Joe T
Well-known member
Back and still recovering from DCC and would like to Thank Greg Sullivan, Mike Zuglan AND my Mother in law for making this great trip possible. Greg and Mike worked out a sponsorship deal that allowed 2 point leaders from the Joss Tour (myself and Joey Korsiak) free room and entry into all 3 events!!!
(the #1 point leader was really Mike Zuglan but he often excludes himself as he is usually the point winner each year)Thanks guys, not only for this but for what you both do for the sport year round.
And I wanted to thank my mom in law who took 8 days out of work to take care of the kids for me. We can all donate things we don’t need or extra money we may be lucky enough to have but donating time out of your life is one of the truest forms of giving. Thanks Mom I really appreciate it!
This was my first DCC experience and it definitely lived up to the hype and is the best event I’ve ever seen in my 20 years of pooldom. My favorite part was getting to watch all the great players gamble and compete at 1 pocket. Here in NE I am rarely exposed to that type of opportunity and in DC it was the cause of a lot of missed sleeping hours. Hats off to all of you 1 hole players and a special congrats to Shawn Putnam who I believe is the only player to have defeated Efren in a 1 pocket match in the last 4 yrs at DCC! It was a great match to watch, Efren was down 2-1 and put the breaks on by placing about 13 balls all tied up on Shawn’s side of the table and started to wear Shawn down mentally by picking out 1 ball at a time. Shawn looked fantastic both mentally and physically at the beginning of this match but during this 4th game you could see it was wearing on him and he was just dieing to shoot. BUT this young player still had enough in the tank to hang in there in the 5th game to put himself in position and come with a very tough shot and pocket the match winning ball. (Most of us would have still been in a coma!)
Cliff Joiner was keeping us all up late in the action room defeating opponent after opponent and as one sweater said to another. “It probably doesn’t matter how much you learn and how much you practice you’ll never play like this man does.” He does play great. Does anyone know if I missed any great 1 hole matchups sat or Sunday?
One final comment on the 1 pocket would be on Jason Miller, this was my first time seeing him play and I saw quite a few of his matches and you could never tell if he was up or down. We all know he shoots great but he has a mental game to match as far as I could tell. The worst I seen him do after a missed shot or lost game was a slight shake of the head. He just kept coming and didn’t seem to get caught up in the drama. Congrats to him for winning the all around and a tour card!!!
(That’s two less monsters I’ll face in Chelmsford)
Speaking of ME, my play at DCC was borderline embarrassing, forget borderline, I crossed the line. I played respectably in the 1 Hole but my 9 ball and straight pool were big disappointments. Not sure what it was but I never felt good at all. The Straight pool event put on by Bob Jewitt was a true treat and was the only thing in particular that I had practiced for. Figuring there was no luck of the draw involved and it was just me and the table I thought I would have a good shot at this. Wrong, the table won and yet again I was very uncomfortable. Even though I was very disappointed in my performance, this competition was a definite high point of DCC and more promoters should think of ways to add this into their events. Bob showed a lot of heart hanging in there like 8hrs per day and accommodating the players. Danny I missed both of your runs and am sorry about that but congrats, it couldn’t have been won by a nicer or more deserving player. AND thanks for those tips that I’m going to experiment with this week.
Oh yeah 9 ball banks, well this was the first time I ever played it and was the first time I felt like a “C” player in about 19 yrs. I had free entry and didn’t even buy back in after Shannon Murphy whooped me 5-0. 5-1, 5-2. I was hitting banks at 9 ball speed and sometimes the spin took, sometimes it didn’t (beginning of the week the cloth was still unpredictable) and I was definitely lost and then noticed that the bank pool players were using a much higher speed than I was accustomed to, not to mention I was kind of lost in the strategy department, so I just put that buy back money back into the old piggy bank!
I didn’t plan on doing any gambling myself but I did get trapped by one unsuspecting hustler. I went across the street to check out the other hotel where there were some amateur events going on, vendors and the layout to possibly do some business and after I did that I sat to watch some of the billiards competition. While sitting there 2 guys sit next to me and start planting seeds about how much money they’ve lost, how it doesn’t matter cuz they’re rich and they just have heart and like to gamble. So having heard similar things 100 times I know they’re moving on me but there’s really no way I can tell how good this guy is so I tell him I can’t afford 500 sets but I’ll try some 200 sets (figuring he’s gotta be pretty I’ll fire 3 barrels). So he hovers over me not wanting his fish to get away till we get back over to the 9ft tables. At the score of 8-2 in our 1st set he pays, quits and our little rich guy with all that heart and gamble was done. Guess he went over to pick on the amateurs and just had a little bad luck.
One of my few regrets was that I didn’t get to spend much time in the az room and meet everyone. I did stop in a few times but my timing was about as bad as my game was. I met a few people and sweat one match with a fellow azer and it was nice to meet people that share the love and hopefully I’ll get to meet more at future events. For those of you that I didn’t get to meet, I was the guy running around with the red, white and blue pool case collecting like 50 autographs on it! That’ll make a good souvenir for the kids someday.
There’s no way I can describe the whole event or my personal experience in a single post so I’ll just leave at this and thank everyone that took part in any part of the DCC and my experience with it. I’ll definitely BE BACK!
(the #1 point leader was really Mike Zuglan but he often excludes himself as he is usually the point winner each year)Thanks guys, not only for this but for what you both do for the sport year round.
And I wanted to thank my mom in law who took 8 days out of work to take care of the kids for me. We can all donate things we don’t need or extra money we may be lucky enough to have but donating time out of your life is one of the truest forms of giving. Thanks Mom I really appreciate it!
This was my first DCC experience and it definitely lived up to the hype and is the best event I’ve ever seen in my 20 years of pooldom. My favorite part was getting to watch all the great players gamble and compete at 1 pocket. Here in NE I am rarely exposed to that type of opportunity and in DC it was the cause of a lot of missed sleeping hours. Hats off to all of you 1 hole players and a special congrats to Shawn Putnam who I believe is the only player to have defeated Efren in a 1 pocket match in the last 4 yrs at DCC! It was a great match to watch, Efren was down 2-1 and put the breaks on by placing about 13 balls all tied up on Shawn’s side of the table and started to wear Shawn down mentally by picking out 1 ball at a time. Shawn looked fantastic both mentally and physically at the beginning of this match but during this 4th game you could see it was wearing on him and he was just dieing to shoot. BUT this young player still had enough in the tank to hang in there in the 5th game to put himself in position and come with a very tough shot and pocket the match winning ball. (Most of us would have still been in a coma!)
Cliff Joiner was keeping us all up late in the action room defeating opponent after opponent and as one sweater said to another. “It probably doesn’t matter how much you learn and how much you practice you’ll never play like this man does.” He does play great. Does anyone know if I missed any great 1 hole matchups sat or Sunday?
One final comment on the 1 pocket would be on Jason Miller, this was my first time seeing him play and I saw quite a few of his matches and you could never tell if he was up or down. We all know he shoots great but he has a mental game to match as far as I could tell. The worst I seen him do after a missed shot or lost game was a slight shake of the head. He just kept coming and didn’t seem to get caught up in the drama. Congrats to him for winning the all around and a tour card!!!
(That’s two less monsters I’ll face in Chelmsford)
Speaking of ME, my play at DCC was borderline embarrassing, forget borderline, I crossed the line. I played respectably in the 1 Hole but my 9 ball and straight pool were big disappointments. Not sure what it was but I never felt good at all. The Straight pool event put on by Bob Jewitt was a true treat and was the only thing in particular that I had practiced for. Figuring there was no luck of the draw involved and it was just me and the table I thought I would have a good shot at this. Wrong, the table won and yet again I was very uncomfortable. Even though I was very disappointed in my performance, this competition was a definite high point of DCC and more promoters should think of ways to add this into their events. Bob showed a lot of heart hanging in there like 8hrs per day and accommodating the players. Danny I missed both of your runs and am sorry about that but congrats, it couldn’t have been won by a nicer or more deserving player. AND thanks for those tips that I’m going to experiment with this week.
Oh yeah 9 ball banks, well this was the first time I ever played it and was the first time I felt like a “C” player in about 19 yrs. I had free entry and didn’t even buy back in after Shannon Murphy whooped me 5-0. 5-1, 5-2. I was hitting banks at 9 ball speed and sometimes the spin took, sometimes it didn’t (beginning of the week the cloth was still unpredictable) and I was definitely lost and then noticed that the bank pool players were using a much higher speed than I was accustomed to, not to mention I was kind of lost in the strategy department, so I just put that buy back money back into the old piggy bank!
I didn’t plan on doing any gambling myself but I did get trapped by one unsuspecting hustler. I went across the street to check out the other hotel where there were some amateur events going on, vendors and the layout to possibly do some business and after I did that I sat to watch some of the billiards competition. While sitting there 2 guys sit next to me and start planting seeds about how much money they’ve lost, how it doesn’t matter cuz they’re rich and they just have heart and like to gamble. So having heard similar things 100 times I know they’re moving on me but there’s really no way I can tell how good this guy is so I tell him I can’t afford 500 sets but I’ll try some 200 sets (figuring he’s gotta be pretty I’ll fire 3 barrels). So he hovers over me not wanting his fish to get away till we get back over to the 9ft tables. At the score of 8-2 in our 1st set he pays, quits and our little rich guy with all that heart and gamble was done. Guess he went over to pick on the amateurs and just had a little bad luck.
One of my few regrets was that I didn’t get to spend much time in the az room and meet everyone. I did stop in a few times but my timing was about as bad as my game was. I met a few people and sweat one match with a fellow azer and it was nice to meet people that share the love and hopefully I’ll get to meet more at future events. For those of you that I didn’t get to meet, I was the guy running around with the red, white and blue pool case collecting like 50 autographs on it! That’ll make a good souvenir for the kids someday.
There’s no way I can describe the whole event or my personal experience in a single post so I’ll just leave at this and thank everyone that took part in any part of the DCC and my experience with it. I’ll definitely BE BACK!
