I believe the shot shot should come up much more often, it's a fantastic "test shot"
We've been talking about rules in 9 Ball and we ran across this article on our Million Dollar Challenge Tournament ....the one Earl ran 11 racks for the ultimate prize.
We noticed that in the article we had some unique rules changes and I'm pretty sure if we would have continued our momentum (provided Earl hadn't ran those racks) we would have incorporated many more, leaning towards 'Two Shot Shoot Out' rules.
Notice we did bring back the potential for a "Spot Shot" although I believe the shot shot should come up much more often, it's a fantastic shot to test a player's ability to make key shots under pressure.....these shot don't come up playing "one foul ball-in-hand".
Here's the article written in the 'AMERICAN CUEST' by author JIM WEST:
The First event of the PCA tourproved to be a resounding success, drawing 40 players from around the US,Mexico and Canada, providing some fine matches and making history in more ways than one.
Wednesday night started off with a VIP/media party to honor the tournament and benefit (former Dallas Cowboy) Tony Hill's 4th Annual Texas Shootout for AMC cancer research. The player's meeting followed then the player's draw was held by tournament directors Jay Helfert of Championship Billiards, and John McChesney and Robin Adair of Texas Express Promotions Group. Top seeds Earl Strickland and Cj Wiley were placed at the top and bottom of the chart (no byes). Play began on Thursday morning at 11. At 8 pm that evening Earl Strickland matched up against Nick Maninno and he started out by running the first 5 racks. Bet out your cameras folks, it's show time! It became apparent that Earl had a shot at the $1,000,000 so the officials were called out and the cameras started rolling. Earl ran game 6,7,9 on the break in game 8, ran game 9, but on game 10 he was left after the break with a tough table length combination with the cue ball at one end near the pocket, the one ball near the side pocket about 10" from the same rail and the 9 about 3" from the pocket on the other end of the table. What to do, what to do, back cut the cobo or go for the run out. Earl cranked up and went for the combo and BAM!, the rest as they say, is history. The crowd went wild and after about 30 minutes of celebrating the match continued with Earl running yet another rack. The odds of that happening are about 7.8 million to 1. Strickland later said that's about how many racks he's shot since he ran 10 in a row once before, 16 years ago.
This tournament was blessed with a lot of fine, tight matches and a lot of great players, known and heretofore unknown, that wil be remembered for a long time. It seems that many of the players featured in the recent book 'Playing Off the Rail' were in attendance either in the tournament or on the sidelines, including the subject of the book Tony Annigoni as well as Amarillo Slim, Jimmy Fusco, Ginky San Souci, Jose Parica, Ismael (Morro) Paez. The atmosphere was very upbeat, even among the losers as the excitement of being in the first PCA tourney and the changes that it will bring were the order of the day among the players. Can congenial and Earl Strickland be used in the same sentence? Yes.
There were some new innovations introduced by the PCA such as a dress code, scratch on the 9-ball (last remaining object ball) opponent has ball-in-hand behind the head string and last but not least, players break their own rack.
There were plenty of close contests to give the crowd it's money's worth all the way up to the finals. On young man, Max Eberle, 23, brought his fine strategic moves all the way from Arlington, VA to finish fourth, while wearing a tux no less, until Paul Potier finally stopped him. Paul in turn, played CJ Wiley to the hill when he missed a cut on the 6-ball and that was all she wrote with CJ taking the match to face the navo riche Earl Strickland in the final match.
RESULTS
1st CJ WIley
2nd Earl Strickland
3rd Paul Potier
4th Max Eberle
5th-6th Shannon Dalton and Larry Liscotti
7th-8th Bobby Hunter and Ismael Paez
9th-12th Glen Atwell, Danny Harriman, Jimmy Fusco, and Jose Parica
13th-16th Mike Gulyasy, Mike Massey, George Breedlove, and Marco Marquez
17th-24th Dave Favor, Tony Annigoni, Buddy Dennis, Smokey Bartlett, Ben Tubbs, George San Souci, Mark Jarvis, Randy Jones
25th-32 Nick Mannino, Dennis Coulter, Scotty Townsend, Bill Meacham, Billy Weir, Bobby Moorefield, David Pierson, Roger Griffis
33-40 Bill Harper, Jim McDermott, Calvin Harcrow, Tommy Dilorenzo, Steve Smith, Martin Shulte, George Michaels, and Tang Ho.
Total Purse $41,000 with $25,000 added
..I bring this up, only in the hope that you may stop, or at least curtail, your NEVER-ENDING monologue, about the virtues of '2 shot-shoot out' over Texas Express..You haven't even noticed, that everyone (including moi) agrees with you ! :embarrassed2:
