Straight pool league...

[stevea]

I'm playing in my first Straight pool league. It's cool how they have it set up. Everyone in the league gets a paper with everyone else's phone number on it and a schedule for the season and it's your job to contact who you are playing that week and set up a time to play them. So there is no set day for league it's whatever time that week you both agree on.

Anyways I think it will be fun. I think it will help my game. I've never really played straight pool, any advise would be great!

Thanks
Steve

 

[mosconiac]

That's exactly how I set up my own league here in the Quad Cities (Eastern Iowa). The "flexible" schedule was VERY popular. We are starting another league in January and we have about twice as many people interested in this one!

We handicapped it so everyone had an equal shot at winning on a weekly basis and in the final standings. Initial rankings were set by the room owner, since he had a good feel for everyone's speed.

We even had a high run bonus ($1 of the $5 weekly dues went to it) which was based on the same hadicaps. Everyone had an equal shot at it. In fact, the guy who won it ran 20...which was not the highest overall run of the season (which I happened to have).

The league really separated the men from the boys. Those that played HARD every week were rewarded. Quality of play was going up each week...not many people play 14.1 anymore so it took everyone a few weeks to learn some do's & don'ts.

For example:
* Some didn't even know the traditional opening break. They do now!
* Most didn't plan the rack out. More do now!
* Most didn't realize the mental focus it takes to play 14.1. They do now.
* Few realized the importance of creating & saving a break ball. They do now!
* Fewer realized the importance of key ball(s). They do now!
* Even fewer realized the importance of taking a scratch. Some do now (they saw me do it).
* Most didn't understand the principle of cleaning up the rails & loose balls before going into the stack again. Some do now...they suffered thru the accidental clusters they created.

 

[mosconiac]

BTW, we kept a 3-ring binder on the counter which contained blank score sheets, statistics from weekly play, ranking summaries,...,etc. When the players came in to play, they would head for the 3-ring binder and then head to the table with a blank score sheet.

Also, we used two ball trays to keep track of balls. This is an adaptation of the 1P technique of keeping your made balls in plain sight so no one can snag one of yours when you're not looking. We weren't worried about people cheating, it was just a simple way of keeping track of how many balls each player made.

Here's our flyer & guidelines for match play. We used the World Standardized Rules, which are available on-line.