Good morning colonial cousins..
I am an infrequent poster but have been on and off here a bit. Some know that I am based in England and am primarily an E8B player. I like watching AP on the interweb and also follow some of my former E8B buddies smashing you lot at your own game over there
A quick search through my posts will show all of this. A quick search will also show I have form as a TD, commentator, backer, governing body committee member, blah blah blah though retired from the game completely about 8 years ago and only came back in about 18 months ago.
I trust this will be sufficient for those who consider I have registered this username for the sole purpose of defending the player.
I saw Danny tonight at an E8B tournament in London, England - for the first time in about 8/9 years.
He told me about this event and he also told me about this thread.
I did have a load of posts I was going to reply to but I am not going to bother. I will make a few simple points.
In the 15 or so years I have known him, I have never ever heard of or experienced any kind of behaviour that is less than honourable on the part of Danny at any point. Ever.
Any tournament of mine he has played in I have never ever had a problem.
Danny did not hide his identity. Danny Gokhul is not a run of the mill name. It strikes me as easy to research.
Danny has never played professional E8B.
I know nothing of the TD for this tournament, except that he went on to win the tournament.
It is entirely possible to play up and down in ability/standard/speed. "If horses ran to form, we would all be millionaires".
The TD claims to have had 25 years of experience in pool but "appears" to have failed convincingly in his duty to "weed out" a distinctive looking little foreign looking chap with a London accent and a foreign name - which he gave honestly. Perhaps another 25 years of experience will give him the skill set he needs to get past this cunning disguise employed by the player.
My view is that the player felt he was wronged and had legitimate grounds for complaint. The tournament director thought he was being conned and felt he had legitimate grounds for complaint.
Both may have been right. Both may have been wrong.
It may be possible that neither the player nor the TD were dishonest.
I think some of the posts, coming from people that appear not to know either the player, the TD and were not even in the same state as the tournament let alone actually at the tournament are disgusting.
The bolded part above is what I am commenting on first. You mean to say that you are appalled that people would comment harshly on something that they have had no personal experience with, were not present and have no first-hand knowledge of the situation?
Never seen that happen on the forum.
As for the situation, I think it should be pretty much standard practice for all handicapped events to run an unknown name through a quick search to see what pops-up. As much as I detest the act of ROBBING tournaments I do feel that it's the tournament director's job and not the player's to determine what handicap a player should be and once entered the player should be allowed to play out the event.
This is the fundamental problem with handicapped events.
Once while on a trip to London I played in a 9 ball tournament. This one had a particularly weird way of handicapping. Lower ranked players and new comers paid a lower entry fee.
But here's the catch, the handicaps were in balls. So a top player might spot the lower ranked player the five out for example. With a TWIST - when there were five balls or less on the table the player getting the spot could directly shoot any ball in and win not just the lowest ball.
New players were automatically assigned the highest handicap. So I was spotting run out players the 4 out for example. Thus it was insured that no stranger would ever rob this event. If a strange player showed up and won it then they had to be a monster player for sure and the victory was definitely earned.
The better players almost always won anyway becuse they figured out how to move the balls around until they were sure to have an easy out before taking any chances. They knew how to keep the lower ranked players form getting to the "all money balls" stage until they had a clear out.
