Fun Memories from Derby Classic This Year

The Curse Of One Pocket

One pocket has been recongnized by many as the best of the pool games for various reasons. It is a great gambling game and involves skills from different disciplines such as banking, kicking, safety play, creative shots and shot making as well. For me and many who have taken the time to learn the game it is by far the most interesting. As a gambling game it is easy to hide one's speed and barely beat your opponent if they lack all of the experience that is necessary to play the game.

While I have never been a great player, I have had the honor to give some of the top players fits on occasion, especially in tournaments and small money matches with the right spot. A working man has trouble achieving the highest honors in pool but I won't make excuses for that. It is what I chose to do. Pool is a wonderful hobby that I take very seriously and I enjoy it immensely at least when I can see semi-positive results from my efforts.

All that being said, I have come to a personal conclusion and it may not be one that most agree with but I think that if you choose to play one pocket as your game of choice, you will never be a very good nine ball player and vice versa. I have seen many good nine ball players get beat in one pocket by players who couldn't run three racks of nine ball if their life depended on it. I have always tried to play different disciplines with a modest amount of skill. After years of attempts to play the best one pocket I am capable of I have become convinced that this attempt to play the best one pocket has come at a cost. The cost comes in the form of poor nine ball play. I have on occasion played fairly decent nine ball but for the most part have always failed to play up to what I THINK is my ability in nine ball. I believe that my ability to play one pocket, inhibits my ability to play nine ball so for a period of three months I plan to discontinue playing one pocket and will make attempts to play only nine ball and straight pool to see if I can achieve better results with my nine ball game. If my nine ball game was even close to my one pocket game, I wouldn't attempt to discontinue playing one pocket because I truly love the game. As an amateur player, while I may lack the consistency of the pros I still can be competitive at one pocket but I cannot say the same thing about nine ball and so I plan to do this experiment.

I have witnessed many pool players whose game is nine ball and when they switch to playing one pocket, their nine ball game suffers immensely. For one pocket players when they attempt to become nine ball players they revert back to being one pocket players. The stroke that it takes to play one pocket and the skills that it takes to play one pocket are different from each other. For amateurs, I think one pocket is a better game because if you learn the moves and safety play you can compete even if you are not constantly in stroke. With nine ball, you have to not only develop and maintain a different type of stroke, you must have a different mentality about the game.

You can name many players who have played one pocket well and most of them cannot play nine ball at the same level. It is the curse of one pocket. I hope that in three months I will be able to increase my level of play at nine ball to the point where I can be comfortable with that game and continue playing both games. At this point in time, I am disgusted with my speed at nine ball and am almost ready to quit the game altogether. It is really disgusting to play 50% worse at one game over another. Anyway, I'm going to give it a shot and see if I can discover any new Epiphanies.

All Pool Players Are Not Scum!

Mark Moore, the cuemaker and I, decided to put pool players to the test.

Mark had a used cue case that he donated for the experiment. We stood the case outside the hotel room door to perform the test. The test was to determine if pool players were really as low down POS as people say they are.

Our first knock came on the door 5 minutes after setting the case outside. We thanked the player and repeated the test a few minutes later. This went on for over an hour, with pool player after pool player letting us know that we left our cue/case standing outside our hotel door. Approximately, 7 pool players let us know that the case was there. We could see the case standing just outside our door through the crack under the door and were hoping to catch a thief in progress. We never did. Finally after much laughter we decide to leave the room to go eat and left the case standing there. As we were walking down the stairway some very young children passed us in a pack and Mark grinned at me and said, "They will get it." When we returned the case was gone. While we don't know what percentage of pool players are scum, we are happy to report that all pool players are not scum.

Mark said he would be soon be going to stay with Vagabond for a few months.

The DCC tournament is great. Meeting lots of new AZ faces and old ones as well. Speaking of old, I did see Williebetmore. (in memory of Breakup only). Williebetmore had the difficult task of hanging out with Jeanette Lee for most of the day and she would come by the AZ Room often and say nice things to Williebetmore to get him to take her to dinner. It was kind of sad, really. I could tell that he had no idea what to do with his new good fortune but being the gentleman that I am, I allowed him to stumble along without my help.