Random Snootiness

So earlier this month I flew to St. Louis, MO.

It was a hastily put together trip. Given the time constraints, I actually had to buy plane tickets before I knew for sure I'd have a reason to fly out there. Things worked out as hoped, however, and I did indeed have a reason for the trip.

I've never been to St. Louis. Even though my ancestral family first settled in Missouri in the mid-1800's and still predominantly lives in the area, I have to admit that I know very little about the regional culture and so on.

Regional culture can encompass many things, of course - music, entertainment, customs, etc. But when I travel, I primarily zero in on the food aspect. Why? Well, mostly I like food. I like a wide variety of food, and generally make a point of sampling the local fare whenever I travel. If I have time, I try to check out other forms of local culture as well, but I don't always have time in my schedule for those types of things... especially if I'm travelling for business.

I always have time for food. Always. And I usually do my best to try some food specific to the region - especially if I've never tried it before. I'm a pretty good sport about trying anything once, and I've had some pretty exotic things. I've had kangaroo and Vegemite in Australia (no, not together in the same dish), balut in the Philippines, something I watched being made but still have no clue what all was in it in Singapore, alligator in Florida, some pretty crazy things in S. Korea, king crab in Alaska, crab cakes in Maryland, friggin drop dead awesome beef brisket in Austin, cioppino in San Francisco, pizza in New York (and Chicago) and, well, you get the point.

Given the short notice for this particular trip (as well as the duration of the trip; only two days), I had precious little time to do food research. Nearly zero time, actually. It was all done via Google on my iPhone while waiting at the gate for my outbound flight. I tried to think of what St. Louis might be famous for... BBQ? Hmm, not really... that seemed like more of a Kansas City kind of thing. But wait a minute, isn't there such a thing as St. Louis-style ribs? It's one of the cuts offered in restaurants across the country. Surely if they earned the namesake, there must me something to the ribs in St. Louis... so ribs was quickly adopted as the target for the trip.

A couple quick Internet searches while groups prior to mine were boarding... ribs... good ratings on said ribs... appearing on the map as being between the St. Louis airport and my destination... no? Damn. Well, how about at least not too far out of the way and easy access to the freeway that goes to my destination? Bingo. Roper's Ribs. I'd have to head away from my destination on the freeway for a few miles to get there but not too far, and the access to the freeway looked good.

Roper's Ribs it is.

This photo of Roper's Ribs is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Other than its location on a map and the fact that I saw a few good ratings, I knew absolutely nothing about Roper's Ribs... but that's OK, that's how I roll sometimes.

I had no idea how small it was. Turns out that it's mainly a take-out place. The 'dining room' is probably about the size of one of my kid's bedrooms and only has four small tables (one of the tables is pictured here). It reminded me of a similarly small BBQ place in Colorado Springs, except none of the tables (or chairs for that matter) matched in the Colorado Springs restaurant.

The BBQ in Colorado Springs hole-in-the-wall was outstanding, though, and I hoped for more of the same here.

I placed my order - a ribs and shrimp combo - and sat at the table by the front window. While I waited, a steady stream of customers came in to either pick up orders that they had called in or place orders for pickup. In all, I probably heard at least a dozen orders being placed... and every single order... and I mean EVERY... single... order... had a common item in it. Snoots. Ribs & Snoots. Shrimp & Snoots. Rib Tips & Snoots. Snoots by themselves. Snoots, Snoots, Snoots. I found myself wondering... "WTF are Snoots?" "This place ain't called 'Roper's Snoots' dammit... are you people insane?" I didn't see any awards for Snoots on the website (or on the walls in the dining room for that matter).

I wondered if there was some secret unadvertised cheap special for these things called Snoots, but there wasn't.

I wondered if I should change my order to include Snoots.

I wondered if I should order Snoots-to-go after eating my meal.

I wondered if some random person sitting in the dining room would take offense if my fork accidentally stabbed one of the Snoots on their plate. I thought better of it after reminding myself that I may very well be the only white person in a one mile radius (nothing wrong with that at all in my opinion... but I was obviously a guest in the neighborhood and should act accordingly).

I mostly wondered what I was missing out on.

Before long, they called my number to let me know my order was ready and I went to the window to retrieve my Snoot-less styrofoam container. The ribs were very good, although not the absolute best I've ever had (granted, I've been to the famous Memphis-in-May national rib competition, so I've had some damn good ribs). The shrimp actually stunned me. They were excellent. Big, firm, juicy, excellent batter... that was the shocker for me. I expected the ribs to be great and the shrimp to be passable like they are in far too many restaurants across the country. These shrimp, in my opinion, would justify changing the name of the restaurant to "Roper's Shrimp"... but I guess that wouldn't have the same ring to it.

I left Snootless, but I'll be back.

I see several trips to St. Louis in my future... another one is already booked in September.

The folks at Roper's - the staff as well as the random customers I chatted with - were all super friendly people. Big smiles, great food, and friendly conversation - what more can you ask for?

I can ask for Snoots, that's what. Next time I drop in, it'll be a Shrimp & Snoots combo, please.

PoolSynergy: Volume 24 - When Sharks Attack!

Hi and welcome to Volume 24 of PoolSynergy!

With this issue of PoolSynergy, two full years of monthly article collections are now in the archives! Believe it or not, it was two full years ago when John Biddle and other billiard blog pioneers joined forces to kick off the inaugural issue of PoolSynergy with the topic of Strategy.

Since that initial volume, the online pool community has been blessed with a steady stream of monthly topics from a wide variety of contributors - over thirty people have written at one time or another!

As a relative newcomer, I didn't join the fray until about a year ago with the 11th edition: GEAR: What's in Your Case and Why? hosted by Samm Diep (now Samm Vidal Claramunt). Since then, I've done my best to contribute as often as possible. I don't think I succeeded in contributing every month, but came close!

This month, I hoped to stir up a feeding frenzy with the topic of "When Sharks Attack" but alas, many of the regular PoolSynergy contributors sent along their regrets as they were otherwise engaged fending off tsunamis, infestations, and other natural disasters in real life.

John Biddle has been with PoolSynergy since the beginning... in fact he was the beginning, pulling the initial batch of writers together and hosting the Strategy topic I mentioned above. John takes what I imagine will be considered a bit of a contrarian view that sharking is over-hyped and over-rated.

Melinda (AkaTrigger) has been with PoolSynergy from the beginning as well. She's one of the more prolific bloggers, and managed to pull together her article somewhere between touring pool halls of Europe and winning the Texas State ACS title. Melinda covers many aspects of sharking - from tactics admitted by a sharker, to sharking among the pros, to her own confession of sharking in the past (say it isn't so!!). Read all about it in her article When Sharks Attack.

Michael Reddick adds his wisdom on the subject with some examples as well as some advice on how to deal with such situations when they arise. Michael's Angle of Reflection blog took top honors this year from Billards Digest Magazine. Apparently feeling the need to prove he can perform as well as he can write, Michael also recently qualified for this year's US Amateur Championship. Check out Michael's thoughts here: Shark Attack.

I play cleanup with some of my thoughts, observations, and tips on the subject as well.

PoolSynergy: When Sharks Attack

Welcome to the October edition of:

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

This month I'm your humble host, and I asked fellow contributors to discuss their thoughts, experiences, and/or advice on what is known in the world of billiards as 'sharking'.

Sharking, in a nutshell, covers a wide range of antics that may be employed to distract an opponent while they're shooting. Sometimes it's visual, such as motion in the line of sight or at the edge of the shooter's peripheral vision... sometimes it's audible, such as a well-timed comment or other sound such as a cough... and sometimes it's mental, such as a comment that's intended to provoke thought well after it's originally made (presumably while shooting).

Of course not every comment, cough, or movement is or should be considered to be sharking. This is an important point, and please take it on board. I've seen more than one person get so hung up on this kind of thing that they drive themselves batty just thinking they're being intentionally sharked when they're not. Pool halls and bars tend to be crowded, noisy, distracting places and you need to be able to cope with that or you'll find yourself limited as to how far you can progress in the sport.

The best pool players have honed their concentration skills to the point that they can tune just about anything out. Take, for example, this video of Efren playing in a noisy, crowded bar:



Or how about this one where Earl runs out while there's still commotion going on after a large bucket full of water fell from the ceiling into the stands:



I guess my overall initial point is that "stuff happens" and the better you can tune it out, the better off you'll be whether the stuff happening is being done to intentionally distract you or not.

On the other hand, I'm convinced that there are players out there with serious ethical and sportsmanship issues who feel somewhere deep inside that they can't beat you without resorting to sharking in some form or another. These are the folks that you need to arm yourself against... while still being mindful that the actions may indeed be innocent.

So what to do? It's a good question, and in my opinion there's no single 'right' answer that covers every situation.

One of the more common distractions I've seen is idle chatting, and more importantly trying to engage you in conversation while you're at the table. Seems innocent enough - after all, pool is often considered a social sport as it's usually done in a (supposedly) social setting such as a bar or pool hall. Intentional or not? It's tough to tell, and I'd tend to say it's usually unintentional... but I know that's not always the case. The best way to deal with this is to simply tune them out if you can. Simply do not allow them to engage you in conversation! Do not talk back to them! Ignore them and concentrate on your shooting.

Another distraction I've seen is the 'table hugger'... the guy who's up at the table chalking his cue or whatever while you're trying to shoot. Again, sometimes this is simply someone with a nervous habit or otherwise clueless about what he's doing. If he's truly clueless, asking him politely to step away from the table or out of your line of sight should do the trick.

Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a little more persuasion to deal with the situation. You might have to be a little firmer with your requests in order to get through. Do your best to keep your cool though! If you let it get to you, chances are it's having an increasing effect on your concentration (and game).

Another option that I've tried with known repeat offenders is to simply mirror them. Whatever they do at the table when you're shooting, do it right back when they're shooting. Don't exaggerate or "one up" them... just match them as closely as you possibly can - and do it in a casual manner too, rather that making a weird "see, I can do this too" expression on your face or something. I've found that one of two things will happen when you do this: (1) they'll say something to you about you doing it, which of course opens up a dialog in which you can politely request that they in turn refrain from doing the same thing... or (2) their sharky actions while you're at the table will magically 'disappear' without comment (and, of course, you should then do the same).

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.

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.

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).