I was watching the stream when this happened. My take on this was that Rodney is more the type that just throws the balls up there and accepts that the rack isnt perfect but he plays hit the rack hard and deal with it.
Dechaine is one of the more modern players that has determined that racking the balls frozen increases wings balls and the 1 in the side, cut breaks, side breaks for wings balls, 4 ball tracks and on and on. Corey and Donny Mills are part of this group. In watching this, I didnt take away that Dechaine was being a douche or jerk, just that he was competing hard to win within the parameters of the rules. As another poster above stated, he clearly knows how to read racks and look for dead balls or alternatively when the rack is a slug.
Incidentally, later in the same match when it was Dechaine's turn to rack, Rodney stood right up close by the rack while Dechaine was racking, closely watching, which imo was more of a shark move than what Dechaine did earlier. But Rodney was not without reason to do this. He was returning the rack scrutiny and letting Dechaine know it goes both ways.
During another match Ray Hansen was doing commentary with Scott Rabon and Bigtruck said something I thought was interesting. They were talking about Alex v Dechaine where Alex was winning big and how there was a discussion going on about something. Then Alex was joking around and Dechaine was not having any part of the joking around. (of course it was alex like 8-2 or something so its easy to joke when your winning like that in a race to 9). Anyways, Bigtruck said, now Mike is very much an old school player in off the table he might like that person alot and get along with him just fine. But in competition he plays with contempt for his opponent. I think you see alot less of this open contempt nowadays, in fact alot of the new champs are like robots at the table and show no emotion win or lose. Im not sure which one i like better, sometimes I kinda like seeing the raw emotion within players leak out a bit from their game faces.
Dechaine is one of the more modern players that has determined that racking the balls frozen increases wings balls and the 1 in the side, cut breaks, side breaks for wings balls, 4 ball tracks and on and on. Corey and Donny Mills are part of this group. In watching this, I didnt take away that Dechaine was being a douche or jerk, just that he was competing hard to win within the parameters of the rules. As another poster above stated, he clearly knows how to read racks and look for dead balls or alternatively when the rack is a slug.
Incidentally, later in the same match when it was Dechaine's turn to rack, Rodney stood right up close by the rack while Dechaine was racking, closely watching, which imo was more of a shark move than what Dechaine did earlier. But Rodney was not without reason to do this. He was returning the rack scrutiny and letting Dechaine know it goes both ways.
During another match Ray Hansen was doing commentary with Scott Rabon and Bigtruck said something I thought was interesting. They were talking about Alex v Dechaine where Alex was winning big and how there was a discussion going on about something. Then Alex was joking around and Dechaine was not having any part of the joking around. (of course it was alex like 8-2 or something so its easy to joke when your winning like that in a race to 9). Anyways, Bigtruck said, now Mike is very much an old school player in off the table he might like that person alot and get along with him just fine. But in competition he plays with contempt for his opponent. I think you see alot less of this open contempt nowadays, in fact alot of the new champs are like robots at the table and show no emotion win or lose. Im not sure which one i like better, sometimes I kinda like seeing the raw emotion within players leak out a bit from their game faces.
Anyway, Dechaine won 7-4, putting Matt to the losers side.
