Sore Winner?

B

bill190

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Ok, I've got one for you!

Each night I play in a tournament, I work on doing something specific. Last night I was working on "keeping control of the table" and safety shots (9-ball).

So I played two different guys. One was experienced with the game and defensive shots are just a challenge to him - no problem. The other is new to the game and I think he considers defensive shots cheating, dirty pool, or whatever - not fair in his book.

Anyway I play this guy and kept snookering him. Time and time again. Man did he get ticked! I mean really ticked. (What does he expect me to do, leave him with straight in shots?) Anyway I was shooting lousy (good night to work on defensive shots) and he was shooting quite well when he had a shot. So as soon as I would mess up on a defensive shot, he would get control of the table and run it out (he won all games against me).

So I'm playing the final game against him and I only get one ball in, but he runs the table, and wins. But he was still ticked and frustrated with his "poor playing". I shook his hand, smiled, and said "good run", but he looked as though I had just run the table on him!

Now I've seen plenty of sore losers, but this was the first case I've ever seen of a "sore winner"!
 
Yeah i've heard many stories from players that were very active in the 70's that if you walked into a hall at that time and shot safe that you'd better be ready to fight. It was very cliche to play anything defensive back then. My assumption would be that he played during this time and has carried over these traditions :/.
 
bill190 said:
Ok, I've got one for you!

Each night I play in a tournament, I work on doing something specific. Last night I was working on "keeping control of the table" and safety shots (9-ball).

So I played two different guys. One was experienced with the game and defensive shots are just a challenge to him - no problem. The other is new to the game and I think he considers defensive shots cheating, dirty pool, or whatever - not fair in his book.

Anyway I play this guy and kept snookering him. Time and time again. Man did he get ticked! I mean really ticked. (What does he expect me to do, leave him with straight in shots?) Anyway I was shooting lousy (good night to work on defensive shots) and he was shooting quite well when he had a shot. So as soon as I would mess up on a defensive shot, he would get control of the table and run it out (he won all games against me).

So I'm playing the final game against him and I only get one ball in, but he runs the table, and wins. But he was still ticked and frustrated with his "poor playing". I shook his hand, smiled, and said "good run", but he looked as though I had just run the table on him!

Now I've seen plenty of sore losers, but this was the first case I've ever seen of a "sore winner"!
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In Rome, do as the romans do, walk in some real red neck cracker bar and begin playing safe and you will be wearing a house cue.
Show me a good loser, and I will show you a loser. You take it hard, but if you are smart, you try not to show it, you go lock your self up in the basement and then begin smashing up the joint alone. Never show your ass out in public.

Fast Larry Guninger The power source pool school
 
ramdadingdong said:
...walk in some real red neck cracker bar and begin playing safe and you will be wearing a house cue...
Click to expand...


Actually it was a "real red neck cracker bar"!

Shame on me.... :p
 
I think it depends on the shot you have when you play safe. A lot of players get uptight if you have a very makeable shot and you play safe instead of shooting the ball in. I'm not saying you were wrong, I'm just saying that's how I think a lot of players would feel about it.
 
I was playing someone 9b in a race to five and I was spotting the other player 3 games. I had him 4 to 3 and I 3-fouled him on the last game; he wasn't happy! Did I do anything illegal? No. Was it a chickenshit thing to do? Maybe but Hell, I had to spot him 3 games in a race to 5! The point is, you do your best to win and the rest comes out in the wash.
 
Mizerak and the Japanese champion

This is from a previous post of mine, but relates directly to the subject matter of this thread.


Some of you old timers surely know the story of when, close to thirty years ago, Mizerak beat a Japanese champion in the US Open 14.1 championships, and played some fine safeties in doing so. When a Japanese onlooker suggested that this win was cheapened by the fact that he played so much defense, Miz asked why that would be so. When told that in Japan, they believed in shooting everything and not playing safeties, he asked "do they gamble at straight pool in Japan?" After being advised that they didn't, he commented "trust me, when they start gambling, they'll start playing safe."
 
Some players are more interested in how they play themselves than whether they win or lose. Players like this can get upset at themselves when they feel they are playing below their personal standards even if they win the match. They might, for example, be thinking that they got lucky to win against you because if you'd played a little better they would have lost and that their next opponent might not make the same mistakes.

You may want to check out the seminal sport pyschology book "The Inner Game of Tennis" by T. Gallwey for the section on the different mental attitudes people bring to the games they play.
 
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