Sitting in the stands last night for the 10 P.M. round of the 10-Ball, I am eventually joined my Mark Griffin, a bit later Bob Jewett, and then Sunny, and OMGWTF, whom I’d never met, sit down. I introduce myself to Melinda and offer to buy her a drink in salute to the cojones she displayed matching up with Borana and we’re all having a good time up in VIP stands. Stevie Moore stops by and I ask him point blank whether he uses CTE and he says yes, he finds it an accurate aiming system. I turn and look at Bob, my wing man, and he is sitting there like some great, silent Buddha and doesn’t say a word and eventually Stevie moves on. Bob has lost his job as my wing man.
The TAR feed has gone out. The suspect is the wind that swept through Vegas during the night and which might have nudged the satellite dish just enough to put the signal offline. There is reason for optimism that this will be fixed in time to stream today's festivities. Shane and Roberto “Superman” Gomez are going at it. Gomez has this extraordinary move on his break shot. (We are all sitting right behind him and we have a clear view.) He starts out with his grip hand at about belt height for his warm up strokes. But then, on his final stroke, he raises his grip hand on the back swing up to shoulder height and swoops down through the cue ball. To say the least, it's a pretty unusual move. At one point Superman is up by as many as four games, but Shane grinds it out and it becomes a hill-hill nail-biter. Shane wins 9-8.
After the Shane -- Superman match, all attention from the spectators turns to the last two men standing in the tournament room: Charlie Williams vs. Edwin Montal. This match, it turns out, started at 10 P.M., as did all the other matches this round. It is now 45 minutes past midnight. The players have both been assessed “slow play” penalties of two games apiece. Put another way, they are approaching the three hour mark, to play out a race to seven. 13 games total.
And after watching for just a few minutes, the reason is readily apparent: Charlie is in full- blown stall. Each shot must be looked at from various angles. And then the bobbing and weaving starts: on every shot he gets down, saws away for a while, raises his head, saws away some more, then gets up to fret about the shot a while longer. This sequence is repeated three or four times, each shot. I’m not sure it’s completely fair to say, but you can just feel that everyone in the room, with perhaps two or three exceptions, are pulling for Edwin. It finally gets to hill-hill, and Charlie wins. But I gotta tell you: it was a real ugly, slow, painful-to-watch win.
The field has been winnowed down to the last eight: Lee Van Corteza, Hi-Wen Lo, Francisco Bustamonte, Rodney Morris, Mika Immonen, Shane Van Boening, Charlie Williams, and Manny Chau.
It should be a real barn-burner today.
Lou Figueroa
The TAR feed has gone out. The suspect is the wind that swept through Vegas during the night and which might have nudged the satellite dish just enough to put the signal offline. There is reason for optimism that this will be fixed in time to stream today's festivities. Shane and Roberto “Superman” Gomez are going at it. Gomez has this extraordinary move on his break shot. (We are all sitting right behind him and we have a clear view.) He starts out with his grip hand at about belt height for his warm up strokes. But then, on his final stroke, he raises his grip hand on the back swing up to shoulder height and swoops down through the cue ball. To say the least, it's a pretty unusual move. At one point Superman is up by as many as four games, but Shane grinds it out and it becomes a hill-hill nail-biter. Shane wins 9-8.
After the Shane -- Superman match, all attention from the spectators turns to the last two men standing in the tournament room: Charlie Williams vs. Edwin Montal. This match, it turns out, started at 10 P.M., as did all the other matches this round. It is now 45 minutes past midnight. The players have both been assessed “slow play” penalties of two games apiece. Put another way, they are approaching the three hour mark, to play out a race to seven. 13 games total.
And after watching for just a few minutes, the reason is readily apparent: Charlie is in full- blown stall. Each shot must be looked at from various angles. And then the bobbing and weaving starts: on every shot he gets down, saws away for a while, raises his head, saws away some more, then gets up to fret about the shot a while longer. This sequence is repeated three or four times, each shot. I’m not sure it’s completely fair to say, but you can just feel that everyone in the room, with perhaps two or three exceptions, are pulling for Edwin. It finally gets to hill-hill, and Charlie wins. But I gotta tell you: it was a real ugly, slow, painful-to-watch win.
The field has been winnowed down to the last eight: Lee Van Corteza, Hi-Wen Lo, Francisco Bustamonte, Rodney Morris, Mika Immonen, Shane Van Boening, Charlie Williams, and Manny Chau.
It should be a real barn-burner today.
Lou Figueroa
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A greenie for you. Can't blame anybody for the feed dropping off.