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.