I just got back from the tournament and wanted to present a different viewpoint. Charlie Williams, Randy Goldwater, Cindy Lee, and the rest of Dragon brought 14.1 back in grand style, and I wish they were getting more praise for their efforts.
We got a beautiful tournament format, which allowed for some tremendous matchups. I think the round-robin portion had 224 separate games, and I would guess that at least a quarter of those were on the "marquee" level; games the spectators would really appreciate. Even a conservative estimate might provide for 40 or 50 awesome matchups in this round alone.
Games like Hopkins against Engert were incredible. The old guard versus the new. You might expect the older Hopkins to fold under the pressure of playing a machine like Engert, but what does he do? He runs a hundred-plus balls on him. I remember watching that match and thinking to myself if the younger German contingent would even know how much of a legend Allen really is. I'm sure they know now, as he beat both Engert and Hohmann within the first three days.
We got to see: Immonen/Ortmann, Sigel/Harriman, Souquet/Sigel, Schmidt/Hohmann, Ouschan/Schmidt, Eberle/Ortmann... the list never ended. Every hour there was another match that everyone wanted to see.
As a player, we were guaranteed seven matches, with the possibility of more. One of the problems with other tournament formats is that the high cost of travel weighed against the possibility of having two bad matches and being out can be a difficult decision. But the round-robin alone made the cost of the trip worth it.
Obviously things went wrong. I'm not sure the reasoning for not having table lights over the latter half of the tables, and certainly the morning matches should have started at least an hour earlier to ease the backup.
The rain in the ballroom was ridiculous, but this cannot be blamed on Charlie or Dragon. When you rent out a large hall in an upscale hotel, you have a reasonable expectation of adequate shelter.
The only real issue I had with the tournament was the scoring. Without enough scorekeepers, the players were left to do it themselves. This was bad because it could take you out of your rhythm, but it was also bad for another reason: The Europeans, God bless them, do not know how to score straight pool. Every European I played could not score the games correctly, and at one point I figured out why. When there is a miss in the middle of the rack, the Americans wrote down how many balls were made. You know what these wacky Europeans do? They write down how many balls are left on the table! I said to Michael Felder during our first match, "With all due respect, your method does not make any sense." (lol). They also see no distinction between rack scores and total scores, meaning if they have 45 and make 6 balls in the next rack (then miss), they will update their total score to 51 in the middle of the rack. It was really a nightmare, and I'm sure it led to more than a few scoring errors if the players weren't careful. In fact, the joke among the Americans was "no wonder all these guys claim high runs in the 400s... they don't know how to score. They're probably running 80s."
I want to say that Michael Felder is about the nicest, funniest guy I've ever met. It was truly a pleasure playing with him. Before each of our two matches, he pulled out a picture of his newborn son to show me. He joked that it would be mean to beat him because he has to feed his kid. Then I joked back that it's probably not even his kid, that he just uses the picture to shark his opponents. Not to be bested, he retorted that if I beat him, he'd give the picture to me so I could use it for the rest of my matches.
I had a disappointing tournament but it wasn't surprising. I wasn't playing well in practice, and I just wasn't tournament-tough at all. I had a bunch of 40+ runs but nothing higher, and at this level, that just ain't gonna cut it. And it didn't. I got what I deserved.
Anyway, I just wanted to give a real nice thank you to Charlie, Randy, and Dragon for giving me a very fond memory and for doing such a wonderful thing for straight pool. I'll be back next year and hopefully I'll put on a better showing.
- Steve
We got a beautiful tournament format, which allowed for some tremendous matchups. I think the round-robin portion had 224 separate games, and I would guess that at least a quarter of those were on the "marquee" level; games the spectators would really appreciate. Even a conservative estimate might provide for 40 or 50 awesome matchups in this round alone.
Games like Hopkins against Engert were incredible. The old guard versus the new. You might expect the older Hopkins to fold under the pressure of playing a machine like Engert, but what does he do? He runs a hundred-plus balls on him. I remember watching that match and thinking to myself if the younger German contingent would even know how much of a legend Allen really is. I'm sure they know now, as he beat both Engert and Hohmann within the first three days.
We got to see: Immonen/Ortmann, Sigel/Harriman, Souquet/Sigel, Schmidt/Hohmann, Ouschan/Schmidt, Eberle/Ortmann... the list never ended. Every hour there was another match that everyone wanted to see.
As a player, we were guaranteed seven matches, with the possibility of more. One of the problems with other tournament formats is that the high cost of travel weighed against the possibility of having two bad matches and being out can be a difficult decision. But the round-robin alone made the cost of the trip worth it.
Obviously things went wrong. I'm not sure the reasoning for not having table lights over the latter half of the tables, and certainly the morning matches should have started at least an hour earlier to ease the backup.
The rain in the ballroom was ridiculous, but this cannot be blamed on Charlie or Dragon. When you rent out a large hall in an upscale hotel, you have a reasonable expectation of adequate shelter.
The only real issue I had with the tournament was the scoring. Without enough scorekeepers, the players were left to do it themselves. This was bad because it could take you out of your rhythm, but it was also bad for another reason: The Europeans, God bless them, do not know how to score straight pool. Every European I played could not score the games correctly, and at one point I figured out why. When there is a miss in the middle of the rack, the Americans wrote down how many balls were made. You know what these wacky Europeans do? They write down how many balls are left on the table! I said to Michael Felder during our first match, "With all due respect, your method does not make any sense." (lol). They also see no distinction between rack scores and total scores, meaning if they have 45 and make 6 balls in the next rack (then miss), they will update their total score to 51 in the middle of the rack. It was really a nightmare, and I'm sure it led to more than a few scoring errors if the players weren't careful. In fact, the joke among the Americans was "no wonder all these guys claim high runs in the 400s... they don't know how to score. They're probably running 80s."
I want to say that Michael Felder is about the nicest, funniest guy I've ever met. It was truly a pleasure playing with him. Before each of our two matches, he pulled out a picture of his newborn son to show me. He joked that it would be mean to beat him because he has to feed his kid. Then I joked back that it's probably not even his kid, that he just uses the picture to shark his opponents. Not to be bested, he retorted that if I beat him, he'd give the picture to me so I could use it for the rest of my matches.
I had a disappointing tournament but it wasn't surprising. I wasn't playing well in practice, and I just wasn't tournament-tough at all. I had a bunch of 40+ runs but nothing higher, and at this level, that just ain't gonna cut it. And it didn't. I got what I deserved.
Anyway, I just wanted to give a real nice thank you to Charlie, Randy, and Dragon for giving me a very fond memory and for doing such a wonderful thing for straight pool. I'll be back next year and hopefully I'll put on a better showing.
- Steve
