March Catch Up

No, I'm not talking about a condiment. It's unfortunately been a recurring theme lately... I've noticed that once again I haven't posted in a while, so I figured I'd address that with a big heaping buffet-o-topics covering what I've been doing and/or working on lately (instead of posting to my blog). I've been busy on several fronts.

Eye update
My eyes have been through a lot in the last year or so. You may recall me mentioning in December that some sagebrush attacked my right eye. What wasn't mentioned in that post was... a few days later, just as I was regaining sight in the eye (I still didn't feel I could see well enough to drive)... a baby attacked the same eye! WTF? I had a 9-month old sitting sideways on the table in front of me at Joe's Crab Shack in Phoenix, and she suddenly spread her arms in reaction to someone else at the table trying to get her to clap - and jabbed my open right eye again with one of her sharp little fingernails. A slobber and food covered fingernail, of course. She's lucky she's so cute.

I'm happy to report that my eyes are doing pretty well now, but I still haven't gotten the post-LASIK touch up to correct the less-than-stellar correction that the first round of LASIK gave me. They wanted to wait until my eyes stabilized, and that sounded like a great plan to me... I'm a "don't rush, get it right" kind of guy, especially when it comes to something like my eyes. My eyes were stable in December until some sagebrush and a baby's finger destabilized them again, so now we're rolling up to my one-year anniversary of the original surgery (I distinctly remember getting it on March 31st last year because I considered waking up the next morning (April 1st) screaming that I couldn't see.

Tournaments
I've been hitting tournaments fairly hard lately, at least every single weekend at a bare minimum over the last couple of months. I once managed to squeeze in four tournaments in a single weekend - three of them in a single day! The dirty little secret here is that I got knocked out of some of them fast enough to get to the next one(s) but shhh!

One of the tournaments was the APA Regionals at Main Street Billiards in Mesa, AZ. I won some and lost some there, didn't qualify for Singles Nationals, unfortunately (which was the whole point of going). The loss that knocked me out was a stupid one - we were hill-hill, my opponent broke and was left a tough shot which he missed. I went to the table and worked my way through a not-so-straightforward run-out... got decent shape but a fairly long shot on the 8-ball. After such a nice run, I confidently fired it in instead of shooting it nice and easy, and it rattled out! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!

I was happy with my performance overall, though. The losses were close, and the wins were solid. A referee made a point of coming over and giving me kudos on my play after a match, and an opponent made a point of dropping by to tell me "good luck" again before he left the pool hall for home after I knocked him out. Overall, I've been shooting well and definitely improving.

PoolSynergy
I'm sad to report that PoolSynergy seems to be on hiatus for the foreseeable future. Although a few of us are interested in keeping it going, several of the past regular writers have either dropped out completely or have simply been too busy to contribute lately. You may have noticed that we didn't do it this month (March) for the first time in something like two and a half years. We're taking a breather and haven't decided if we should try to regroup in the future or not.

New League
As another part of my self-imposed "self improvement" program, I've thrown myself into the fire by getting into another league... this one being BCA-sanctioned (which has been my goal for awhile). I started out with APA a few years ago, and I think I'll continue with it for a bit longer... still have a few unfulfilled goals... but I'm wanting to get my foot in the door elsewhere.

I say "thrown into the fire" because it's a non-handicapped league and I chose the toughest division available. While I chose the division partly because of my schedule (it's a good night for me)... I mainly chose it because many, if not all of the best players in town are in the division. Take last week, for example: one of the players on the opposing team was Max Eberle. Enough said?

Max missed a tough cut on the 1-ball in one of his games allowing his opponent to run out. Max then did something that impressed me: He set up the same shot and tried it over and over again until he started making it consistently. He probably missed it 10-15 times in a row while everyone looked on until he had it nailed.

Pool legend Jimmy Mataya is also in the league. I don't expect to kick butt anytime soon, but I know I'll get some great experience and I'm sure I'll have my moments. I was in a similar situation the first time I played in the Masters division of APA, and surprised everyone by ending up with the best point average on my team!

When describing this new league to my girlfriend I jokingly said, "I'm not even sure if I qualify to be their water boy to be honest, I'm just thankful they let me on the team and I'll be happy to play every now and then." As she often does, she came up with the perfect analogy, "so you're like Rudy, huh?" I laughed and said, "Yep - exactly!"

VBB Scene
Probably the biggest drain on my "spare time" over the last month or so was the creation of a new online discussion forum for the Las Vegas pool community. This is something that I've felt we needed for some time now so I recently teamed up with Amy Encinias, president of Vegas Billiards Buzz, to bring it to fruition. It's similar in function to the bulletin boards hosted by AZ Billiards and Billiards Digest, but we're focusing on pool in the Las Vegas area. You don't have to be a Las Vegas resident to participate - anyone traveling to or having an interest in billiards/pool in Las Vegas area is more than welcome to register and join the action, so drop by and check out the VBB Scene!

New Pool Adventure
If all of this isn't enough, I'm headed across the country to Baltimore in a couple of weeks for a brand new pool adventure. I'm really excited about it; anxiously hopeful that it works out well. I'll most likely write about it in an upcoming post, so stay tuned!

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.

Physics Don't Lie...

... but sometimes people do. Or maybe they don't understand physics. Or maybe they're just delusional. Or in denial. Or maybe all of the above.

Yeah, we had a bit of controversy on a shot yesterday at the annual 8-ball "cities" tournament, which is the local team qualifier for APA Team Nationals in August. As expected in tournaments like this, it was an extremely competitive environment and tensions ran high from time to time.

The shot in question is approximated in the diagram below. The opposing team's player was shooting stripes, and his object ball was on or near the rail as shown. My player's 3-ball and the cue ball were more or less as shown. A key point was: the cue ball had to completely pass the 3-ball in order to hit the object ball. Due to the ball positions, there was no possibility of a simultaneous hit (which would have been a legal hit).

Anyway, the player on the opposing team took the shot... and my player said "That was a foul, right? You hit the three first."

The shooter denied it. "No, it was a good hit, I hit my ball first."

My player replied, "Then how did you move the three?"

"I put a lot of draw on the shot, and it came back and hit the three afterwards."

The opposing captain jumped in with a (very weak) argument "He made the shot, how could he have made the shot if he hit the three first?"

I jumped in with "look where the three ended up, how could it possibly get there if he drew back into it after a good hit??"

A neutral bystander (high SL player) from a team at an adjacent table jumped in, saying "I saw it, it was a bad hit."

General chaos broke out for a minute or two... but it was quickly apparent that the shooter and his captain were not going to budge from their completely delusional stand that it was a good hit. Given that we didn't get someone to watch the hit, we had to fall back on the 'unwatched disputes go to the shooter' rule. Interestingly enough, I heard this very same captain reminding his players about the rule during the previous round (they happened to be playing at the table next to us). Apparently, he's a big believer in the rule.

Don't get me wrong, it's a decent rule to settle things when all else fails... but I also believe in being honest about the hit in the first place. Or at least being open-minded about evidence that counters what you think you saw. There is NO frigging way that the 3-ball could have been deflected forward to the middle of the end rail with a legal hit. Period. End of story. I don't care how much draw or what kind of English was used.

In hindsight, sure, we should have gotten someone to watch the hit. But hindsight is 20/20. This was not exactly an immediately obvious "hit watch" situation where the balls were frozen together or something. The shooter was also in the middle of a run and shooting at a fairly good clip, so the decision to get a hit watch would have had to have been a quick one. And calling for a hit watch would have been disruptive to the shooter's rhythm which I hate to do unless necessary... but so be it.

Because of this incident and particularly due to the attitudes displayed during and even well after the incident, I'm going to be a lot more careful (and quicker) about calling for hit watches when dealing with this player and/or captain in the future.

And why not? It's what they want. It's what they demand. They were very clear to us that it was our fault for not calling a hit watch. And it's tough to dispute that, but there's also fine balance between calling a hit watch when necessary and overdoing it. For me, the fine balance has been permanently tipped towards the cautious side when dealing with either member of this duo in the future. Fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice, shame on me.

There's two sides to the "you should have called a hit watch" coin as well. The best sportsmen will suggest to their opponent that it might be a good idea to get a hit watch. Think about it - being the shooter, they're in the best position to make the suggestion anyway... they have the best picture of the shot, and they know how they intend to approach it. The opponent often doesn't know what the shooter is going to do until he's down on the shot. This is particularly true in a non-rotation type game such as 8-ball. So while it's the opponent's responsibility to get the hit watch, it behooves the shooter to approach the whole situation in a reasonable and sportsmanship-like manner unless he wants to get shocked out of his stance in the middle of his practice strokes by his opponent exclaiming that he wants a hit watch.

Given the nature of this particular situation, I wrestled in my mind whether I should name names. It's generally been my policy to avoid doing so, particularly when dealing with negative situations. The focus of this blog is more about situations, technique, equipment, rules, my experiences, etc... and not individual people (unless I'm giving them kudos or something)... so I decided to focus more on the situation than the actual people involved because I'm sure there are people like this in just about every league across the country (and beyond).

While thinking about this, however, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen one of the names (the shooter) mentioned somewhere before... and sure enough, it turns out that he's a blogosphere veteran. Figure the odds of that one, eh? Small world.

It also turns out that the team in question went on to qualify for Nationals, so I'll congratulate them on that. They are a decent team, and my only hope is that they represent Las Vegas well... both in performance and sportsmanship. I'll add that this particular situation was not the determining factor in the outcome of the match between our teams. Although the bad call enabled the shooter to win the game in question, he was already well behind in the match, clearly out-gunned, and lost his match in the end anyway.

Kudos goes to my player for putting the incident behind him and continuing to kick butt despite the BS and spot of an extra game.

Reverse Angle Kick

In this game won and lost by fractions of an inch, I seem to be particularly adept at being on the wrong side of that inch fraction. Just last night, I blew an 8-ball break-and-run by over running position on the last ball by a half-inch. Ugh. Up 'til that point, the run was a nice challenging surgical cluster-busting run, not one of those magical ones where all of your opponent's balls line up neatly tucked away against the long rail while all of your balls end up hanging in open pockets (the remaining few that didn't drop on the break, of course). Oh, and the 8-ball sits there all by itself center-table.

No, it wasn't one of those. It was ducking in and out of traffic, making something runnable that wasn't really runnable in the first place. Then all I had to do was drift over near one of the opponent's balls for a simple stop shot on the key ball that would in turn leave me perfect shape on the 8-ball. Sigh. Whitey drifted ever so slightly too far. About a half an inch. Probably less. I could still hit my ball, but didn't have the angle I needed. Again.

The whole scenario got me thinking of some of the crazy stuff I've had to pull out of my butt (or at least attempt to) due to sloppiness in position play. I'm mumbling to myself, of course, because I'm sure none of you have this problem. ;)

It also reminded me of a game the previous week where I once again over ran position by about a half inch or less. The game was 9-ball that time, and I had a really delicate shot on the 1-ball in the corner pocket (next to the 5-ball as shown in the diagram). I obviously wanted to line up on the 2-ball which was a couple diamonds back up the rail. The 1-ball was far enough out from the corner that a stop shot wouldn't leave me the shape I needed, and I didn't want the cue left too far off the long rail or shape on the 4-ball would have been tougher. So I used a drag shot to slow the cue ball down but get just enough follow to put me near the pocket without scratching.

The good news is, I didn't scratch.

The bad news is, I followed it just enough to hook myself behind the corner of the pocket... unable to hit the 2-ball. Sooo frustrating. Worse, the 5-ball blocked just about every conceivable kick path I could think of (even a five-railer, Jeanette... sorry to report your ESPN "Tip of the Day" didn't help).

I sat there and scratched my head for a bit while my opponent chortled at my misfortune and I concluded it was Hail Mary time. I had a very narrow route to work with between the corner of the pocket and the 5-ball... heading pretty much towards the center diamond on the far rail. I first considered using right English to widen the angle off the foot rail and try to hit the 2-ball with a two-rail kick (in theory coming off the side rail between the 6 and 7-balls towards the 2-ball). I didn't have a good feel for the English required and angles involved, so I wasn't so crazy about that option.

I then considered another possibility. I wondered if I could load up on enough left English to reverse the kick angle and hit the 2-ball with a one-rail kick off the end rail? The 2-ball would be a bigger target from that angle (compared to above) and I also realized that if I wasn't able to reverse the angle that far, I might get it far enough to have a shot at hitting the 2-ball on the second pass after the cue ball came back off of the head rail.

Overall, I liked the odds a lot better, and was mainly just trying to get a good hit at this point (luckily, the 2-ball wasn't frozen to the side rail) but I honestly had no idea if I was going to be able to stroke the ball well enough in the vicinity of the pocket and the side rail and the 5-ball. And even if I managed to stroke it perfectly, I wasn't sure if I could bring it back that far. The chortling continued and perhaps even intensified.

I lined up... took a few practice strokes... took a couple extra... and unleashed my best effort.

The chortling halted abruptly and was replaced with "DUDE!!!"

I got the angle, made a good hit on the 2-ball... and... damn near made it! It rattled in the pocket next to the 5-ball. Yeah, a little luck was involved. But that's part of the game too, right?

2011 APA 8-ball Southwest Challenge Day One

The APA Southwest Challenge is a fun annual tournament that draws folks from all over the southwestern states. There are actually two of these tournaments per year: 8-ball in the Spring and 9-ball in the Fall. Teams of three with a skill level limit of 14 (15 for 9-ball) compete with a pre-set and continuously rotating roster order. This makes things interesting, because you're not able to control the match-ups... they're already determined for you based on how the roster rotates. This means the weakest player on your team may end up playing the strongest player on the other team (or vice-versa). Since they're all handicapped matches, everyone's got a chance... at least in theory.

The first day of the tourney is pretty laid back... registration, practice, and mini-tournaments. One of my teammates and I headed to the Riviera about 7:30 PM to get our team registered, check out the tables, and get some practice in.

When we got there, the conference room was pretty darn packed. There were somewhere around sixty tables and all of them were in use. We made our way to the registration desk and got registered... found out our team number (Las Vegas #12) and checked out the brackets. First round bye... yippee-skippy.

We saw a couple guys packing up their cues at Table #29 and jumped right on it before it had a chance to cool off. We were both shooting pretty darn well... trading games back and forth and finishing most of the games off in one or two innings.

And then, it happened. My break. A good solid break, nice even spread of the balls all the way back to the head rail, and a couple balls dropped. The cue ball planted fairly well near mid-table initially, but then got deflected slightly towards one of the side pockets. Still not bad though, and potentially runnable. Except for one thing.

I broke the frigging cue ball! I couldn't believe it. To borrow a phrase from a fellow blogger, OMGWTF!

In case you've never seen a broken cue ball, they don't roll very well. My hopes of a break-and-run quickly faded as we both stared in amazement at the broken cue ball. It was a decent quality ball too, a Magnetic Aramith like they normally have at APA tournaments at the Riviera (and like the one I tried to run through my dishwasher).

I guess I need to dial back a bit on the Wheaties or something.

I took the ball up to the registration desk and asked if they had another one. They didn't. Believe it or not, they actually wanted me to give them the broken one. Nice try, registration desk people. It's going to end up in a plexiglass box on my trophy shelf. Or something. It's not going to end up in their trash can.

So there you have it... day one of the 2011 Southwest Challenge, and I'm starting off with a bang (and a souvenir).

Return to BullShooters

I just got back from Phoenix where I competed in an APA Regional Qualifier for Singles Nationals, held at my previously disclosed favorite pool hall.

Overall, it was a great weekend. No, I didn't qualify for Nationals in 8-ball this year. I won several matches against some very good opponents and made to the semi-finals, then simply didn't play as well as I should have and lost.

I didn't play horribly, mind you. I made some very tough shots and even had some decent safeties but I made a couple of errors at key moments and my opponent was more than competent enough to take advantage.

After the match, she remarked "I made her think far too much for the first match of the morning."

I'm glad my strategy and safety play was appreciated.

Overall, I have mixed thoughts about the loss. Sure, I wanted to win... I pretty much always want to win. But since I'm already qualified for Nationals in 9-ball, I didn't have to win. And, I'll admit that I was wondering what it'd be like to juggle both 8-ball and 9-ball at Nationals. Sure, people do it... but I don't know how effectively.

In the end I think I'll probably be better off putting 110% into 9-ball at Nationals than 80% into both 8-ball and 9-ball. And that's the plan.

Two Balls One Hole

Wow - this is only my third post this month, and the month is almost over. Sigh. Been busy, been a little sick, had sick kids... stuff happens. Mostly good stuff, though. Part of my busy-ness has been gearing up for upcoming tournaments as I mentioned in a previous post. As promised, I have a couple of follow-up posts to that one coming up soon.

What else? Let's see... I'm working towards LASIK surgery in the near future (specifically iLASIK). Yes, I believe the time has come. I've been watching the state-of-the-art in eye surgery evolve for decades now. My mom was an office manager for two of the leading eye surgeons in Reno back in the 80's and 90's so that was a good opportunity for me and we did in fact discuss it, but I didn't pull the trigger for various reasons. The technology has advanced significantly since then, enough so that the procedure I'm looking at is the first to be approved by the military and NASA for pilots and astronauts.

I've also been following the OMGWTF vs. Asia Cycak saga with moderate interest and amusement. If you have no clue what I'm talking about and feel left out, a couple initial posts about it are here and here. The drama is real and sad in many ways, but it serves as a good reminder that you need to watch your back with some of the folks out there. The whole thing also reminded me of a recent article in the Vegas Billiards Buzz. Kudos to OMGWTF for her usual journalistic excellence on the subject. By the way, am I the only one thinking this might be an opportunity for a streamed grudge match in another medium... like Jello, mud, or oil? I'm sure I could come up with a venue for that here in Vegas. (did I just type that out loud?)

Anyway, back to the subject at hand... sometime last fall, shortly after I took over as captain of my Wednesday night 8-ball team, I sat down and read the APA Official Team Manual cover to cover. I didn't really expect to retain it all, but wanted to have a good idea of what was in there so I could refer to it when situations arise. I remember in particular a passage at the top of page 48 (part of the 'Pocketed Balls' section that began on the previous page): "It occasionally happens on tables with small pockets that two balls become jammed in a pocket and are leaning over the edge of the slate to some degree..."

Now, this is a cruel thing to slip into a book I'm reading. Why? Well, maybe it'd be helpful to know a couple of things about me: I currently work at a casino gaming machine manufacturer. We develop slot machines, slot accounting systems, player tracking systems, and so on. In other words, my current life is filled with probability and statistics math. As I read, part of my brain spun off a background process to calculate the odds of such an event happening.

Prior to getting into my current line of work, I was a nuclear reactor operator. Consequently, I'm very familiar with and even taught nuclear physics at a college level (at a Navy training facility). As you might guess, another part of my brain spun off a background process to figure out the physics involved in getting two balls jammed in a pocket during normal play. At some point, I believe one or both of those background processes attempted to divide by zero and my head about exploded.

Suffice it to say the odds are huge. Most people won't see it in their lifetime.

Well, it happened to one of the players on my Wednesday night team (Ron Worley) when he broke during his league match last Wednesday night, coincidentally at a bar I've blogged about before. Never a dull moment there I guess.

Several people witnessed it - players as well as onlookers with accumulated pool shooting experience totaling well into hundreds of years, and no one had seen it happen before.

Blind Scotch

OK, I think I've coined a new term using the "blind date" analogy. Blind Scotch is hereby defined as going into a scotch doubles tournament without a partner and matching up with whomever you can find similarly standing around, available, and looking for a partner. I did that today - and while we didn't finish in the money, I met someone new, had a good time, and think we did respectably well.

Today's 8-ball Scotch Doubles tournament at the Las Vegas Cue Club kicked off the new season for the Vegas Billiards Tour. As mentioned in previous posts, I joined the tour last year because I knew there were a lot of really good players in town that I wasn't getting exposed to. I felt rubbing shoulders with them at least once a month would help me improve, and I have to say that it has. Even though I didn't join the tour until Stop #4 last year, I accumulated enough points to finish in the top 25% or so of the standings and qualified for the final event at the end of the year. My goal, of course, is to do even better this year!

Unlike most of the Vegas Billiards Tour events, this stop was un-handicapped... relying solely on the skill level cap to keep the teams reasonably well matched. My partner and I fell a couple points short of the cap, but I think we were close enough to be in the mix. We got off to a rocky start, dropping the first match 4-2 (the race was to 4 on the east side of the bracket and 3 on the west side). I don't think we were all that out-gunned, we each just made a couple mistakes at critical times and perhaps more importantly played a team that appeared to be very familiar with each other's play. My partner and I were obviously at the other end of the spectrum in that regard, having only met minutes before and not even getting much chance to warm up together prior to the start of the tournament.

On the west side of the board, things came together for us and we rolled up a strong 3-0 victory in the first match. Our second match on the west side was against a strong team comprised of the 2010 Vegas Billiards Tour Champion paired up with Ms. oN a miSsioN (who assured me she'd make another post soon so I'm helping her out by putting it on the record).

It was a tough match, going hill-hill, with a defensive deadlock endgame in the last game. Their last ball was blocking a corner pocket, but we had a ball snugged up close to it so they weren't able to sink it from the vast majority of the table without fouling and likely giving us the game and match. We had another ball on the table that we were able to poke around defensively, allowing us to continue making legal hits. I think overall we had the upper hand at that point, but we all knew that it'd come down to whoever made the first mistake.

Unfortunately, my partner fouled while attempting to position our free ball for a breakout on the other ball... giving them ball-in-hand and the victory. He commented that we was glad that he was the one that made the mistake, and since he was the stronger player on our team I can understand his point - he didn't want it to end on a sour note for me, and I appreciate that. Overall, I was happy with our play, and I'd have no problem playing with him again. I got the feeling that he felt the same way, so it's all good.

Oh, and I learned something else today - bloggers live in glass houses - LOL. Shortly after my last match, a very observant onlooker (and good friend) declared that I was guilty of using my old rail bridge as opposed to my new rail bridge for at least one of my shots (not a break shot, since we were following BCA rules and I was therefore opting to break from just off-center of the head string rather than my usual spot near the side rail). The comment was well received, of course. I guess the new bridge isn't quite ingrained yet, and the old one came out in the heat of the moment. I'm pretty sure I made the shot anyway, but I definitely need to queue up some more practice to get that old bridge out of my system.

Them's the Breaks

We are only three weeks into the Spring season for APA and I actually haven't even played many matches in these opening weeks but so far I've managed to log three 9-ball "snappers" during league 9-ball matches and one 8-ball break during an 8-ball match. Time will tell if the trend continues, of course, but needless to say I've been pretty happy with my break lately.

The 8-ball break is particularly significant since it's the first one I've done in a long time (6 months, maybe?) due to pretty much abandoning attempts for intentional 8-ball breaks during that period of time. I stopped trying them because aiming at the second ball in the rack tends to be a riskier shot - it's fairly easy to scratch either by pocketing the cue ball or by hitting the cue ball off of the table. I was getting a good spread and pocketing balls more often than not with a 'normal' break, so I opted to reduce my risk and stick with that.

So what's changed recently? Well, after chatting a bit with Sondra Friestad earlier in the month, I realized it had been some time since I dedicated much more than perfunctory practice on my break. While very little of our discussion about breaking and break practicing made it into the edited version of the interview, she and I talked at length about the importance of a good break and how so few seem to dedicate time to practicing such a critical shot.

We were in complete agreement during that discussion because I remembered doing nothing but breaking for hours on end for a period of time about a year and a half ago... my kids ducking for cover and calling me names every time I sent the cue ball into the family room where they were... but I made some big improvements; got my power dialed up to a reasonable level, and got to the point that dry breaks were more the exception than the rule.

As a result of that intensive practice period, I've got a fairly strong break. I generally clock in at or just under 20 MPH as measured by the iPhone Break Speed app, which I think is pretty respectable. Once I got to the point that I was satisfied with my break, I more or less put it on the back burner while working on other areas of my game. (Hat tip to Michael Reddick for turning me on to the Break Speed app)

After my discussion with Sondra, I decided it was about time to circle back around and focus on my break again for a bit. Since I'm generally satisfied with the power of my break, I decided to put some time into improving my accuracy.

Probably the biggest factor in increasing my accuracy was an improved bridge, particularly when breaking from the side rail as I often do in both 9-ball and 8-ball. The bridge I used to use was a simple two-finger bridge as shown in the first picture to the left. Basically, the shaft glided over the felt on the rail and was loosely guided by my index and middle fingers.

While it's not apparent in the picture, the palm of my hand is elevated and no part of my hand (other than the two fingers) come in contact with the shaft. This is a fairly common rail bridge, but not a particularly stable one. It's extremely easy to move the tip side-to-side by moving the butt of the cue side-to-side, for example.

My improved bridge is shown at right. Notice how I've tucked my thumb underneath and laid it next to the shaft. The shaft now slides alongside my thumb and middle finger, and my index finger actually serves to snug the shaft up against my thumb and middle finger. This seemingly minor change results in a huge gain in lateral stability of the shaft.

With the old bridge, my fingers were only in contact with about 1/2 inch or at most an inch of the shaft (lengthwise) and they created a simple pivot point. I could easily move the butt of the cue side-to-side to freely move the tip side-to-side. With the newer bridge, my thumb and middle finger come in contact with about four inches of the shaft which eliminates the simple pivot point... I get much more resistance when I try to move the butt of the cue side-to-side. This bridge, in addition to some recent concentrated practice, has definitely improved my aim to the point that I'm much more confident in getting a good hit on the second ball (which is generally considered to improve your chances of sinking the 8-ball on the break).

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.

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.