how are ya'll doing in league ?

Doing much better this season than the last two. I'm far enough up in top shooter for top tier that I'm almost sure I can take the rest of the season off and no one can catch me. A ton better than my awful showing the last two seasons.

Won my 8-ball match vs a SL6 last night, 4-1.

That was the best I've played in a while, it felt good. Not flawless, but I did most of the things that I intended. My opponent helped, of course. I had never played him before, tho I've seen him play others, and he seemed to miss some shots uncharacteristically.

Our team took all five matches, so we're creeping back into the playoff picture.

Long time no updates from me. Not sure many read them anyway...

Mon night APA 8-ball:Two weeks ago, I play my second match as a four against a three. I shut him out. Third game, I think he had 5 balls left on the table. Next week, I'm back down to a three :thud: :scratchhead: :shrug: it's the second week of playoffs (lower tier), and for some reason we already play a team in a different division? Something about not enough teams. I don't play, our team gets demolished, 9-0. Better luck next session, I guess.

Tues night APA 9-ball: Two weeks ago, Imdidn't play. First week of playoffs (upper tier). We win, thanks in part to the opposing team forfeiting a match. Last week, I play the first match against a 4, who used to play on my 8-ball team. It's my first time playing a higher handicap in 9b, and when he's on, he's on. The first half of the match, I'm off, and he's shooting well. Even when I get BIH, I make my first ball, then miss the next. I was too preoccupied with the score, as I knew he had taken a strong league. At some point, my friend yells at me to stop worrying about the score. I start playing better. I lose, but I was only 5 points out for a 14-6 score. The team ends up winning, and we continue into the tri-cup

Wed in-house league, I haven't played last two weeks due to work.

lorider said:

i can see my captains view point because he wants me to get better at all games since its a laggers choice and i dont always win the lag....got a pretty good percentage of winning lags though.. lifetime percentage is at 70%.

my handicap in 8 ball is 60 and in 9 ball its 37....oh yea ...my 10 ball handicap is 52. figure that out lol.

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With a difference like that, no one is going to choose 9-ball against you!

Just looked at my stats, I only win the lag 42% of the time. I'm going to attribute that to the fact that I practice at home on a 9' table and only play 7' tables once a week for league.

Last night was NAPA lagger's choice. I won the lag (for once) and choose 9-ball, 7-3 race, I needed 3. I won 3-2 with one 9-ball break. I could/should have won both games that I lost:

In the first, I scratched going from the 8 to the 9. I knew it was a risk but thought I played it so the cueball hit the long rail before the side pocket. Not so.

In the second game, I ran out from the 2 but got bad shape on the 9. It was just off the rail at the 3rd diamond (from the head rail) on the long rail and I let the cue ball drift to the foot rail. I ended up rattling the ball.

I really need to practice more often with a heavy cueball.

Playoffs started last week for our APA 9-ball league. With only 4 teams in our division, three went to playoffs. Our team placed 2nd at the end of the session, so we had a bye for the first week. Last night was our match against the third place team, to decide the playoff winner. I played first against a SL5, that just got back from Vegas as a SL6. I'm assuming that a National SL doesn't transfer to the local division? I don't get it. (...more on that later) I won my match 16-4, I was up 35-15 and missed an easy safe. It was 4 innings before I had another shot. I won 38-20.

Back to the Vegas SL's - Either four or five players, on the opposing team, had been bumped up one SL between Tri-Cup, Regionals, and Nationals. Their two SL3's, SL4, SL5, and SL6, were all bumped up one SL. However, we played them last night and only one of them were stilled with their raised SL.

So, if I get bumped to a SL7 or SL8 at nationals, I can still play as a SL5 during regular session play?

Regardless, I finished this session 5-2 as a SL5. I may have had one break and run all session :embarrassed2:

Bah humbug. Got to Vegas for the masters nationals and kept making slight errors to get shut out my first match, but teammates won handily. Next match, played so-so and won. Last match, played great and teammates lost. Sucks.. it was the limbo round, one spot before the money, but one round after you can lose.

Thru 4 matches our UPA team is 2nd out of 10 in 8B.

As the highest ranked player in this league (an 8, with 10 as max) I more often than not have to go to 5 before they get to 2. Not much room for error! I've won all matches winning a total of 20 out of 22 racks. The recent lessons from Scott Lee and Lee Brett are making a positive impact.

KoolKat9Lives said:

Thru 4 matches our UPA team is 2nd out of 10 in 8B.

As the highest ranked player in this league (an 8, with 10 as max) I more often than not have to go to 5 before they get to 2. Not much room for error! I've won all matches winning a total of 20 out of 22 racks. The recent lessons from Scott Lee and Lee Brett are making a positive impact.

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KK9L, the badass. Wish I could afford lessons. Nice shooting.

TimKrazyMon said:

KK9L, the badass. Wish I could afford lessons. Nice shooting.

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Thanks Tim! Re: Lessons. I was so fortunate to get those world class lessons back to back within a month (the only 1 on 1 lessons in my life). Thanks Scott and Lee! I had voices in my head immediately afterwards and I struggled. Ex. Elbow drop or no? I didn't have a good last UPA session as I worked thru the transition. As in all sports, you tend to get worse before you get better.

And then I said F it and decided to choose what I believed would work for me - so I chose to take "my" best parts from each lesson, prioritize them, and incrementally implement.

Instructional dvd's can be very helpful, but it's triple more impacting in person.

KoolKat9Lives said:

Thanks Tim! Re: Lessons. I was so fortunate to get those world class lessons back to back within a month (the only 1 on 1 lessons in my life). Thanks Scott and Lee! I had voices in my head immediately afterwards and I struggled. Ex. Elbow drop or no? I didn't have a good last UPA session as I worked thru the transition. As in all sports, you tend to get worse before you get better.

And then I said F it and decided to choose what I believed would work for me - so I chose to take "my" best parts from each lesson, prioritize them, and incrementally implement.

Instructional dvd's can be very helpful, but it's triple more impacting in person.

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That's an absolute fact between last season and this season. I watched the internal conflict last season when you would shoot and it was like your mind was always second guessing if everything was right on each shot.
Your game this season is spot on brother. I watch you now and you are playing faster and (like a great classical musician) you're obviously zoned into the table instead of analyzing yourself before each shot.
I call it "Dancing with the table" and I'm sure that anyone who has witnessed your play over the past 4 weeks is just as impressed as I am over it. Don't mean to give you a case of the bighead there captain o' captain... But keep doing what you're doing... It's been a thing of beauty to watch.
Now come on over and challenge me... I need to compete against that "10" level that you've been playing at lately to boost my own game.:thumbup:

lorider said:

lets see if i got this right.

ya'll were going to have some one play twice. the rules state the opposing team picks their opponent.

you dumped your match hoping the other team would pick you for the replay cause you wanted to see how good this guy was.

their choices for a replay were
2-6
3-6
or you in a 5-4.

well be glad i was not the opposing captain...i would have chose the 6-3 race. any thing can happen in a 6-2 race and a 5-4 race is just too close to call.

glad it worked out for you though.

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Don't forget that if you look at a player and they are playing bad, the other guys would jump all over that especially since I had to win the most games and was the best player on my team but "was playing bad".

Diogenes said:

That's an absolute fact between last season and this season. I watched the internal conflict last season when you would shoot and it was like your mind was always second guessing if everything was right on each shot.
Your game this season is spot on brother. I watch you now and you are playing faster and (like a great classical musician) you're obviously zoned into the table instead of analyzing yourself before each shot.
I call it "Dancing with the table" and I'm sure that anyone who has witnessed your play over the past 4 weeks is just as impressed as I am over it. Don't mean to give you a case of the bighead there captain o' captain... But keep doing what you're doing... It's been a thing of beauty to watch.
Now come on over and challenge me... I need to compete against that "10" level that you've been playing at lately to boost my own game.:thumbup:

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Thanks, thats's a heap-load of praise my brother in arms/team-mate.

It was great to see you (and a treat to score your match) fire up some awesome play this week Pat! I know some health issues have held your game back at times, but damn, you were splitting the wickets and beaming ear to ear with joy and confidence. :thumbup:

I'd like to play on your kick ass GCIV more! Playing a 5 - 2 league race once a week, zero gambling for months, is just a whistle wetter for me since I took this new job and have been moving. Life gets in the way of desires. I hate moving...

I got my Scott Lee packet in the mail a few days ago. Santa dropped down the chimney.

hang-the-9 said:

Don't forget that if you look at a player and they are playing bad, the other guys would jump all over that especially since I had to win the most games and was the best player on my team but "was playing bad".

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As a newly thrown in the fire captain, having never played in league prior to @ 6 months ago, I've been mind-f'd as to learning the rules (some unwritten and nuances out the ass), getting a team together each night, and perhaps most importantly - how to match up the 5 matches per night.

That could be a thread on its own, but each league is its own and I'm in a smaller (UPA), uniquely diff one.

Won my 9-ball match tonight, 15-5. Another pretty satisfying match for me. I made more mistakes than I'd like, but I closed out some runs, too.

This win should put me near the top of the rankings for Top Gun, 2nd or 3rd place by best guess, with two weeks to go. We shall see...

I finished off my post a week or so ago saying that we would need to kill it this week and say some prayers. Apparently the pool gods were looking down on us. About three or four weeks ago we were more than 40 points back, and although we had a favorable closing schedule against teams lower in the league - the team ahead of us also had the same finishing run. Not identical, but very similar. Going into this final week we'd closed it to 9 points. But we were still feeling a bit like we were on the outside because they faced off against the team that is by far the worst in the league. We'd beaten them by over 80 points with 4 sweeps and 2 or 3 rackless matches about a month back.

Nice thing about NAPA is that they have the online app, and most teams use it. So we can look at things in real time. My buddy Sammy led off the night for us. He almost won the spring session, but summer hadn't been treating him well. He was 2-4 over his last six weeks. But he came through by leading off with a sweep against a lower rated player. He lost the lag but ran it off 4-0. At the same time we noted that the other team managed a 7-2 win. The sweep versus that caught us 6 big points, and suddenly we're only 3 back.

I took the table next. I've been rolling through the session, and have either been even with or giving games to other players, to the tune of a 7-1 session record. This time the other team threw their captain, who has a higher rating than me. Playing in a 4-5 race I took the lag and the first game. By the time he won the second game I had a good feeling for his game. Fantastic shot, can't expect him to miss anything at all, and he tended to get his leaves going shot-to-shot, but he didn't think ahead much. He wouldn't stop to analyze the table until he came down to the last balls before the eight. In the end I managed to take advantage and win it 4-2. While I did that the other team's NAPA national champ from last year got swept. All of a sudden we're in the driver's seat.

Our third shooter is the guy that is generally our best shooter... when we play each other. He's inconsistent in league, and the other team threw their 100 rated guy at him. It started out rough with our guy going down 3-0 really quickly. He worked a win to make it 3-1 before dropping the next two. Down 5-1 he managed a tough win.... and then snapped the eight. Second time this session he's snapped the 8 on a deciding game. While he'd done that the other team had won a 6-1 match. We're still holding position, but it remains close.

Final game is our captain in a match he should win, the only way to guarantee the session championship is a sweep. He wins the lag, and proceeds to almost blow the first and third games, but overall looks comfortable en route to a 5-0 sweep as the NAPA app tells us that the other team swept as well.

And all of a sudden, after as recently as two weeks ago feeling dead in the water we won the summer session. Honestly I was wired the rest of the night. It's only a summer session, it's only a local NAPA league, and it isn't that big of a deal in all reality... but being a group of guys who have only been playing leagues since this spring (our captain and one other guy on the team had a few matches of experience prior to this spring as subs, but that's it)... It felt big to us.

I've been spouting to each of them since spring time that if we keep feeding off of each other, fighting to beat each other, practicing, and just in general competing like mad with each other... one day we could all be pretty special pool players. It's the sort of thing that takes years, but with every jump from one plateau to the next you get more confident in the future. We're nobodies, we're not great, we're just good - but we're going to keep working at this.

*pokes the thread* All the leagues between sessions?

I just started APA for the first time. Our Monday In-House started a week before the rest of the local APA leagues because the holiday is next week. Which is perfect for me - since I have a Fantasy Football draft/party that evening. Obviously - first time in I'm joining as a 4. I played a 5. In all reality it was probably a pretty brutal match to watch. He handed me game 1, I handed him game 2. I wound up rolling on the back of his mistakes to a 3-1 win, overcoming my own poor positioning. Made some great shots and all - threaded the needle on a full table length bank that was pretty, but just couldn't pull off the position. My best shot of the night was an early safe shot in the fourth game that, instead of just hitting a stop shot I stood up, the cue-ball jumped, but it made the appropriate contact and stopped in place. Ugly as sin, my teammates had no idea I'd intended it. Pretty great how bad it looked. heh

Gotta love backing into one. I'll take it though - between this and the NAPA session that just ended I've rolled up 7 in a row.

Yeah our league doesn't start up for another couple of weeks I believe. I will technically be on a double jeopardy (8 and 9) team on Sundays but will probably play the minimum since it is during Funday Sunday football. Usually there are a couple of league players that get all cocky thinking they play a couple of skill levels above what they really do so I am sure I am going to rob an APA 5 once or twice during the session .