I beat Billy Idol in pool

I am sitting here using some anonymous neighbor's WiFi while waiting for a technician from Verizon to come check the DSL. Since Saturday afternoon we've been without our regular service and it's gotten old real fast. I do see that the blog here is in desparate need of an update, so I'm going with a quick visit I made to Two by Four a few weeks ago. It was around 11pm on a Saturday night and I was killing some time before I was to go to National Underground to watch a couple of my old neighbors play a live set as part of their new trio called The Pleasure Model. Long story short, the trip to Two by Four was was an impulse decision, likely because my bank is right across the street and I had gone to get some cash. There was nothing too memorable about the inside of Two by Four, with the exception of the guy I played (above), who had an uncanny resemblance to Billy Idol. He even had a bit of the lip curl thing going on. He had requested a bunch of Iron Maiden on the jukebox and it was amusing to watch him rock out as he was playing his friend. It was easy to see he was a bit of a wreckless shooter, hitting the ball too hard, not calling caroms, going for low-percentage banks, etc. Once it was my turn to play him he didn't slow down one bit, especially not when "Run to the Hills" started kicking in. At one point he made an incredible masse shot that I would never have tried. Slowly but surely I wore him down by shooting and ducking, never leaving him a shot on his one solid at the other end of the table. At the very end of it all I made an extremely thin cut on the 8 ball. His friend came over to compliment me on the shot and I said "Thanks, are you next?" He said "Nah, we gotta go put coins in the parking meter outside." A few minutes later I went outside to see what was taking them so long, and of course they were nowhere to be seen.

Nuances

I want to clear up a few things regarding an argument I had with a player this week at Sophie's. It was during the third match of the night and we were down 0-2. I had lost earlier, in the first match, and had been replaying scenarios in my head from my match and was pretty pissed at myself for some of my poor decisions. My apologies to everybody for the temper tantrum. But what I want to write about is infinitely more interesting than anything else I've got lined up for the blog this week, so here goes.

Basically we're dealing with a post-safety situation. Like I said, it wasn't my match, so the details of ball placement, table layout, etc. are a little sketchy. All I remember and took note of is where the opponent's two stripes were. I got out of my seat just to see what all was frozen. I saw that the 10 ball was frozen and that the 9 ball clearly was not. In hindsight, I should have announced this to both players. But doing so didn't really feel like any of my business, as it wasn't my match--I was simply curious. The opposing player lined up for a long kick shot into the 9 ball. But he missed the 9 entirely and the cue ball came rolling back up the table and rubbed off the 10. I said something like, "Shouldn't that be ball in hand?" Apparently, because I hadn't declared it frozen earlier, it was a mute point.

Here's what the APA rulebooks says about frozen balls:

"The ball-in-hand fouls are as follows: ...

c. Failure to hit a rail after contact. A rail must be hit by either the cue ball or any other ball after the cue ball and the object ball contact ... A sentence that should answer many questions is: ANY ball must go to a rail AFTER LEGAL contact. [capital letters not mine]

d. The object ball is frozen to a rail and the player is contemplating playing a safety. In order for the following frozen ball rule to be in effect, the opponent must declare that the ball is frozen and the player should verify. Once it is agreed that the ball is frozen, then the player must either drive the object ball to another rail (of course, it could hit another ball, which in turn hits a rail), or drive the cue ball to the rail after it touches the object ball. If the latter method of safety is chosen then the player should take care that he quite obviously strikes the object ball first. If the cue ball strikes the rail first or appears to hit both the rail and ball simultaneously, then it would be a foul unless either the cue ball or object ball went to some other rail."

Reading the wording of that rule bores me to death. And it gets murky, especially in the case of this shot, when one tries to define the term "object ball." Intended object ball or incidental/accidental object ball? Long story short, I got into it with this player, self-righteously calling myself the only one in the room who was "hyperobservant" enough to check beforehand. He admitted that he was going for the unfrozen 9 ball, but he kept countering my argument by saying that my lack of audibly declaring the 10 ball as frozen was a negation of any right to claim ball in hand. Whatever, it's probably one of those "you had to be there moments." At any rate, we lost that night 1-4. So one lousy ball in hand dispute probably doesn't sound like it would have made any difference. But it would have. This match I'm describing was close, it went hill-hill. In fact, each of the first three matches we played that night all went hill-hill. And during my own match, I begrudgingly gave up a ball in hand, against my instincts, when nobody came to my defense. It seems like the whole match hinged on these kinds of small, tiny nuances of the rules of the game.

Week 2

Lots of good thoughts running through my mind today. I'm still feeling really good about the summer APA session, my new teammates and playing on Monday nights. We had our first away match last night and we won 4-1 (the team we played, from Identity, only had four players show up, so one of our wins was by forfeit). When I picked up the sheet on Sunday I must say I was a little humbled to see that I had gotten bumped down to a SL4. But it is certainly fair and much deserved, as I simply have not been keeping up any sort of regular practice regimen. It was no surprise considering my dismal 3-7 record last season. On the other hand, it was a little bit of a relief last night to only have to win three games, against another SL4.

My opponent said he had played in the league before, but that it was a long time ago. This made me skeptical, but I didn't ask him what his skill level had been. I couldn't help but overhear, however, as I was taking a few practice lags, him going over the basic rules of the league with his captain. I lost the lag by about an inch and it was a stinger as he stayed put at the head of the table chalking up as I racked. But halfway through the first game I was on a three-ball run and I nailed a cross-side bank and intentionally didn't look to see if it went in. It did, and in my peripheral vision I could see him sort of shake his head and adjust his stance in slight discomfort. Little by little, small clues kept coming into my head as to this guy's true league experience. At one point in the first game he missed his ball entirely and the cue ball went whipping around the table, hitting no balls at all. Just to be courteous and safe, I asked out loud to anybody, "Ball in hand?" That's when I heard my opponent say to his captain, "I thought if you hit three rails it wasn't ball in hand." I don't care how long ago it was he played on the league, but I certainly think that's one rule he would have remembered.

I won the first game with a soft shot into the side pocket. Pretty soon we were nearing the end of the second game and I only had the 8 ball left on the table when he hit a shot too softly and nothing hit a rail. He seemed a little confused and annoyed when he realized that meant ball in hand for me. As I made the no-brainer shot on my 8 to go up 2-0, he said something like, "It usually takes me two games to warm up." Then, as I was putting my final dollar into the table he asked me, "Do you mind if I just hit these last few balls in?" I gave him a sort of "Hello?!" look and said, "Well we're sort of in the middle of a match right now." His captain chimed in and said it was too late to be taking warm-up shots.

Now, many times I've admonished my teammates, when they're playing a weak opponent, "This is easily going to be the easiest match of the season for you." But I refused to let myself think that about this match. Because at any point I could have lost a game and that certainly would have affected me mentally. His best shot of the night was a safety and it was suggested to him by a coach during a time out. I tried to kick out of it and the cue ball went flying off the table. We went back and forth an inning or two when he left me with a fairly easy runout scenario. After sinking my final 8 ball I went over to shake his hand and then went to sit down. That's when, as they were trying to figure out who to put up next, I heard the captain murmur something to the effect of "That guy's a 4?" It was my first win in over two months, since April 8th. And it immediately called to mind my most convincing win ever, which was my first league match ever, in February of 2006, when I crushed another weak SL4 three games straight in less than ten innings. Doing so must have raised a few flags at the APA office, because the next week I found myself ranked a SL6. Even though that only lasted a week, it was still kind of fun to brag about. I do wonder how long I'll get to be a SL4. Hopefully it'll last more than one week.

Should have seen it coming

This past Monday night was my first time playing for the Monday night Sophie's team. I won't get into the specifics of the team's dynamics just yet. It's very early on and I just want to see how things play out. But I have to say, I feel pretty good about this season. We won our match, 3-2, at home against a team from Sixth Ward. I played second, after AJ had won his match decisively against a SL4. We all decided that I should play, just to get my name officially onto the roster. I was not pleased when they countered by putting up their captain, also a SL5, who I would venture to say was by far the best player on their team. In a race to four games, he got up to a quick 2-0 lead. In the third, he got an early 8. I won the 4th game to tie it up 2-2. He won the 5th, I came back to win the 6th, tying it yet again and taking it to the rubber match. Long story short, the above diagram was my last shot of the match, an unfortunate scratch on the 8 ball. I had marked the pocket in the bottom left corner and was sizing up the angle for this difficult reverse cross-corner bank. I kept eyeing the other corner pocket, worrying about where the cue ball would end up. I put bottom right english on it, and just hoped for the best. Unfortunately, not only did the 8 ball not even come close to going in, but the cue ball caromed off the 5 ball straight into the corner pocket. I most certainly should have hit the ball softer. Doing so would have likely increased the rebound angle of the cue ball coming off the rail and probably have sent it straight into the 5. The same with the 8, it probably would have come off the rail with a much less severe angle and gone more toward the corner pocket. It was frustrating, of course, but I don't feel that I played poorly overall. I made what I thought were some pretty good shots, one killer kick shot and another kick-to-safety that ended up sinking two of my stripes. In each of the two games that I did win outright, I ran out the table on three-ball runs, one of which required precision stop shots with that lumbering, massively oversized cue ball. All told, I felt it was pretty good pool: seven games where the lead went back and forth throughout an efficient 20-inning match.