Future of USPPA & West Coast Pool
I spent most of the day reading this thread from beginning to end and wanted to chime in. I also run the
West Coast Pool Players website and chose not to attend, but promoted, the USPPA Reno event on it.
I started playing pool competitively in '98 when I first got into BCA leagues via the
Diablo Valley Pool League, I always heard others referring to other player's handicaps with much higher digits than I was accustomed to hearing, like "Watch out for him he's a 100 speed." That was my first introduction to USPPA, so I tried a few USPPA tournaments out. I was clocked as a 70 speed simply by playing a practice game with another player and my handicap has never changed, probably since I never played more than a dozen USPPA events.
I moved to Alaska in '01, after living in Alaska for several years, I returned to the California Bay Area in '08. In my absence in Alaska I heard the news about our friend, Dave Piona, passing, but it wasn't until I started getting around and playing in halls here in the bay area that I started hearing reports from room owners about the USPPA seemingly going downhill.
At the 1st Chet Itow Memorial Tournament at
CBC, Tony said my membership was expired, and promised me and everyone else, a free year's membership. Well my membership was not expired (as I had recently renewed it the June before but never received my membership card - I just again located my temporary receipt to confirm this), but I accepted his offer anyway. Again I never received a membership card, nor did I ever see my name on the list of current USPPA members. In fact this may be true for all those who attended and were "given" free memberships because I heard from the owner of CBC that Tony left the completed membership forms there.
So between the hearsay amongst disgruntled room owners about the impending demise of the USPPA and the simple fact that I didn't have enough sheets in to qualify, I did not attend Reno. I did not really support the USPPA since my return to California simply because for a business whose primary service involves consistent and accurate record-keeping I thought it odd that my handicap never has changed, that I never received a membership card (whether paid or free), and that I did not see my name as member on their website.
In the weeks leading up to Reno, I noticed the date change for the event, and that many of the other major pool mags and websites had the old info. So I made a post on my site with the corrected dates, and contacted Tony. Tony at that time mentioned something that confused me, he started talking about poker and working with industry players at a very high level.
Then I watched the live streams from Reno, heard and saw the players and payouts, and I got ALL EXCITED, thinking to myself, "Well I'll be sure to qualify for next year's RENO event." $100 entry, if I knock off this tourney and get paid $5000 and then win the poker tourney to qualify for the WSOP Main event, isn't that like $15k in winnings not including the payout for the poker tourney since a seat to the WSOP is $10k (assuming you could pull of wins in both - very small odds for me, but you say there's chance)?
So now, with the money lagging, and no explanation, I am back to where I started, no membership card and no real interest to play in the USPPA.
But I can't let this go. Why?
The idea of a statistically accurate, objective method of clocking players and handicapping games is what I believe was the best thing going for the USPPA. It seems that this format may have fared better for me than Paul Bramwell putting me in as an A in the
CPPT, or Kevin making me play George Michaels even in the weekly 10-ball at
Crown Billiards. I really don't think I shoot *that* good.
I also hear people talking about the good ole days and see Bob's post
#264 here and wonder wow, that looks neat. I never got to experience those days.
Spots in pool are tough, because performance is variable. But I think the USPPA system was/is a good one, if managed and implemented properly. It helped me differentiate skills levels between players that a bar league average would not identify, as well as putting me in the ring with tougher players on better equipment. I always heard of concerns that some players intentionally manipulated the system, so they could play the big events with a much lower handicap to cash. Now with the whole debacle over Reno payouts, it seems a quick, healthy recovery for the USPPA handicap system is unlikely.
In any case, all I can say is that I agree with Mike and Jay (
begins around post #140) on what professional pool needs right now and 2nd Mark Griffin's idea of a pool summit of industry leaders (
post #152).
In the meantime, I will try out Bob's
WorldPPA system assuming he doesn't overrate me since I got lucky and beat him 4 sets of 9-ball last time we played.
