It’s been an interesting week. Thursday I finally won my first 9 ball match of the season. It’s been in rough I’m, 1-7 for the season I think it’s the worst season I have ever had and I feel like I’m playing great so it’s been strange. Anyway it was a 65-46 race I won 65-19. Missed a couple shots that I regret but ultimately I played fine.
This weekend i played in a petty big 8 ball tournament. It was a pretty strong field but I was very comfortable. I arrived two hours earlier had a good breakfast good night sleep. Played well all day and in to the evening. I finished in second place it was a great day.
As a high skill rank team captain there are a few ways to approach team building. I like to recruit people with no experience in pool and teach them to play better. My opponent last night has a different method. He likes to dump until his skill rankings drops. As a SL6 he not only can’t be beaten but also gets an extra skill point on the bottom end to use.
What in saying is yes I won my 5-5 match 5-2 last night. But the guy I played wasnt trying to win, so who cares. You get all kinds of people in league.
Looks like my 8 ball team is back in first place.
I love pool…
After the end of the Mosconi cup which by the way the us U.S. won it leaves a giant hole in your life that can only be filled with distractions like the gym and skiing. I hear the mountain calling me. Yay pool!
Tonight was fun league was cancelled for the holliday and folks were holding Apa qualifiers all over the place. I managed to get a spot in one. It was a open skill ranking tournament so I was spotting games all over.
Match 1: 6-2 race I won 6-1
Match 2: 5-4 race I won 5-0
Match 3: 5-4 race I won 5-2
Match 4: 5-3 race I won 5-0
I had a great time.
Took a little road trip today to play a little $10 tournament. Got there at noon stayed till 1:30am. I am really good at going to pool halls, not so much leaving them. I played terribly in the tournament, won one match lost two. I finally warmed up three hours later. Anyway they didn’t charge me table time so I played my new friends all night.
For the last week I have been crazy busy with family. The wife is traveling in India for work and 24 hour single parent style is totally uncool. Folks who raise multiple children while working full time jobs alone are pillars of willpower. Not quite sure how that works and I will definitely be pretty psyched when the wife gets home.
Thursday my 9 ball team won 58-37 in four matches. I couldn’t play and we had to forfeit the last match when no other players showed up for the last match (15 points). This of course begs the question how did we manage to win 58-37 lol. I don’t rightly know…
Tonight a friend from a far away land thanked me for helping him with his game. It reminded me how cue sports really can create friendship between folks all over the world.
Last night was league for my now third place 8 ball team. We were one point behind the two teams tied for first. With the wife out of town I had family babysitting the kids. I had promised to be back by 9:30. I played the second match after we lost the first one 0-3. My match was a 5-2 race I won 5-0 giving the team a 3-3 tie. Then I raced off to get the kids. In the end my team won 7-6 so we are probably at least tied for second.
I had a great weekend played three friends won 13-7, 13-6 and 7-1. I love when I have time to actually go and play people. Family is the best but it’s fun to get out and play sometimes too.
It’s funny looking at how I feel about this season so far. It’s been a fun season and I feel like I have enjoyed it. But according to my record it has been a season of objective failure. I have played six 9 ball matches and lost all six. Tonight it was a 65-46 race I lost 57-46. Over the last six matches I scored 309 points versus my opponents 287 points a difference of 22 points. Sadly to win all six matches I needed to score 390 to their 287 a difference of 103 points. If I break it down into little bites I needed to score a little more than a rack (13.5 points) more than I did per match. Looks like I need to try just a little harder for the rest of the season. Luckily in 8 ball I am doing fine.
I am my teams captain and I feel a little responsible for some of my teams success and most of the failure. Because of this I like to have a plan most of the time. Tonight I had a plan that could have worked out better. It involved me not playing, probably a mistake. We ended up losing 6-8 vs the last place team. We are currently in first place so depending on how second and third did we are either still in first place or at least in the top 3.
That was quite a weekend. My 9 ball team finished last season high enough to play the post season where we won the right to play in a tournament (tri annual) to qualify for the state championship next summer.
This weekend was that tournament. We did really badly lost two matches with a 1-8 record getting knocked out in the second round. I only played once the very last match. It was a 65-19 race I ended up losing 34-19. Had I managed to win we would have moved on to the next round even with our terrible showing but I failed. I guess it happens like that sometimes. Afterwards I was a referee for the other teams and played pool all night while waiting to be called to officiate. I got about 10 hours of practice in it felt great.
League is funny, one week your team is an unstoppable force the next you are struggling to survive. It’s really just a dice roll most of the time and everyone is going to trend towards a 50% lifetime win percentage most of the time. The place you can really affect the outcome is in the unforced errors.
Last night nearly every match was decided by unforced errors. Sadly most of them were on our side. I was playing a 5-3 race and only managed to get 4 games. It’s always hard losing because of the spot but that’s the game. Had I not made 4 or 5 silly sloppy errors it would have turned out differently.
My team lost 4-11 in the end. Even with out loss we are probably in first place but it’s kinda hard to tell before the scores are processed.
Installed a new break tip for guy from league. Went with an Ultraskin heavy hitter it should help him with his miscuing issue.
My team crushed it tonight. Everything went really well we won the match 12-1. My match was a 5-2 race I won 5-0 giving my team 3 points. I think my opponent feels like I am a better player than I really am and he let it get into his head. I really think 5-2 in this case should be an easy win for the guy I played, but he just couldn’t get out of his own way.
I had an awesome lesson today. It was my first official lesson teaching a kid. The best part was when his dad asked him how it was having a two hour lesson and my student replied “That was two hours?”. I am so glad he learned something and enjoyed doing it.