Accustats has blessed us with another great video from their vault featuring Jim Rempe and Allen Hopkins. Grady Matthews and Jack Colavita are on commentary.
1992 US Open Straight Pool Championships - Jim Rempe vs Allan Hopkins
- Thread starter Positively Ralf
- Start date
Good stuff. I was at that event but didn't see this match. Two future hall of fame players are facing off here. Colavita and Grady offer excellent commentary, too, and it gets even better when Ervolino joins them.
If you listen carefully, you can hear the voice of the tournament director, Pat Fleming, also a future hall of famer.
If you listen carefully, you can hear the voice of the tournament director, Pat Fleming, also a future hall of famer.
very good match to see, shame there isnt more video of rempe or hopkins playing 14.1
this is probably the only time ive seen jim play it
this is probably the only time ive seen jim play it
Jim, like Sigel and Varner, was a first rate straight pooler. When you watch footage of him, you wonder why he didn’t win a few more straight pool majors. Like Mike and Nick, however, he transitioned to nine ball seamlessly, and he mass produced titles for the remainder of his Hall of fame career.
Back in the '80's I watched a VCR tape of Rempe running 150 balls,great player but on that tape he was so slow that I found myself yelling at the TV,shoot it,it's a hanger.
Here's what I saw with Hopkins on the long shot he made before he missed the next long shot at his last time at the table.
When he shot the ball up table he played a stop shot and then had a long shot down table that he jumped up on and missed that cost him the game.
The shot up table had a slight angle towards the long rail,why not fire that shot in and hit the long rail then the short rail and get closer to the ball that he missed?
Back in Jersey in the '80's I saw Hopkins play a lot in person and in this match he looked a bit nervous and I never saw him ever get nervous or jumpy he was always solid in that respect.
When he shot the ball up table he played a stop shot and then had a long shot down table that he jumped up on and missed that cost him the game.
The shot up table had a slight angle towards the long rail,why not fire that shot in and hit the long rail then the short rail and get closer to the ball that he missed?
Back in Jersey in the '80's I saw Hopkins play a lot in person and in this match he looked a bit nervous and I never saw him ever get nervous or jumpy he was always solid in that respect.
Hopkins' last turn at the table was when the score was 142-145 and Hopkins missed a long bank with the bridge. Do you have a time stamp or a score for the situation you're describing?
Yeah you are right,let me take another look.
Here's the only other match I know of Hopkins playing 14.1 on Youtube or other free video sites.
From the vantage point of this fan, two things spelt the end of the straight pool era: 1) slow play and 2) call shot. Not suggesting that call shot wasn’t necessary, but the casual fan doesn’t want to watch this somewhat laborious format. Yes, there were a few fast players, but most of them back then were slow.
Classic case of where what the players wanted and what the “less than diehard” fans tended to prefer didn’t ultimately jive.
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see post #2.
Allen was/is a Great Player, truly deserving to be in the Hall of Fame, but did he ever take criticism because of his Stroke? Hopkins has a kind of Poke to his Stroke, and McCready was a Side-Armed Shooter, but obviously were World-Class Players, and players seem to be more alike these recent years.
What a match. I thought Allan was going to run out from the beginning. I’m surprised he tried the bank instead of safe in the end.
Grady is like the Morgan freeman of billiards announcers. It took me a week to watch it because I kept falling asleep to Gradys commentary.
Sent from my iPad using AzBilliards Forums
Grady is like the Morgan freeman of billiards announcers. It took me a week to watch it because I kept falling asleep to Gradys commentary.
Sent from my iPad using AzBilliards Forums
The reasons, as I see them, are:
a) Snooker was on the BBC, sometimes even during prime time, before the game was terribly popular. This gave snooker huge exposure. Pool has never enjoyed such a marketing advantage and, most definitely never will. When snooker was new, few had cable TV, and British TV had as few as five channels from which to choose. The number of times pool has enjoyed strong media attention is so few that pool fans celebrated wildly when CBS did a short piece on Shane Van Boening as part of its "60 minutes" show. Pool in America is under the radar.
b) Snooker is simplicity itself. I recall when I watched it on the BBC for the first time in 1989. I'd never seen snooker played before, but it didn't take me much more than five minutes to understand 98% of what was going on. Red-color-red-color, etc. and when there were no reds, the colors had to be played in order of value. Reds are worth one and the colors have fixed point values. No shots are called. The only game played on a pool table that is as simple to follow as snooker is 9nine ball, and Matchroom understands that the game represents pool's best chance to ever capture mainstream fans.
c) Snooker took itself seriously and went to great lengths to put out a public image of respectability during the play. The players were all well dressed and well groomed, because Barry Hearn always understood that this would matter to many demographic groups. Pool is filled with players that misbehave, that dress poorly during tournaments, and with countless players who don't see how they present themselves as important. Now that Matchroom is taking over the reins of pro pool, pool's image can be changed, but it won't happen overnight. Revitalizing pool's image to the point that the general public sees it as respectable as golf, tennis, or snooker is a difficult undertaking, but Matchroom seems to be the first pool event producer in decades that is taking this matter sufficiently seriously.
d) While diehard fans of both snooker and pool love defense, and understand that it can produce many wins, they still prefer offensive play. In the case of mainstream snooker fans, most of them only tolerate defensive play. They'll always root harder for guys like O'Sullivan and Trump, who take on even the most difficult shots, than Selby, whose conservative choices can slow down a match to a crawl at times. Snooker fans love offense enough to tolerate defense. Snooker is much slower than 14.1, and I've seen more than a few racks/frames of snooker that took over an hour. Both games face the growing reality that fans prefer a faster pace and will have to manage it with care as they proceed forward.
Just one man's opinion.
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kanzzo
hobby player
I totally love watching Rempe playing straight pool. In fact, i am on a trip away from home at the moment and i have 8 videos of Rempe on my Ipad to watch in the evenings.
So aside from the above video there are 7 more videos with Rempe playing straight pool in the Accu Stats collection
How to run a rack in straight pool
How to run 100 balls in straight pool (these two are instructional videos without an opponent)
2 matches from 1995 maine event (vs Lisciotti and Reyes) and 3 from 2000 US Open 14.1. A player review with Rempes commentary ag Sansouci and matches against Engert and Ortmann.
All matches with great commentary by Grady, Bill Incardona or Jeremy Jones
There was a book on this actually but I’ll need to dig it up to see the title.
It’s a mixture of right time, right people and right players.
The short version is that BBC was looking to build its programming and snooker presented an opportunity. But to take advantage of that over the years you needed people like Barry Hearn involved who had a marketing and business mindset to grow the World Snooker product.
It wasn’t just Barry, but he definitely played an important role in pushing the business side of things and promoting his players as a product. And there were other player managers too that did similar things to promote their players.
And then finally, prior to the snooker boom these players made their living off exhibitions. So by the time they made it on tv they were entertainers as much as they were competitors. Add to that Alex Higgins was in his prime and getting into the newspaper for his antics.
So if i had to distill it down I would say it was marketing, promotion, luck and more marketing.