Forced E8

I am so glad I won my match last night. Our team lost 2-3 but at least we made it to the rubber match. I played fourth, and with my win I evened things out 2-2. This was the last play of my match, against a SL5. At this point I was ahead three games to one (WWWL, in that order) and only needed one more. In this final game my opponent had almost lost when he hit a shot too hard, causing the 8 to roll straight toward the corner pocket. Fortunately for him, the cue ball was rolling alongside it and nudged it off course a few degrees, preventing an E8 (APA term for "early 8," as opposed to S8 for a "scratch on the 8"). I muttered something to myself about how lucky he had gotten, and went on to run a few balls. Then I got to this scenario.

I called a timeout with Chris just to think things over out loud. (A quick note about Chris. He had just lost his match, stringing together, incredulously, consecutive losses via E8, S8, E8. Whereas a few weeks ago he won his match with two consecutive 8BRs--8 on the break--so he can be hit or miss, so to speak). My idea was to force my opponent to go for his 14. Sure, I could have banked the 6 ball cross-side. But I wasn't crazy about the reverse angle on it and I didn't want to leave him access to his 11-15 mess if I missed. Plus, the payoff for my plan was much better: by deliberately caroming the cue ball off my 6 into the 13 (from C1, in the highlighted area), leaving the cue ball right there, it would force him to go for the 14. And I just knew that the angle for the 14 was such that, in order for him to make it, he'd have to hit it at a speed that would make the cue ball come back downtable toward the pocket with the 8 in front of it. So you could say it was a trap I set for him, and he totally went for it. I was almost giddy as he got in position to shoot the 14. As I had hoped, he hit it firmly and the ball came rolling back exactly where I had wanted it, pocketing the 8. Before it even touched the 8 I elbowed Chris as if to say "told ya so."