Recent content by Bert van Manen

I've not been privy to any of the negotiations, but this is what I think is the construction: Drawshots, which is a private company, proposed a mini-tour intended to promote 3-cushion. You can only invite two ranked players to an invitational, any more and you'll have to pay a significant fee to...

Would be pretty pointless to try and organize a World Cup in the USA right now. For starters, half the field would say thank you but no thank you.

If you want to read anything into it: the three major disasters in the past 15 years have been a cancelled World Cup in Mexico (when players had already booked), a dumpster fire of a World Championship in Bolivia, and this Bogota cancellation. I'm not counting the cancelled World Cup in Turkey...

I think he's 1.94, I may be off by a centimeter. As for the cue: not that I know of. The fact that 1.94 guys and 1.62 guys play with - just about - the same length cue is one of the mysteries in our sport.

Raymond once told me that he hardened Peter, when his grandson was a young lad. "We'd play 30 points, and I'd let him get to 27 or 28 and kept him there as long as I could. You need to be able to deal with frustration in this game, and those practice matches where I beat him 30-29 helped. And...

As for the PBA events: I don't think you miss much. They appear to favor "professional presenters" over insiders with knowledge of the game. A friend of mine who is fluent in Korean says the commentary is disappointing. Jae Ho Cho, who sometimes sits in, is the positive exception. He is -...

He may be 88 years old, but he can still hit the ball where he wants to. Yesterday, Belgian League, against seasoned opponent Freddy Staelens, Ceulemans needed 15 innings for his 40 points. Quite a few seriously decent players have not done that in their entire career, and he does it at the age...

Thanks for the heads up. AI looks like a mixed blessing, so far.

"I often put a little ball of toilet paper inside the butt of the cue, as a shock-absorbing, damping material. If you are a polite customer and I like you, that piece of toilet paper will be previously unused." (DD)

Here's a decent story about Roberto Rojas, his fans will like this. We were playing a seniors tournament in Seoul (60+ guys), and the organization offered us a tour of the Korean DMZ. Very military atmosphere, heavily armed Korean soldiers everywhere. Lots of tourists taking selfies. Our group...

Sayginer back with UMB? That's new to me. Are you certain? As far as I know, he is still under PBA contract and active individually and in their team league.

Actually, Zanetti is 63 :). But I take your point.

No problem bbb, asking questions is a good habit. Average must not be confused with higher runs. I'd be happy to make ten runs of four. :) My question was: why aren't today's grand averages higher than those of 5, 10 and 15 years ago? And, surprisingly, they're not. I've tried to explain why...

By the way, has anybody given thought to the strange fact that the averages at the top have stagnated? Yes, they have. TB had an Overall World Cup average of 1.928 as long ago as 1995. Sanchez had 2.035 in 2015. Jaspers was over 2.000 on three occasions when winning the OWC. Caudron won it with...

Tell me you're old without telling me you're old. :)