View attachment 741903
Two new updates this post.
1) I joined a league! I only played a league once in 1998 or so, and swore I never would again. Never say never! I joined this league specifically because it's a Fargo league. It's handicapped using the fargorate app handicap matrix, and the scores are reported using the BCAPL app. It's an 8 man team, and each week 5 players from each team play a single race. The teams all have fargo caps. We have 4 "good" players on my team, ranging from 545 to 610. The rest of our players are in the 2-300's.
The league was a good time. We all had "fun", and I made a couple new gal friends
The pool definitely seemed secondary. About half of the overall league were D players that did not have a CB at all. On my team and the team we played, about 5 of the 10 people had only about 10 robustness. Looking around the room I'd say the same. So the ratings were all guess starter ratings by the league director, and they will work themselves out over time. The opponent I played was a 575 starter rating, and we played an even race to 4. I won easily 4-1. He only had a robustness of 15 or so when we played. I just checked his rating now, and I guess the match with me pulled him down. His rating in the fargo app now says 568P, 21 robustness, 575 starter rating.
The BCAPL scores went into the fargo app almost instantly. A huge contrast to the typical week it takes when I enter weekly tournaments. Unfortunately, in the set I won 4-1, it had 5 entries. Entry of "1-0" for games I won, and "0-1" for the single game I lost. I hated this. It is ruining all my match history in the fargo app. Now I will end up with dozens and dozens of rinky dink 1-0 and 0-1 entries, that will pollute my actual set history. I hated it enough to almost quit the league.
The league was really good for the room. It was packed. I haven't seen this many people in this room in 25 years. I was very happy about that.
2) I played my first Salotto match. I've been wanting to do this for months. A buddy of mine I used to gamble with in the late 90s/early 2000's called me up and wanted to play in the app. He has zero robustness. He wants to get the 200 robustness, just like I did, to play in the monthly type xxx and under events. When we used to gamble, I'd give him the 7, or the split 7/8. I haven't played him in 20 years. We were not gambling. I told him to play hard, and we both were. We played two races to 10, 9 ball, GC3. The first set I won 10-4.
The table was horrible. By far the worse GC I've ever played on. Its rails were all DEAD. Holly molly. I wonder if this was the batch of GC3's with the dead rails. Funny, there was a GC1 right next to it with a couple on a date. The balls were bouncing perfectly on that table, I made it a point to watch their play. After that couple left, I went and rolled some balls on it, and it was perfect. It was triple shimmed to boot. I wondered if it was the original Monarch cushions. It must have been the one pocket action table when the room had a different layout. Now, it was in the back, banger section. To add, there was a group of 10 next to us with a bunch of little kids.
After the first set I went up to the counter and said we need another table, that the rails were dead. The counter lady didn't know anything about pool, but the security guard, who used to be a top Philly player, pointed me to the good tables. So we moved to a triple shimmed GC3 one hole table in the "player's" section, with new cloth, and tons of room around it. This played excellent. I won this set 10-7. (The "player's section" was all packed when we arrived).
Total combined set score of 20-11. This data from salotto went into the fargo app almost instantly. I forget if the same night, or the next day. It affected the robustness in two stages. The first stage it only showed a robustness of 14, for both me and my opponent. The second or third day it got the full 31 games robustness, for both me and my opponent. The opponents rating is now 458P, 31 robustness, starter rating 0. This completely matches a 50/50 probability using my rating of 545. He is wholly tethered to me until he gets more games with someone else.
It was his birthday yesterday, and I texted him: "Happy Birthday. You got the 31 robustness as a present."
