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... ;)

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!

PoolSynergy: Thankfulness

Welcome to the November edition of:

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

This month is hosted by Melinda AkaTrigger, and her chosen topic is "Thankfulness" which is certainly appropriate since the United States has a holiday towards the end of the month called Thanksgiving. While it seems many people associate Thanksgiving with football and food (often the overindulgence thereof), the holiday is really intended to be a time to reflect and "give thanks" for the many blessings in our lives.

I have to say this was one of the tougher PoolSynergy topics for me... not because I lack appreciation, but more because I had a hard time coming up with something that I felt might be halfway interesting and pool-related without sounding corny or something.

Sure, I'm thankful for my health... my family... the roof over my head... the fact that I'm able to support my family and so on - and I'm very aware that many people struggle with some or all of the above. I wanted to dig a bit deeper and come up with something that might be perhaps a little more unique. Something that I feel might give me a bit of an edge in pool and something and isn't related to the ability (or lack of ability) to pony up some $$ for better equipment or instruction or table time or whatever.

For me, it's a much higher than average level of Attention to Detail. What does this mean? Generally, I tend notice a lot more things in the environment around me than the Average Joe (or Josephine). Sometimes it's a little awkward, because I notice things that I shouldn't (or wish I didn't)... but I usually consider it a pretty useful superpower. How can it be awkward or annoying? Well, for instance, it sometimes turns me into a freakishly overactive proofreader. If I'm reading an article or book that contains a lot of errors, for example, the errors jump out at me so much that they become distracting and detract from the informational content of the article.

It's definitely a sub-conscious activity - I recall noticing some misspelled words in a marketing video a few years ago. I was amongst a few hundred people viewing the video as part of a "preview session" prior to a major trade show. Portions of the video had numerous words popping on and off the screen in rapid-fire fashion, rotating, moving, fading in and out and so on to a pounding dance beat. The individual words weren't really meant to be read... certainly not all of them. It was just an effect kind of thing.

Unfortunately, my spider-sense kicked in, and I felt compelled to go up to the VP of Marketing after the session to tell him that I was pretty sure there were a couple of misspelled words in the video. I was trying to be helpful, thinking there might be time to make corrections before showing the video at such an important show. The VP asked me which words were misspelled and the odd thing was, I couldn't tell him! I only knew that my brain 'triggered' on at least two. He rolled his eyes a bit and gave me a "this video was professionally developed and proofed by dozens of people, I'm sure you're mistaken" line. I persisted, and convinced him to play the video again in slow motion. I was right, two misspelled words.

Other things tend to jump out at me as well - something out of place in a room, or details about someone's clothing, or whatever. Details in general. And that's where the "thankfulness" comes in. Partly because some of this is undoubtedly innate ability, but also because I had a father that drilled it into me as a child. My father was a policeman you see - and as you might guess, attention to detail is huge with policemen. Failing to notice a weapon tucked under a shirt or someone laying down in the back seat of a car could mean the difference between life and death... or failing to notice something ever-so-slightly out of place at a crime scene could mean the difference between getting a conviction or watching someone walk.

So it turns out attention to detail was my father's life. He made it his mission to make it a part of my life as well. I didn't enjoy it at the time, but I now realize it's probably one of the best gifts he gave me.

His method was simple but effective: he'd randomly pepper me with odd questions about things going on around us - while driving, he'd ask questions about things we passed after we passed them... signs, for example - "what elevation are we at?" "how many miles is it to Reno?" "what mile marker did we just pass?" In other settings, just about anything else was fair game - "what color socks did that lady have?" "what was the name on our waitress' name tag?" and so on.

He had the advantage, of course, because he knew when he was going to ask a question and could actively look for something obscure to ask me. That drove me crazy! At first, I hardly ever got an answer right, and he'd act as if I was some sort of failure... but over time, the competitive part of me took on the challenge. I began to soak up minute details of pretty much everything around us, and even discovered patterns in his questions... tipping the advantage in my direction by being able to anticipate what he was going to ask before he even asked it. I eventually got to the point that he could rarely stump me.

So how does this relate to pool?

I believe it gives me an edge when "processing" table layouts. I tend to see things that others miss, even players with a lot more experience (remember I'm an average hack who really hasn't been playing all that long, relatively speaking). Similar to the way misspelled words jump out at me... so do angles, wired combinations, caroms, billiards and the like. Just last week an experienced player painstakingly studied the table and executed a safety exactly as he intended to. It was a good safety - I'm fairly sure it would have stumped most opponents, but I noticed something obscure with the table layout during a previous turn at the table that turned out to be the key to turning his safety into a very quick and easy run out for me. I knew the answer to his safety before he even conceived and executed it! He was dumbfounded with the speed of my response.

So... as muscle memory can be built through practice and repetition, so can perception and other related activities... and I'm thankful that I had a father who took the time to develop that within me (although I hated it at the time).

Be sure to check out all of this month's PoolSynergy articles as well!

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.

English as a Lifestyle

OK, I seem to be continuing this trend of getting fewer posts up than in the past, but I'm sure it's just a phase I'm going through - LOL.

Truth be told, I've been extremely busy and playing pool nearly every night of the week lately. It's been a good run - but during this burst of activity, other parts of my life have fallen behind a bit. I haven't been able to concentrate on focused practice and drills. I haven't been to the gym in who knows how long. Normal around-the-house 'stuff' is falling behind a bit. My kids don't recognize me anymore (unless they want money or food).

And so it goes in the life of a Pool Hall Junkie!

Truth be told, I've enjoyed this burst of activity, and I think it's done my game some good. I don't begrudge any of it, and I don't feel like I've 'lost control' or burnt myself out. In some ways, it reminds me of the Fartlek training I did back in my high school years (hey, I didn't name it, only did it... and no beans were harmed).

I picked up some new experiences, played in new leagues, and met new people. All good things for my game!

Starting next month, I've decided to consolidate my league play a bit to free up some nights for other things like deep practice (The Talent Code) to focus on improving specific areas of my game. I've identified several areas that need attention, and put together a plan that should address them quite nicely. I'll be discussing the elements of my plan in future posts over the next couple of months.

Back to my recent burst of pool hall activity - one of the "new" things I did was join a 10-ball league. I've played in a couple 10-ball tournaments before, so it's not a completely new game to me... but this is the first time I've played it in a league setting. I've noticed that 10-ball has improved my overall game a bit. The called-shot format has forced a bit more discipline upon me... especially since you can only call one ball and one pocket. While playing 9-ball, I occasionally take shots that involve two or more balls through caroms or billiards. Often, I'd take such shots knowing the odds were good that I'd sink one or the other, or maybe both and any of the possible outcomes were fine as long as I made a legal hit and pocketed a ball. When you have to call one and only one ball/pocket, you're forced to look at the shot more critically.

The break is a little different in 10-ball too, but I'm happy to report that I've done a pretty good job of sinking balls on the break more often than not.

There are only two weeks left in the season, and it's been a great experience. I really like my teammates, and it's given me exposure to players I've never played before as well.

One such player I played last week. I had to spot him a game on the wire, so he's somewhat less average on the average hack scale than I am.

Um... have you ever picked up on something with an opponent that made you simultaneously cock your head to the side in WTF-type amazement, try to keep a straight face, and get eye contact with teammates to see their reactions? Of course you have! Well, at least some of you have.

This opponent seemed to be seriously enamored with English. Overly enamored. Terribly, dreadfully enamored.

Prior to most shots he'd stand upright, studying the shot... then say something like "1.5 right" to himself... get down on the shot and shoot it. I must say I usually ignore what people are saying to themselves at the table, and so it took me a little bit to pick up on this... but once I did, I found myself being drawn in with serious jaw-dropping WTFifness!

He was using English on just about every shot. Worse, it became apparent that wasn't just using English for position on the next shot. After missing a not-too-difficult bank into the side pocket, for example, he made a remark to his teammates along the lines of "I didn't get enough English on that one, I needed one and three-quarters tips of right and just couldn't get it."

And his teammates nodded silently.

WTF?

That shot in particular could have been made with a center ball hit... or pretty much anything in the vertical plane (draw/follow) and/or varying degrees of right or left English. Sure... some choices may have led to a scratch, but he wasn't explaining away a scratch... he was explaining away a miss! Bizarre. And even more bizarre that one of his better teammates didn't point that out to him at some point (he does have a couple of really good players on his team).

Numerous other thoughts came to mind: how was he "calculating" the needed amount of English for the shot in the first place? Was this method calibrated for his tip? His cue? The cue ball? His stroke? Was he even remotely aware of the numerous factors that affected the applied spin on the cue ball?

Anyway, it was entertaining.

Sure, there are differing opinions on the use of English, but personally I try to follow the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) as much as possible. I cue in the vertical plane of the cue ball whenever possible, and try to set up for natural position if I can. Of course that's not always possible. Yes, I use English here and there to get better position on the next shot. On occasion, I screw that up pretty badly which brings me back to Earth!**

The use of English for the sole purpose of sinking an object ball (via spin-induced throw or cue ball to object ball spin transfer) should be a very rare thing, in my opinion.

The bottom line is English introduces all sorts of additional variables into your game that can affect aim: throw, deflection, swerve, and squirt to name a few. Worse, some of these effects vary due to other factors such as ball cleanliness and so on... which introduces even more inconsistencies into your game as you travel from venue to venue!

** Ironically, I screwed up shape badly on the final 10-ball of this match with overzealous use of English... but managed to recover, thank goodness.

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?

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.

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).

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!

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.

Quick Update

I know all four of you have been sitting on the edge of your seats wanting to know how the APA season is wrapping up for me *cough* *cough* so I thought I'd give you a really quick update anyway.

Monday night is my 9-ball night and last night was our last night of the season. We were in first by a comfortable margin going into the night and had a decent (66-34) win, so I dare say we'll stay in first. I led off the night for us with a 14-6 win. 9-ball's been really good to me this season - not really sure why I'm doing significantly (and consistently) better in 9-ball than 8-ball, but I'm not going to complain. I lost only one match all season, and ended up #2 on the top shooter's list behind the guy who squeaked out a victory against me. He was undefeated going into this week (haven't heard how he did this week).

Wednesday night (8-ball) we won, but didn't win by enough to lift us out of the tie for third place. Unfortunately, we were tied with a team (I believe the only team in the division) that comes out ahead of us in a tiebreaker situation, so that dropped us out of the playoffs. In a somewhat odd twist of fate, we won the wildcard berth... so we're back IN the playoffs. Yes, pool gods exist, and they like fucking with us. We play this week against the first place team who we seem to have a handle on (we're undefeated against them, beating them in one of the matches 5-0). Hopefully the second place team (who we also do well against) will take out the third place team (who we struggle against). If things don't go to plan, we'll just have to cope... and we will!

Last Friday night (8-ball) we had a bye for the first round of playoffs since we were in first and it's a small division (only 4 teams). I guess some people actually do other things on Friday night? WTF? Anyway, I haven't heard who we play this Friday... but it's one team or the other. LOL

Sunday (Masters) we lost badly enough to cement our position in last place. What do they say? Oh yeah, it was a rebuilding season, that's it! We have some solid players, things just didn't go our way this time around.

There you have it. Back to regularly scheduled programming.

Hammer Week Wrap-Up

Quick update from my last post. The week was a mixed bag. Monday night I won but the team as a whole struggled... we lost, and dropped to second place. With one more week to go, I think we're solidly in the playoffs though... and it's very possible that we could regain first place with a decent win this week.

Wednesday night, we all struggled. Most matches (mine included) went down to the wire in hill-hill races... but the pool gods just weren't on our side and our highly motivated opponents pulled out the majority of wins to tie us in third place in the overall standings. We're going to need a big win against the first place team just to stay alive. We are capable of a big win against these guys... we beat them 5-0 last time we went up against them.

Friday night, I won and we won. I actually played really well Friday night, sweeping my opponent in straight games. I was a little worried in the first game, because I broke dry and then watched as she nearly ran the table... missing position on the 8-ball by just a couple of inches (why couldn't I have that kind of luck on Wednesday night!!??) I took advantage and ran out, then managed to stay ahead of her in the subsequent racks as well.

The biggest news of the week is... I got a new computer! Yay me! I got tired of begging and borrowing my daughter's computer and/or surviving on my iPhone and grabbed a new desktop at Costco on Black Friday to replace my still ailing laptop. I've been poking at that darn laptop for over a month now, and tried just about everything I could short of a destructive tear down and rebuild. I saw a decent deal on a desktop and figured that was the best way to support the pending destructive tear down and rebuild. Now all I have to do is suck the data off the laptop's hard drive and I'm golden even if I'm never able to resurrect the darn thing. I'm actually in good shape anyway, all of my really important stuff is backed up.

I hope everyone (in the US) had a great Thanksgiving... and now it's on to double hammer time for the last week before playoffs!

Hammer Time!

Another APA season is coming to a close, and of course that means playoffs and tournaments. All of my teams are in line for both at this point - at the beginning of the week my Monday night 9-ball team was in first place in their division, my Wednesday night 8-ball team is currently in second place, my Friday night 8-ball is in first, and my Sunday Master's team is in second place.

The races in some divisions are tighter than others... I feel pretty good about the Monday and Friday teams; a bit nervous about my Wednesday team because it's my baby - I took over as captain earlier in the season. It's a very solid team, but the race between the top five teams is extremely close and we're wrapping up the season against two very good teams. This week, we play a team that managed to sweep us 5-0 earlier in the season. I wouldn't say they're better than us overall, just got the right match ups and got the rolls, etc. It was one of those nights. Tonight is our chance to respond!

Next week, we play the team that's currently in first place in the division. Coincidentally, we managed to sweep them 5-0 earlier in the season, so I'm sure they're thinking the same things about us that we're thinking about tonight's team!

Good luck to everyone else out there wrapping up their season(s) as well - finish strong!

Also, to my US readers - I hope you have a very happy (and safe) Thanksgiving. And if you happen to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade... I feel the need to have a quick "proud parent moment" and point out that my son will be in it this year, marching and playing the euphonium in the Green Valley High School Marching Band.

He claims he'll be the one that trips and falls in front of 50 million TV viewers - LOL. I'm sure he'll do fine, but if someone does trip, I'll state for the record now that it wasn't him (even if it was).

The Rise... and Fall!

Ugh - t'was an awesome week last week and a lousy week this week. I'm still trying to figure out why but no obvious answers come to mind, so I think I'm just going to chalk it up to "one of those things" and move on.

Anyway - last Monday, my APA 9-ball team shot lights-out and swept our opponents 5-0 and point-wise 70 to 30. My match was actually the closest one of the night, with me winning by a single ball for a 12-8 win. That win propelled us from 5th place in the division standings to 1st. My Monday night team is a solid team - we've been together for over a year now and are gelling very well. Being in 5th place in the division was  unusual for us; we finished last season in 1st and generally hang out in the top three spots.

Then... Wednesday... my APA 8-ball team (the one in which I recently took over as captain), ALSO won 5-0! Prior to the match, we were in 2nd place in the division by a couple of points and the team we were up against was the 1st place team... so the win gave us the lead in the division by a decent margin. It was a fantastic night - we all shot incredibly well - there was just no touching us. It was our put up for the fourth match and I put up our best player, a SL 7, more-or-less expecting them to match their best player up with him. They didn't. Being down 3-0 at that point, I guess they decided to mix things up a bit and put up a very solid (probably somewhat underrated) SL 4 hoping he could manage to pick off two games in the resulting 5-2 race. It was actually a smart move, but it didn't work out for them. Our 7 shut him down with solid play (with a heavy dose of defense) and won in 5 straight games.

The second part of their mismatch strategy meant that I'd be matched up against their best player. He was undefeated so far in the season... solidly in first place in the division's "Top Gun" rankings... and really a good shooter overall. Prior to that night, I'd never played him head-to-head but watched him play several times (obviously, the same went for him). He won the lag and broke dry. It was a so-so break - not really open, but not too bad. I nearly ran out. Getting shape on my last ball was a significant challenge, there was a fairly small window that I had to get to, but I nailed the position with a decent angle to break out 8-ball. Then... I missed the shot on the 6... rattled it in the corner pocket. I lost focus, probably thinking too much about the breakout (which I nailed) and not enough about the shot itself. Luckily, I got the table back before too much damage was done and was able to finish it off for the win... starting things off 1-0 with a decent "yeah, I'm here to play" statement. We then traded some games back and forth and I ended up winning before he could get to the hill. Very nice way to cap off a great night!

Then... THIS week. My Monday night team had a bye, so nothing to report there. Then, absolute disaster struck on Wednesday night, and we lost 0-5! WTF!? Our opponents were a solid team, but I wouldn't say any better than the team we played the previous week. It just seemed nothing was working for any of us. Yuck. Luckily, we were in first by a decent margin and the team that beat us was down far enough in the standings that they couldn't overtake us. Depending on how the other teams did, we might still be in first... or at least not too far out. A good wakeup call, and it came at a relatively harmless time... it wasn't during playoffs or a tournament or anything, and there's plenty of season left in which to recover.

I'm wondering if the Monday night bye was a factor? There's a lot of player overlap between the Monday night and Wednesday night teams. Maybe that broke our stride a bit.

On to next week!

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!

Happy Birthday!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big Weekend of Pool

I spent most of Saturday (until 1 AM) playing a 10-ball tournament here in Las Vegas. The tournament was part of a local tour. Having never played 10-ball before, I mainly went for the experience and to see some of the very best players in Las Vegas. That said, imagine my surprise and delight to have a decent run and make it into the money - placing 7th/8th out of 51 of the best players in Vegas!

Even though I didn't join the tour until its fourth stop, that finish actually put me within striking distance of having enough points to make it into the final event at the end of the tour. I'm very glad I went and learned a lot just by watching some of the great players there. I even heard someone utter the infamous line "that wasn't so great of a run out, all of his shots were easy." I shot really well the first couple of matches, then struggled in the 3rd match against the person who eventually won the tournament (he was struggling too - it was an agonizing hill-hill match, to be honest). I then had a couple of decent wins on the one-loss side of the board to land me in my final resting place of 7th/8th.

As I always try to do, I came out of the tournament with a couple of "lessons learned"... one of the early matches was the first time I've ever lost a game to the "three foul rule" so I need to be more wary of that in the future. I'll give my opponent credit, it was a very good play on his part. I won the match against him anyway, so the lesson learned didn't cost me too much. My second "lesson learned" was to keep a better eye out for a shot on the money ball(s) when I get ball-in-hand. There were not one but two situations in matches on the one-loss side of the board where I had ball-in-hand and was actually lining up on a shot to sink the next object ball when I realized there was a reasonable combo on a money ball. Luckily, I caught each of them in time... and sunk both combos for wins. If I'm not mistaken, both of those wins were actually match wins rather than just game wins. Playing mostly APA 9-ball, I guess I'm used to playing for points rather than looking for the money ball. And since I've never played 10-ball, I'm definitely not used to looking for the 10-ball!

Last night, I had a great 9-ball match in APA league play. I was up against a higher skill level player whom I've played several times before. The two of us are very competitive, and we always seem to bring out each other's best games. I was shooting well, and managed to jump to a substantial lead. With only two points to go for the win, he missed a very tough thin rail cut shot on the 7-ball, which was about a diamond and a half away from the pocket on the head rail. He inched the 7-ball closer to the pocket for me, but it was still a tough angle (probably around 80 degrees) and a long shot... more than three-quarters of the table. I made the 7, but then watched the cue ball slowly roll the length of the table to its final resting place in the corner pocket for a scratch. Under the conditions, I'm not sure if there's much I could have done differently - I may not have made the shot if I took much speed off the cue ball; and given the thin cut, I didn't have many options as far as English goes. Anyway, my opponent seized the opportunity and pretty much ran three racks while I watched for an incredible come from behind victory. It's always disappointing for the "it ain't over til it's over" maxim to apply to the other guy, but I can't feel bad about forcing someone to play like a pro for three racks just to eek out a two-point victory. Kudos to him!

Crazy Week!

Wow, it's been a week full of pool! I played every single day/night except Friday and even then I took advantage of the lull in action to get a couple hours of drills in at home.

As I previously wrote, Sunday was the most demanding day of the week for me. Monday was a normal 9-ball league night where I was put up against a tough opponent who had recently been 'downgraded' in skill level (I seem to be bumping into that a lot lately). She shot very well and jumped out to a quick 9-1 lead on the first rack, but then I was able to chip away steadily at her lead to bring it down to the wire. She actually sunk the winning point when I still had two points left, but she also scratched on the shot giving me ball-in-hand and the victory. I dodged a bullet on that one!

Tuesday night I participated in APA qualifier boards for regional tournaments to be held in October. I made it to the finals in two 8-ball boards, but unfortunately lost both matches in close games. I managed to qualify in 9-ball though! This is a little surprising, because I consider 8-ball to be more my game than 9-ball... but it's good to "go with the flow" and go with whatever is working. This qualification will give me motivation and opportunity to improve my 9-ball game.

It's really not my intention to give you a blow-by-blow of my play every week, so I'll spare the details of the rest of the week other than to say our handicap advantage didn't carry us through the whole 9-ball doubles board this morning. We handily won our first match and were in the lead in the second match (only needed three points to win!) but hit a wall... we got hooked over and over again it seemed and the other team was able to put together a nice comeback. Very disappointing for us of course, but we really can't fault our play... I think we did well. Sometimes the rolls just don't go your way.

Skill Levels and Handicaps

I had a very interesting and unusual 8-ball APA league match last night. My captain sent me up against a guy I'd played in the past and beaten, if I recall correctly... but the thing that got me was a comment my captain made as I went to the table, "by the way, he's a three now."

I thought to myself, "wait a minute... did she just say THREE?"

I casually wandered back to the score sheet and took and look and sure enough... a 3.

The last time I played him, he was a five and I was a three. I imagine he felt the handicap that night because he told me after the match that I wouldn't be a three much longer when he congratulated me. Now, the tables had surely turned with him being a SL 3 and me being a SL 4.

I saw him practicing prior to the match, and he sure seemed to be moving the ball well and making shots and so on... pretty much what I'd expect to see for someone in the SL 4, 5, or even 6 range. In other words, he didn't appear to be shooting like a three... he didn't seem to have a physical handicap like he might have if he had been in an accident or had a stroke or something. I knew this guy well enough to know that he didn't typically participate in tournaments or anything that would give him reason to try to manipulate his handicap and I also knew him well enough to think that he wasn't really the type to do that anyway. So curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to ask.

I asked casually, "Hey, weren't you a 5 last time we played?"

He responded in a soft tone, "yeah, I was."

"What happened?"

"I don't know, I've just been losing a lot lately... and I didn't play for a couple of months as well."

"You look like you're shooting pretty well to me... good luck!"

"Thanks, I'm trying to snap myself out of it."

He seemed genuine, and even a bit frustrated and low on confidence. I was still a bit baffled about the whole thing, but wasn't upset or anything. I couldn't think of a better match up for him - we had higher and lower skill level players available on our team, but a higher SL player would have faced an even tougher race and a lower SL player probably wouldn't have much of a chance of keeping up with him. I knew I had my work cut out for me, but I just decided to do my best and concentrate on my game if nothing else. I didn't have a high expectation of winning, to be honest... but not in a defeatist kind of way, if that makes sense.

He won the lag, broke, and nearly ran out. We were off to the races! I had a decent run of 5 balls or so, then rattled a pocket. He ran out and sunk the 8 to go on the hill in the 3-2 race. In game two he broke dry and I ran a few balls but realized the layout didn't support a run out, so I played a safety when the opportunity arose. It was an OK safety, but did leave him a bit of a shot. He made the shot, ran several, then missed. I ran a few more and missed. He got to the 8-ball first... and then scratched on the 8! I broke and game three was pretty similar to game two with both of us having decent runs and him beating me to the 8... then scratching again on the 8-ball to put me on the hill!!! I couldn't believe it... and neither of his scratches were  something he could have done on purpose (in my opinion)... there were rails and ball deflections involved in both of them... it was crazy!

But in any case, I found myself on the hill and about to break... and seemed to have karma on my side. I went for an 8-ball break and got good movement on the 8, but it didn't drop. It was a good break spread-wise, and I dropped two stripes so I was hoping I could run out - the only real challenge was the 8 being frozen to a solid. I indeed ran out except for the 8... which I tried to break out during the run, but missed. So I played a quasi-safety to break out the 8 and put it in better position, figuring I'd probably get another turn due to the layout of his balls. I did get another turn, and blew it! Ugh. But I improved the position of the 8 in the process. I got a second shot at the 8 and sunk it, winning the match.

Four games... 9 total innings... I played two defensive shots and he played one - and I burned an extra inning on the 8 in the last game so it certainly wasn't a typical match against a SL 3!

It was one of the more bizarre situations I've had in a long time - but I didn't let it get to me, concentrated on my game, and ended up prevailing (with luck on my side for sure). As we've heard many times - it ain't over 'til it's over.

I guess in closing I have a chance to badmouth the APA handicap system but I won't. All in all, I think it's a good system and meets its goal of allowing so-so players to compete with better players and vice-versa. It's not a perfect system for sure, but I certainly don't have any brilliant ideas to make it better. I know from experience that the APA is very sensitive to the possibility of "sandbagging" - particularly at high-level tournaments. They do what they can to keep things fair, and I appreciate that.

I know for sure that I've been the beneficiary of a favorable handicap as well. As I've mentioned before, I do tend to be pretty inconsistent at times. As a result, I have been accused of sandbagging myself. I honestly have never ever tried to manipulate my handicap. I also don't try to second-guess the magical APA computer. In situations where I'm asked to declare my SL, I declare it as I know it to be in the computer. I play my game and play to win, period. Sometimes it goes well... sometimes it goes extremely well... and sometimes I stink it up big time. Next Saturday I'll be hitting another Team Nationals qualifier tournament (9-ball) with what should be an extremely favorable handicap... so we'll see how it goes.