Not that often, but once is enough. After that, he shoots and either pockets the 9 somehow, or messes up the entire table and leave the cueball behind a ball or some other unintended safe.
So much luck it can't be luck... yet it is, I don't get it
- Thread starter Fastolfe
- Start date
Not that often, but once is enough. After that, he shoots and either pockets the 9 somehow, or messes up the entire table and leave the cueball behind a ball or some other unintended safe.
50 euros
Not likely, he was his own barman.
The other thing that I don't understand with him is, he drinks a lot (1 beer every race to 3, which means one every 10 minutes or something). At some point he had 10 bottles on the table, in various states of emptiness, that all ended up empty. Yet he never takes a piss! Heck, I drink decaf each time he drinks a beer and I gotta go all the time. It is a problem to concentrate on the game
Oh yeah, I do that, that's not the problem. When I play, I wear earplugs, I don't look at my opponent, I adopt a poker face from start to finish, and if I miss a ball, I sit down and move on in my head. No problem at all.
Nevertheless, after the game, when he's out of sight, I can't stop shaking my head in disbelief, and feeling bothered by the fact that I do my best to play cleanly and intelligently, while this guy plays half at random and nails the money ball all the time.
Simple solution.Make it that you have to call the pocket that the 9 goes into,or it gets spotted.
This must be on a bar box because it would never happen on a 9 ft. table.
This must be on a bar box because it would never happen on a 9 ft. table.
Just like I posted in another similar thread.
This just goes to show you that you can have only marginal skills and still be somewhat successful when it comes to 9-ball. If you want to see how good they really are, offer them to play you a game of 14.1.
This just goes to show you that you can have only marginal skills and still be somewhat successful when it comes to 9-ball. If you want to see how good they really are, offer them to play you a game of 14.1.
Play 10 ball instead. Takes some of the luck out of the game. If a ball is pocketed accidentally opponent has option to take shot or let shooter continue. Rotation can be painful to endure sometimes. Keep your chin up I'm sure you will get him next time. I believe that the better you get the less luck matters.
He won't play anything but 9-ball, for obvious reasons since he can't win anything else. His reason for not playing anything but 9-ball is that it bores him, that he likes quick games. I call BS of course: he plays 9-ball because he can win on luck.
We played on a 9' table with wide pockets. The pockets indeed help the balls in more than they should.
OK, at least he's one zero short of what he won last time :smile:50 euros
I was j/k referring to the first story, it seems he's under your skin. If you can't make him not to drink, why don't you order him some beer yourself? Some extra-strong trappist, that would make him think (or see) twice :grin-square:The other thing that I don't understand with him is, he drinks a lot (1 beer every race to 3, which means one every 10 minutes or something). At some point he had 10 bottles on the table, in various states of emptiness, that all ended up empty. Yet he never takes a piss! Heck, I drink decaf each time he drinks a beer and I gotta go all the time. It is a problem to concentrate on the game
BTW, I'll probably be going to Antwerp some weekends in the next couple of months. We could play some if it's close to your town.
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I ran into a guy kinda like that several years ago. Playin $5 9ball I lost over $600 to him over a 2 year period. Every time I went through Davenport I stopped to play him. I just couldn't believe someone could drop that 9 ball from anywhere over and over. Granted he wouldn't play that way against a stronger player but he sure was having fun with me! After the first time though I knew it wasn't luck. Thats why I kept going back. It was worth every penny. Anyone else know Little Joe? LOL
LOL! Who else?:grin:
:rotflmao::rotflmao::rotflmao:
Sorry for laughing, but you don't know how much it warms my heart to see someone else have this problem! We have TWO guys here like that! And, they have ALWAYS been like that! (over 20 yers now) They will definitely teach you patience, and how to lose. Over all, you will win on them. But, they will get their fair share (although less) of games also. If you can learn to not let it bother you, you will be in a lot better shape to beat them. It took me more years than I care to recollect to learn that.
I think I am the only guy in town that will still jump to play either of them. The one guy gets the most unbelievable rolls imaginable. He will either slop something in to get the runout, or he will accidentally miss and leave a very tough kickshot. I've had 5 or 6 turns in one game of 9 ball, and had to kick every single time! (And he wasn't playing intentional safes) If I left him kicking, he would kick at it break speed, hope to get lucky, and would.
The other guy, he will drive you nuts. He has almost a push stroke. Playing 8 ball especially, he will go about a run completely backwards, and somehow manage to get away with it.
The 'trick' to beating these guys, is all in YOUR attitude. You CAN'T let the rolls get to you. If you do, you are toast. I look at it like I'm playing someone several balls better than they actually are. The better player would get there anyhows, so I have to deal with that level of play. Once you learn to keep your cool, you will be in a position to deal with the rolls. One thing you can do- just say "okay, he made the one, he made the two, he made the 3 (DON'T say he just slopped in the 3, even though he did) " Mentally, just deal with it like he intended it to happen, and play him accordingly. Sometimes, his luck will run bad, and you will run all over him. It happened to me for a few months. I ended up giving up a lot of weight to play him, then eventually his luck came back into play. I laid off him for a few months, and then got him to play with less weight. I still win probably 3 out of 4 times with him. But, the losses keep him coming back. So, instead of cursing his luck, I try and go with the flow, knowing it will come back to me in the long run.
Bronco Billy???? :smile:
td
Well, old thread but new development: it seems you were probably right, the guy was under my skin but I think I figured him out. I thought I was pretty good at ignoring his remarks and his luck, but I may not have been.
I played him again yesterday (same format: 9-ball, race to 3 for a drink), but this time I had carefully observed him play other people and decided to change my mindset:
- He plays very straight when the shot is obvious. I better approach the game as if it was a tough straight pool match;
- He IS lucky. I just told myself to consider this a part of his skillset and get over it;
- He'll quit on me if I play too seriously, unless he's passably drunk and/or he has lost too many games before and wants to get even. He does his best to appear as if he doesn't care, but looking at him carefully, I reckon he's a sore loser;
- He cycles through a dozen sharking lines, clearly intended to make the other player mad. They're always the same, so when I observed him play, I tried guessing what the next one would be. Sure enough, after a while, he sounded like a broken record.
So the first 3 sets, I played quick and not especially well, but I won two. As he was getting hotter, I started concentrating on making good safeties, and after each shot, I played the "what's your next remark gonna be?" game in my head, making the guy appear silly rather than infuriating to me. And in the end, I flattened him big time. He won games here and there, but I took all the sets. He was the one calling it quits, and he clearly wasn't having a good time.
So, the moral of the story for me is that I'm not so immune to sharking as I thought I was, and that it's better to know whom you're playing with. Also, the game really is all in the head: I realize now that when I was trying to beat him before, I was really trying to beat myself.
Last night almost made me enjoy 9-ball
nice job, it's good to hear a player learn something about their own mental game. That's one of the things it's hard to teach yourself, usually someone else has to point it out to you.
My feeling is... don't worry about what the other guy is doing. It's out of your control (unless you actively try to shark him... but try to resist that urge). Don't worry about his intentions. The 9 going in by luck or by plan or by planned luck doesn't really affect what you personally do during the next rack. Or it shouldn't.
Pretend you were blind and deaf the entire time he was shooting, and the next time you walked to the table it was like someone set up a "how do you get out from here" puzzle for you to solve.
My feeling is... don't worry about what the other guy is doing. It's out of your control (unless you actively try to shark him... but try to resist that urge). Don't worry about his intentions. The 9 going in by luck or by plan or by planned luck doesn't really affect what you personally do during the next rack. Or it shouldn't.
Pretend you were blind and deaf the entire time he was shooting, and the next time you walked to the table it was like someone set up a "how do you get out from here" puzzle for you to solve.
