To paraphrase the great sports columnist, Thomas Boswell, in today’s Washington Post: You can't hide in pool. The truth about your game comes racing right up into your face.
And so it is. You go to an event like the Derby City Classic (version 2.0.11) and go to the screen crawl to view the draw for the 1pocket and you watch name after name after name and think to yourself, “Glad I didn’t draw him.” “Phew, dodged a bullet there.” “Wouldn’t want to play THAT guy the first round…” It really is a little unsettling to see so many names you recognize from the magazines, and internet, and Accu-Stats tapes with the dawning realization that at any moment *your* name is going to appear nestled right next to one of theirs.
My first draw Sunday was against Shannon Murphy, a young heavy-set guy, from I believe the Ohio area. Against Shannon I quickly find out (once again) how lost I am on Diamond tables. Weeks, months, and even years of playing on older, albeit double-shimmed and well-kept GCs with pool hall pool balls that have 200,000 miles on them, have ill-equipped me to play on Diamond pro-cut tables with new cloth and balls.
One of my most reliable 1pocket shots is the one right after the other guy has broken and because the cue ball is on or near the rail, you jack up a bit, bank a ball near the spot to your side, and snuggle the CB up against the top of whatever remains of the stack. This is one of my bread-and-butter shots and I am known to be able to get whitey to cozy right up against another ball. It’s a delicate shot because usually you have to move the CB just so, an inch or less, and are often using just a half or quarter of an OB to hide your opponent from seeing any ball on his or your side. Our first game Shannon has left me this very exact same shot after the lag and break. I step up to the table fully confident that this shot -- which I have executed to perfection hundreds of times -- will put Shannon in a death trap that will eventually allow me to extricate myself from his break. I bridge off the rail, elevate and pop the CB with the intent of drawing the cue ball about an inch back and to the right, right up to a big fat orange five ball.
I pull the trigger and the cue ball stops dead.
There is no draw action on the ball. I mean: the cue ball flash freezes in its tracks, out in the open, nekked, exposed to at least three different balls Shannon can choose to shoot into his pocket as his whim dictates. I have miscalculated the weight, size, and spin I’ll get off a new Aramith full-sized red circle hitting a new full-sized Aramith two ball. And so it went. Repeatedly, I attempt to play position on balls only to watch the CB roll, and then roll farther until the next ball in the run I had visualized is out of reach. Where I should get four, I get one. Where I should have a shot at a ball, I have gone too far and am hooked behind another. My banks are all over the place. I deservedly lose 1-3 and Shannon goes on to the next round and to finish in the top ten of the Banks.
One of the great things about the DCC is that you get to see different disciplines and the Banks have always fascinated and at the same time demoralized me. I watch players like Brumback and Hogue rifle balls in off the rails. Now, if for absolutely no other reason, you have not gone, you should go to the DCC to observe this phenomena for yourself live and in person with your own two peepers. It is: absolutely amazing and soul crushing. You think you know something about pool and then go and watch these guys *rip* balls in up and down the table one, two, three, four, and even five rails and your eyes get wide, your jaw drops, and you walk away reconsidering all you thought you knew about the game.
I settle in to watch Buddy Hall playing Larry Nevel their "bumps" match. Gulfport Doc is next to me and, as pool players normally do, we multi-task: watching the match unfold we talk about various unrelated topics. I have stopped by to observe the last couple of games of the match. What I did not know (but was to later learn) was that earlier someone had been standing on the very same piece of carpeting my own two feet now occupied and had caught the ire of one Cecil "Buddy" Hall, Jr. They had, in fact, been admonished to keep it down by Mr. Hall when Mr. Hall was in the act of shooting a pool ball.
That offender was now long gone and now I stood, unwittingly, in his place. Buddy is shooting an up-and-down bank while I expound to Doc on how the boats took all the action money out of the St. Louis pool halls and Buddy stands up from the shot, turns to us (me really), and opens both hands wide in a wordless plea of “Whaddahey” and I apologize and fall silent. I don’t feel too bad about it. I wasn’t talking very loudly, Buddy is after all a pro and he shouldn’t be bothered by a slight distraction. And so Buddy returns to his labors and badly misses the shot. Mr. Nevel then steps to the table and rockets in (and I do mean *rockets*) three one rail banks AND THEN stabs a three-railer that was probably still accelerating when it hit the pocket for the game and match. Mr. Hall then turns in his chair towards me and says, quote, “Thanks a lot.” Later on, I find out that there was someone there previously and Buddy may have thought I was the same guy sharking him. Anyway, later in the evening I am up in the balcony watching Buddy play his next match down below on the first floor. Frankly, he is so smooth and accurate I love watching him play. I think Buddy figured out, or was told, I wasn’t the same guy and at one point during his match downstairs he looks up into the balcony, sees me and silently mouths, “I’m sorry.” And I open up my hands and nod my head in a silent, “It’s all cool, Buddy.” Buddy is once again a great guy in my book.
The Derby this year had a different tenor than previous editions -- it was quiet and more peaceful. The energy in the main tournament room, and even in the upstairs rooms, was totally different. I finally realized why: first off, the matches were scheduled. Your match came up on the screen and you could see your opponent, table assignment, and the time you’d play. Players were no longer swarming around in angst worried they’d miss their match start time. Second, because the matches had scheduled times there was no longer the constant drone of the tournament director calling matches on the hotel speaker system. Even better, (because the computer program didn’t melt down this year) there was not the repeated promises of, “We’ll be doing the draw for the second round of the 1pocket in about 30 minutes.”
Oh, and I want to write this before I forget: but I thought the tournament staff -- those working the desk and ticket office were exceptional. I believe they are mostly Diamond employees uprooted and trucked in to help out for the event and I just want to say how, in spite of the non-stop questions, requests, and transactions how pleasant they were. They add a lot to the tournament and deserve to be commended.
Walking around it was surprising to me how few vendors were at the tournament. I’d guesstamate they were down at least a dozen vendors. I took a look around and shook hands with Freddy the Beard, John not Fred, and Artie Bodendorfer at Freddy’s booth and listened to Freddy rant about some of his favorite posters on onepocket.org. I bought an autographed copy of “Confessions of a Pool Hustler” by Bobby “Cotton” LeBlanc (after Freddy read me the passage about himself in the book
It is, in my opinion, unfortunate that the hotel is setup the way it is, all chopped up into “meeting room” sized compartments. During the evening you’d constantly encounter knots of people craning their necks, four and five deep, to see inside the TAR Studio (which looked very nice by the way) or the AZ/onepocket.org Room for the 1pocket Challenge, or in the Action Room. If you weren’t one of the lucky few who actually got in early and close you had no chance to sweat what was going on. In the 14.1 Challenge Room there’s barely enough room for the two tables and a few spectators. Monday I hung in there for a while and watched Schmidt and Mika and Appleton take on the mountain. The day before, Appleton had posted a 183 right off the bat. But, for unknown reasons, all three champions I watch on that day looked about my speed at the table. Shot after shot they over ran position, got hooked, or flat out missed. Mika gets to the point of slamming balls and (to be honest about it) whining more than a bit, complaining out loud at one point "Why is everything such a grind?” John's attitude was a bit different, with him good-naturedly muttering, “My God, do I really suck this bad?” Somehow, for me, this was the flip side to watching all these same guys scream balls into the holes in the banks tournament and I enjoy a bit of schadenfreude.
I saw many, many friends at this event and that, for me is always a highlight, Bill, Dennis, Rich, Fred, Mark, Sunny, John , J.D, Ed, Mike, Josh, Greg, Grady, Jay, Freddy, Doc, Harold, Lenny, Ghost, Justin and on and on. A couple of guys greet me by saying, "Ah, my favorite poster on AZ" or just telling me how much they enjoy my posts and that is especially gratifying. Steve Booth of onepocket.org and I kissed and made up after a misunderstanding at last year’s event and that was very heart-warming to be able to set that aside. Thanks, Steve.
My second round match was against another banking savant, Louie de Marco. Frankly, neither one of us played very well that match and, had I been able to do anything at all with the CB, I might have prevailed, but Louie got me 1-3. Later that night I get into the 1pocket-mini and actually win my first match against a young player who shall remain nameless, 2-1. Lou actually pulls this match out of the jaws of death when the young lad needs one and I need three and I take a ball out of his pocket and bank my way to victory. As we’re unscrewing I get "the speech" from the young kid that I have gotten, oh, maybe five or six times from defeated opponents at the Derby. It is second in popularity only to "the speech" that goes, “Yeah. I stopped playing for a few years and didn’t practice much for this tournament and I’m just getting back into it.” This speech instead goes (and is always delivered to you after you have scratched and clawed your way to victory using every bit of skill and knowledge and experience you posses: “Yeah. I only started playing 1pocket about a year or two ago.” I love hearing that speech.
My second round in the mini is against Shannon Murphy, again, and that goes poorly for me and I’m out 1-2.
And here I’m going to give something away. It is only my opinion and not based on anything other than my 40 years or so of playing pool: if you don’t play on Diamond tables regularly and go to one of these events, you are giving up at least one and probably two balls to the field. If nothing else, do yourself a favor and get yourself a set of nice new polished Aramith Pro balls, take them to the pool hall if necessary, and practice with them. It is a totally different game with new balls: aiming; how they react to throw; the angles they take; and ultimately, the confidence you will shoot with.
Tuesday morning I share a breakfast table with Mark Griffin and John Henderson. Mark invites me out to Vegas again to write/report from an upcoming event in May. We swap stories and plans and shortly thereafter I am “wheels up” as we used to say in the Air Force and on the road back home to St. Louis.
If you have not been to a Derby City Classic you need to start planning now to go next year.
Lou Figueroa
And so it is. You go to an event like the Derby City Classic (version 2.0.11) and go to the screen crawl to view the draw for the 1pocket and you watch name after name after name and think to yourself, “Glad I didn’t draw him.” “Phew, dodged a bullet there.” “Wouldn’t want to play THAT guy the first round…” It really is a little unsettling to see so many names you recognize from the magazines, and internet, and Accu-Stats tapes with the dawning realization that at any moment *your* name is going to appear nestled right next to one of theirs.
My first draw Sunday was against Shannon Murphy, a young heavy-set guy, from I believe the Ohio area. Against Shannon I quickly find out (once again) how lost I am on Diamond tables. Weeks, months, and even years of playing on older, albeit double-shimmed and well-kept GCs with pool hall pool balls that have 200,000 miles on them, have ill-equipped me to play on Diamond pro-cut tables with new cloth and balls.
One of my most reliable 1pocket shots is the one right after the other guy has broken and because the cue ball is on or near the rail, you jack up a bit, bank a ball near the spot to your side, and snuggle the CB up against the top of whatever remains of the stack. This is one of my bread-and-butter shots and I am known to be able to get whitey to cozy right up against another ball. It’s a delicate shot because usually you have to move the CB just so, an inch or less, and are often using just a half or quarter of an OB to hide your opponent from seeing any ball on his or your side. Our first game Shannon has left me this very exact same shot after the lag and break. I step up to the table fully confident that this shot -- which I have executed to perfection hundreds of times -- will put Shannon in a death trap that will eventually allow me to extricate myself from his break. I bridge off the rail, elevate and pop the CB with the intent of drawing the cue ball about an inch back and to the right, right up to a big fat orange five ball.
I pull the trigger and the cue ball stops dead.
There is no draw action on the ball. I mean: the cue ball flash freezes in its tracks, out in the open, nekked, exposed to at least three different balls Shannon can choose to shoot into his pocket as his whim dictates. I have miscalculated the weight, size, and spin I’ll get off a new Aramith full-sized red circle hitting a new full-sized Aramith two ball. And so it went. Repeatedly, I attempt to play position on balls only to watch the CB roll, and then roll farther until the next ball in the run I had visualized is out of reach. Where I should get four, I get one. Where I should have a shot at a ball, I have gone too far and am hooked behind another. My banks are all over the place. I deservedly lose 1-3 and Shannon goes on to the next round and to finish in the top ten of the Banks.
One of the great things about the DCC is that you get to see different disciplines and the Banks have always fascinated and at the same time demoralized me. I watch players like Brumback and Hogue rifle balls in off the rails. Now, if for absolutely no other reason, you have not gone, you should go to the DCC to observe this phenomena for yourself live and in person with your own two peepers. It is: absolutely amazing and soul crushing. You think you know something about pool and then go and watch these guys *rip* balls in up and down the table one, two, three, four, and even five rails and your eyes get wide, your jaw drops, and you walk away reconsidering all you thought you knew about the game.
I settle in to watch Buddy Hall playing Larry Nevel their "bumps" match. Gulfport Doc is next to me and, as pool players normally do, we multi-task: watching the match unfold we talk about various unrelated topics. I have stopped by to observe the last couple of games of the match. What I did not know (but was to later learn) was that earlier someone had been standing on the very same piece of carpeting my own two feet now occupied and had caught the ire of one Cecil "Buddy" Hall, Jr. They had, in fact, been admonished to keep it down by Mr. Hall when Mr. Hall was in the act of shooting a pool ball.
That offender was now long gone and now I stood, unwittingly, in his place. Buddy is shooting an up-and-down bank while I expound to Doc on how the boats took all the action money out of the St. Louis pool halls and Buddy stands up from the shot, turns to us (me really), and opens both hands wide in a wordless plea of “Whaddahey” and I apologize and fall silent. I don’t feel too bad about it. I wasn’t talking very loudly, Buddy is after all a pro and he shouldn’t be bothered by a slight distraction. And so Buddy returns to his labors and badly misses the shot. Mr. Nevel then steps to the table and rockets in (and I do mean *rockets*) three one rail banks AND THEN stabs a three-railer that was probably still accelerating when it hit the pocket for the game and match. Mr. Hall then turns in his chair towards me and says, quote, “Thanks a lot.” Later on, I find out that there was someone there previously and Buddy may have thought I was the same guy sharking him. Anyway, later in the evening I am up in the balcony watching Buddy play his next match down below on the first floor. Frankly, he is so smooth and accurate I love watching him play. I think Buddy figured out, or was told, I wasn’t the same guy and at one point during his match downstairs he looks up into the balcony, sees me and silently mouths, “I’m sorry.” And I open up my hands and nod my head in a silent, “It’s all cool, Buddy.” Buddy is once again a great guy in my book.
The Derby this year had a different tenor than previous editions -- it was quiet and more peaceful. The energy in the main tournament room, and even in the upstairs rooms, was totally different. I finally realized why: first off, the matches were scheduled. Your match came up on the screen and you could see your opponent, table assignment, and the time you’d play. Players were no longer swarming around in angst worried they’d miss their match start time. Second, because the matches had scheduled times there was no longer the constant drone of the tournament director calling matches on the hotel speaker system. Even better, (because the computer program didn’t melt down this year) there was not the repeated promises of, “We’ll be doing the draw for the second round of the 1pocket in about 30 minutes.”
Oh, and I want to write this before I forget: but I thought the tournament staff -- those working the desk and ticket office were exceptional. I believe they are mostly Diamond employees uprooted and trucked in to help out for the event and I just want to say how, in spite of the non-stop questions, requests, and transactions how pleasant they were. They add a lot to the tournament and deserve to be commended.
Walking around it was surprising to me how few vendors were at the tournament. I’d guesstamate they were down at least a dozen vendors. I took a look around and shook hands with Freddy the Beard, John not Fred, and Artie Bodendorfer at Freddy’s booth and listened to Freddy rant about some of his favorite posters on onepocket.org. I bought an autographed copy of “Confessions of a Pool Hustler” by Bobby “Cotton” LeBlanc (after Freddy read me the passage about himself in the book
It is, in my opinion, unfortunate that the hotel is setup the way it is, all chopped up into “meeting room” sized compartments. During the evening you’d constantly encounter knots of people craning their necks, four and five deep, to see inside the TAR Studio (which looked very nice by the way) or the AZ/onepocket.org Room for the 1pocket Challenge, or in the Action Room. If you weren’t one of the lucky few who actually got in early and close you had no chance to sweat what was going on. In the 14.1 Challenge Room there’s barely enough room for the two tables and a few spectators. Monday I hung in there for a while and watched Schmidt and Mika and Appleton take on the mountain. The day before, Appleton had posted a 183 right off the bat. But, for unknown reasons, all three champions I watch on that day looked about my speed at the table. Shot after shot they over ran position, got hooked, or flat out missed. Mika gets to the point of slamming balls and (to be honest about it) whining more than a bit, complaining out loud at one point "Why is everything such a grind?” John's attitude was a bit different, with him good-naturedly muttering, “My God, do I really suck this bad?” Somehow, for me, this was the flip side to watching all these same guys scream balls into the holes in the banks tournament and I enjoy a bit of schadenfreude.
I saw many, many friends at this event and that, for me is always a highlight, Bill, Dennis, Rich, Fred, Mark, Sunny, John , J.D, Ed, Mike, Josh, Greg, Grady, Jay, Freddy, Doc, Harold, Lenny, Ghost, Justin and on and on. A couple of guys greet me by saying, "Ah, my favorite poster on AZ" or just telling me how much they enjoy my posts and that is especially gratifying. Steve Booth of onepocket.org and I kissed and made up after a misunderstanding at last year’s event and that was very heart-warming to be able to set that aside. Thanks, Steve.
My second round match was against another banking savant, Louie de Marco. Frankly, neither one of us played very well that match and, had I been able to do anything at all with the CB, I might have prevailed, but Louie got me 1-3. Later that night I get into the 1pocket-mini and actually win my first match against a young player who shall remain nameless, 2-1. Lou actually pulls this match out of the jaws of death when the young lad needs one and I need three and I take a ball out of his pocket and bank my way to victory. As we’re unscrewing I get "the speech" from the young kid that I have gotten, oh, maybe five or six times from defeated opponents at the Derby. It is second in popularity only to "the speech" that goes, “Yeah. I stopped playing for a few years and didn’t practice much for this tournament and I’m just getting back into it.” This speech instead goes (and is always delivered to you after you have scratched and clawed your way to victory using every bit of skill and knowledge and experience you posses: “Yeah. I only started playing 1pocket about a year or two ago.” I love hearing that speech.
My second round in the mini is against Shannon Murphy, again, and that goes poorly for me and I’m out 1-2.
And here I’m going to give something away. It is only my opinion and not based on anything other than my 40 years or so of playing pool: if you don’t play on Diamond tables regularly and go to one of these events, you are giving up at least one and probably two balls to the field. If nothing else, do yourself a favor and get yourself a set of nice new polished Aramith Pro balls, take them to the pool hall if necessary, and practice with them. It is a totally different game with new balls: aiming; how they react to throw; the angles they take; and ultimately, the confidence you will shoot with.
Tuesday morning I share a breakfast table with Mark Griffin and John Henderson. Mark invites me out to Vegas again to write/report from an upcoming event in May. We swap stories and plans and shortly thereafter I am “wheels up” as we used to say in the Air Force and on the road back home to St. Louis.
If you have not been to a Derby City Classic you need to start planning now to go next year.
Lou Figueroa
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