for good players as well!

I managed to find a couple players that round out the roster very well, so I'm excited about the possibilities! Stay tuned!