how are ya'll doing in league ?

End of season 9-ball tournament. You dont actually have to be a current player to play, so some big guns were in town (this isnt Fargo-powered league, but for comparison they are in the 670 Fargo).

Long and short, I lost in the first round. But my teammate won the whole thing! He got some big spots (2-5 in the finals, which he won 2-2).

This league pays off lots and really pays to those that play. I only played 6 or 7 out of about 20 matches. We got 3rd place, and I was paid over $300, which included incentives for BRs, snaps, shutouts, and high scores.

End of season snap pot (9-ball, magic rack), $1050. I hit it for once. Unfortunately, I was an early shooter, so everyone after me just followed my cue ball placement. If they put it in exactly the same spot, the nine ball got kicked out of the rack area every time. If they didn’t exactly put it in the same spot as I did, the nine ball wouldn’t even move, as you would expect with the Magic Rack. Two other guys made the 9, so we split three ways.

One of the other guys who hit it was the guy who showed me the spot to begin with. In the last three end of season snap pots that I witnessed, he’s hit it all three. So even though he also hit it this time, I still jelied him.


Freddie <~~~ lots of chicken dinners

Cornerman said:

End of season 9-ball tournament. You dont actually have to be a current player to play, so some big guns were in town (this isnt Fargo-powered league, but for comparison they are in the 670 Fargo).

Long and short, I lost in the first round. But my teammate won the whole thing! He got some big spots (2-5 in the finals, which he won 2-2).

This league pays off lots and really pays to those that play. I only played 6 or 7 out of about 20 matches. We got 3rd place, and I was paid over $300, which included incentives for BRs, snaps, shutouts, and high scores.

End of season snap pot (9-ball, magic rack), $1050. I hit it for once. Unfortunately, I was an early shooter, so everyone after me just followed my cue ball placement. If they put it in exactly the same spot, the nine ball got kicked out of the rack area every time. If they didn’t exactly put it in the same spot as I did, the nine ball wouldn’t even move, as you would expect with the Magic Rack. Two other guys made the 9, so we split three ways.

One of the other guys who hit it was the guy who showed me the spot to begin with. In the last three end of season snap pots that I witnessed, he’s hit it all three. So even though he also hit it this time, I still jelied him.


Freddie <~~~ lots of chicken dinners

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Odd they let non league players into the event. If I was paying into a league and was playing in all year, I would not be very happy if those that were not in the league were allowed to play, entry free or not. It's like the guy that puts the last mile of the railroad getting all the credit instead of the one that built the first 100 miles.

measureman said:

this Wednesday is the last night of league.
if I shoot a 37 out of a possible 50 i am top shooter.

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I've got a pretty good feeling you're gonna get there. :thumbup2:

Git 'er done!

Maniac

hang-the-9 said:

Odd they let non league players into the event. If I was paying into a league and was playing in all year, I would not be very happy if those that were not in the league were allowed to play, entry free or not. It's like the guy that puts the last mile of the railroad getting all the credit instead of the one that built the first 100 miles.

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The end of season tournament is a way for the league operator to get people together, have them collect their seasonal payout, and have us celebrate a league that pays out more money than any other league available. It’s always been open to players who haven’t been part of the league. It actually has very little to with the league other than handicapping.

Complaining about a tournament that doesnt have to take place to begin with while collecting more league money than I’ve ever see at any local level fits right into the defintion of cutting of your nose to spite your face.

I would rather have the tournament and celebrate that my lower-level handicapped player won this single knock out tourney. Complaining only has one result: no tournament. That’d be fun.

Well my 8 ball team finished dead last for the summer session, after winning the spring session. It's enough to drive you crazy. Anyway, I had to remove a member from my team for the first time, and my best player has decided to focus on tourneys instead of playing league. So we start the new session Monday and will try and get back on track!

On that note, advice on this scenario: I had a player in a match with an outmatched opponent. My guy has to win a 4-2 race. everything is good, we are up 3-0, when a scratch on the 8 puts the over matched guy on the Hill. Later my guy scratches again leaving the opponent with BIH and two balls left for the win.

Opponent sits the cue ball down on his shot line, gets down, adjusts the cue ball with his ferrule, and my guy immediately jumps up and shouts THAT"S A FOUL! I get BIH. The other guy is shocked and basically says to heck with you, that's not a foul.

I intervened and let him know that he can continue shooting (he makes his runout for the win) and my guy is furious, telling me that as captain it is my responsibility to know the rules and that I should have their back in this situation. I asked them to step away from the table and told them that A) adjusting the cueball with the stick is not a foul, and that B). Even if it was a foul, pretty much everyone on my team does it, so we are going to have a lot of fouls, so I wouldn't call it anyway.

I even showed my guy the APA rule, and he is still mad and telling me that he expects me to have his back. Since it was the last match of the session, I thanked him for playing and let him know that he might be more comfortable on another team. ( He had been a thorn in my side several times, losing his temper and blaming everyone and everything for his losses.) I feel like I handled it right, but one of the guys friends on the team said I should have given him a warning, but let him stay on the team.

jokrswylde said:

Well my 8 ball team finished dead last for the summer session, after winning the spring session. It's enough to drive you crazy. Anyway, I had to remove a member from my team for the first time, and my best player has decided to focus on tourneys instead of playing league. So we start the new session Monday and will try and get back on track!

On that note, advice on this scenario: I had a player in a match with an outmatched opponent. My guy has to win a 4-2 race. everything is good, we are up 3-0, when a scratch on the 8 puts the over matched guy on the Hill. Later my guy scratches again leaving the opponent with BIH and two balls left for the win.

Opponent sits the cue ball down on his shot line, gets down, adjusts the cue ball with his ferrule, and my guy immediately jumps up and shouts THAT"S A FOUL! I get BIH. The other guy is shocked and basically says to heck with you, that's not a foul.

I intervened and let him know that he can continue shooting (he makes his runout for the win) and my guy is furious, telling me that as captain it is my responsibility to know the rules and that I should have their back in this situation. I asked them to step away from the table and told them that A) adjusting the cueball with the stick is not a foul, and that B). Even if it was a foul, pretty much everyone on my team does it, so we are going to have a lot of fouls, so I wouldn't call it anyway.

I even showed my guy the APA rule, and he is still mad and telling me that he expects me to have his back. Since it was the last match of the session, I thanked him for playing and let him know that he might be more comfortable on another team. ( He had been a thorn in my side several times, losing his temper and blaming everyone and everything for his losses.) I feel like I handled it right, but one of the guys friends on the team said I should have given him a warning, but let him stay on the team.

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Your ex-teammate needs to read the APA Team Manual. If he actually knew the rule, there wouldn't have been an argument to start with. Was definitely not a foul committed in that scenario.

One another note, if I were you I'd encourage all your teammates to read both the APA Official Rule Booklet and the Official Team Manual. If everybody would just take about 30-45 minutes out their busy lifetime and read (and learn) these two publications, there would be a heckuva lot less arguing going on at league night.

Maniac

Last night at league I had to shoot a 36 to lock up top shooter.
I shot a 46 !

measureman said:

Last night at league I had to shoot a 36 to lock up top shooter.
I shot a 46 !

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Well played, sir! :thumbup:

Maniac

Maniac said:

Well played, sir! :thumbup:

Maniac

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thanks,
And it was against a tough team,the Red shirts a Vegas tournament hard bunch.

lorider said:

I played a 5 in 8 ball first and won 4-0. Now what I am about to say might not seem ....uh...ethical I guess but the end result was a great win. I soon the lag and dry broke. My opponent ran a few and I was fixin to run the rest of the table and when I got on the 9 the thought occurred to me....probly gonna break like shit and I was lucky the first rack that my opponent screwed up a run out off my break. so I half ass attempt a makeable shot and rattle the pocket and left it hanging. I did the same thing a couple more racked....basically giving him the 9 and the breaks. I won 46-26. Now I realize some players could probably make me pay dearly for basically giving them the breaks but the end result in this match with another 6 like me was a 15-5 win.

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I wouldn't call what you did unethical, but it was VERY risky. If you had done this against me, you would not have beaten me 15-5.

It's your choice to do something like that, but against most SL6's that move is going to be a regrettable one. You are giving a table back to a capable shooter with no predictable outcome of what may ensue. Ballsy.

I guess the only thing that could be construed as unethical is whether or not you told the scorekeepers to mark those shots as defensive shots, since you had zero intention of making the ball. I bet you did not, right? That's how people get accused of sandbagging, the biggest bugaboo that hurts the APA leagues, and that would make you guilty of that in a sense. If you called a defensive shot after the fact on those shots, then all is good. Running innings up (even a couple or a few) is not conducive to honest play.

Maniac

Here in Germany my team won the Bezirksliga division we were in last season, and has been promoted to Landesliga. Admittedly, I prolly should be playing at the Verbandsliga or Oberliga level, but we don't have a spot available on either of those levels.

Played the first match of the Landesliga last Saturday, and I hadn't touched a cue in about 6 weeks, but we still managed to pull it out 7-1. Next match is next Saturday, and I am getting my "Diamondized" Gold Crown III delivered next Sunday. I expect my game will improve dramatically with actual practice. My goal is to have stats for the season that ridiculously eclipse both Landesliga and Verbandsliga levels, so the club won't have any choice but to find me a spot on a higher level team next season.

lorider said:

Lol.....anytime I I play a non obvious safe I inform my scorekeeper. I feel the need to address this subject a lil more..i mentioned previously non obvious safes as those are hard to detect when keeping score. I dont make it a habit of looking at my scorekeeper and telling them to mark a safe on an obvious safe and I will tell you why. Some times I am focused on the match ...even when I am not shooting. During those times I do not want to break my focus to turn around and tell the scorekeeper to mark something they should have already been aware of.

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If you purposely "rattled" nine-balls into the corner pocket because you did not want to break and no one but you knew that then, 1.) There's not a scorekeeper in the world (yours or theirs) that would have marked those shots as "defensive" and you've got to know that, and 2.) However small the amount was, you were still running up innings, no way around that.

That said, if you had let on to your scorekeeper what you were doing, it was totally acceptable. But in my thinking here, there was an element of deception at play. IMHO...an extremely mild case of sandbagging occurred.

Don't get me wrong. I know you are an honest player and a good guy, but missing balls by rattling the pockets with them purposely are simply not going to be construed by ANY scorekeeper as a safety, and if that is what you did (and by your own admission you DID do it), you should have, in that scenario, alerted both scorekeepers to that.

Sorry, Lo....I cannot side with you on this one. It was an out-and-out clear case of deception that resulted in innings being wrongfully marked, and then you come back on here and tell us you went back down to a SL5 the next week. Hmmm, would that have happened without the benefit of the extra innings? Probably made no difference, but only the APA's computer knows for sure.

Maniac

ShortBusRuss said:

Here in Germany my team won the Bezirksliga division we were in last season, and has been promoted to Landesliga. Admittedly, I prolly should be playing at the Verbandsliga or Oberliga level, but we don't have a spot available on either of those levels.

Played the first match of the Landesliga last Saturday, and I hadn't touched a cue in about 6 weeks, but we still managed to pull it out 7-1. Next match is next Saturday, and I am getting my "Diamondized" Gold Crown III delivered next Sunday. I expect my game will improve dramatically with actual practice. My goal is to have stats for the season that ridiculously eclipse both Landesliga and Verbandsliga levels, so the club won't have any choice but to find me a spot on a higher level team next season.

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You're in Wiesbaden! I lived there from '86-90, stationed at the old "Camp Lindsey." Played lots of pool around those parts.

I also lived in Nuernberg before that and played in the Landesliga... I miss the European Pool league system. So much better than what we have here. It's more of drinking, hang-out past-time than a really serious "sport league" with advancement ladders here.

Good luck...

JT

Maniac said:

If you purposely "rattled" nine-balls into the corner pocket because you did not want to break and no one but you knew that then, 1.) There's not a scorekeeper in the world (yours or theirs) that would have marked those shots as "defensive" and you've got to know that, and 2.) However small the amount was, you were still running up innings, no way around that.

That said, if you had let on to your scorekeeper what you were doing, it was totally acceptable. But in my thinking here, there was an element of deception at play. IMHO...an extremely mild case of sandbagging occurred.

Don't get me wrong. I know you are an honest player and a good guy, but missing balls by rattling the pockets with them purposely are simply not going to be construed by ANY scorekeeper as a safety, and if that is what you did (and by your own admission you DID do it), you should have, in that scenario, alerted both scorekeepers to that.

Sorry, Lo....I cannot side with you on this one. It was an out-and-out clear case of deception that resulted in innings being wrongfully marked, and then you come back on here and tell us you went back down to a SL5 the next week. Hmmm, would that have happened without the benefit of the extra innings? Probably made no difference, but only the APA's computer knows for sure.

Maniac

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This is why I like the USAPL scoring system, they don't care about innings or misses or safes, just win/loss and total points. You can take 10 innings to win and it won't matter, they just count match points total. And the 9 is actually worth a game not just an extra point like APA, 14 points if you win the game, loser gets a point per ball made. So if you miss the 9 but make 8, you only get 8 points, the winner gets 14. In APA from my understanding if you run 8, you get 8, the guy making the 9 gets 2. Basically you are playing short rack straight pool in the APA not 9 ball. Only time you count a safe in USAPL if it's called shot like 8 ball and you are actually calling a safe, but it does not go on a score sheet and does not affect your handicap.

What happened with missing 9 balls on purpose sounds like a good strategy from the way the match went, the issue is the league scoring more than anything. For example, Pat Fleming would give up the breaks to his opponent at times since he had stats that showed the breaker lost slightly more games than the non breaker. If the APA counted the 9 ball as more than just a point or if they did not mark misses and safes for handicapping, this would not be an issue at all and I think would be an interesting idea on how to win against this particular opponent. The Art of War, you do what you need to in order to win, even if it's deceptive. There would be no moral issues if APA 9 ball played like real 9 ball. No one in their right mind would miss a 9 ball on purpose if it meant they would lose the match or game by a lot, if the 9 ball only counts for 1/5th the points of the total rack, who cares who makes it then as long as you make more points per rack than the other guy. And if the APA did not dumb down what a "good' player is they would not be caring about how many misses a player has. A good player would play 8 ball and "miss" many shots if it is needed to setup a good end game as a normal thing.

I have to say, I'm in the middle of this, if it was me, I don't think I would miss on purpose knowing that this is tracked for handicaps, but I can't fault using this as a strategy to beat someone. You may have to do a confession to a priest for this but it's not a criminal charge LOL

My USAPL team did not make playoffs this session, it's a 8 ball and 9 ball split play. Win a trip to Vegas a few months ago, miss session playoffs this time LOL

Good thing is that since we did not have to play in the playoffs, my son and I went to a tournament where I played pretty well but did not cash and he ended up splitting 1/2nd place and made $250.

hang-the-9 said:

I have to say, I'm in the middle of this, if it was me, I don't think I would miss on purpose knowing that this is tracked for handicaps, but I can't fault using this as a strategy to beat someone. You may have to do a confession to a priest for this but it's not a criminal charge LOL

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I don't fault the strategy at all, just the fact that there were shots missed intentionally and weren't marked as defensive shots on the scoresheet, per APA rules of their scoring system.

He may have told his scorekeeper that he had shot a defensive shot on the "rattled" 9-balls, but Lorider never really came out and said he did.

It was a petty amount of innings/safeties in play here, but.....the only way the system works is if the scorekeeping is accurately kept. As a longtime APA player that has seen way too many under-ranked players due to faulty scorekeeping, I definitely have an opinion on the subject.

Maniac

lorider said:

Please go back and read my first sentence in my last post. I stated....anytime I play a non obvious safe I inform my scorekeeper. I also went on to explain I dont take the time to inform them of obvious safes because its there job to know what a defensive shot is and to mark it accordingly.

I probably detest sandbagging as much if not more than you do. I have disagreements with other captains a few times over the number of safes that we marked on their players and have also notified them that our players had safes that were not marked on their sheet.

I was definitely trying to win the match in question and I tried a controversial tactic in the process. I just did not know if basically giving 2 points and the break was the proper thing to do but my mindset at the time was to pls to my strengths and weaknesses to come out winner and it obviously worked since I won the match pretty handily. Of course I would not dream of using that tactic on some one capable of putting a break and run on me.

I have had too many heartbreaking losses due to opponents scoring a bunch of points off my breaks and decided ti do something this this once. As I said in my last post I used a different break in my last 2 matches and won both of them also without giving up any breaks such as I did in the match in question.

As cir me going back down again. That one single match is not why I went back down...and I reiterate.....the safties in question were marked correctly in that match.

I always try to match up with the other teams best player and when I am a 5 I usually win....when I am a 6 I usually lose to those same players. Its because I am good enough to win getting the spot I do as a 5 but not good enough to win having to go an extra 8 points as a 6. That's why I fluctuate up and down ....not because I am a sandbagger .

Hope fully I can improve to the point of being able to win consistently having to go the extra points as a 6.

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It's all good, my friend. No problems here.

Maniac