The road to New Orleans

Okay this is very far in the future and I am not sure whither it will ever materialize but here is my tentative road map to New Orleans…
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Playing Ernesto…

Today I went to campus in order to practice my game… When I got there, no one was in: group of girls and Charles shooting randomly at some balls. At first I wasn’t going to play until Charles gave me his table and told me that Ernesto was coming in a few…

Now here this: at Crenshaw lanes, frequenting the pool hall are three top players Ernesto, Tom and Nick (that one is a real asshole, I won’t mentioned him unless needed)… Furthermore Ernesto won the tournament and only play Tom or Nick (or, by some unlucky event, someone in league) but recently he has been accepting to play me at practice. Today was one such case.

I started as usual trying to accommodate my poor skills to his level by setting some basic rules: alternating breaks and so on… The key when playing a player better than you is to play 8-balls it increase the odds, the converse is also true.

I played over 20 rack with Ernesto and only managed to run up to 4 balls on each… in on particular match I almost won but managed to get stuck on the 4-ball in the corner right pocket… was an S… Truth is if I can increase my winning percentage against Ernesto or Tom (as I refuse to play Nick) from 0.0% to 5.0% I will consider myself ready for New Orleans…

Tournament outcomes

Well…

There is no need to spell it out: I got eliminated:'(. Yet I can be very proud of myself for I had a nice run. I got up really early  this morning, after watching the news on CNN I got myself ready to go to campus. The tournament was set for 2:00 P.M but the pool hall was not open until 1:30 so in effect that meant  a short warm up time.

I first played Trevor for practice and end-up playing Kris (not to be confuse with my roommate). Finally John and Alex showed-up for to start the tournament. They were in all 12 of us. The tournament was a double elimination, meaning you had to loose to 2 different opponents to get eliminated. In the first round we all played our matches for a race to 5… Then whoever loose in the first round goes to the loser’s bracket and the system goes into a further complicated manner.

I played Alex in the first round… He ran for a lead of 0-2 but in the on the third rack he kick in the 8-ball for a lost bringing the game to a 1-2. Soon we found ourselves at a situation where we were 4-4… On an incredible shot from one cross-rail to the other I got the 8-ball in the side right pocket giving me my first and only win in the tournament…

From there on I lost to John in series ended at 1-5… going to the loser’s bracket for a shut-out by Frank on a 0-3…

In some I need more practice. Thus tomorrow me and Kris are heading to Hallagin to play in the league as partners… Boo-Yah !

Getting Ready

Welcome world…

To be honest this is not my first blog I have had many but never maintained them with much care. So why start with this one… well I have decided to fuse my blogging time with my off time and add a twist to it: “I’ll be blogging about my preparations for an event.”

Truth is I play pool (pocket Billiards) a lot yet I am not very good but I have been getting better and have decided to take a pool trip across north Florida  through Alabama heading to New Orleans for the summer jazz festival in may. Until then I have 7 months to get ready by truly playing my heart out in my local league here at Florida State…

Currently I am ranked 9th with a skill level 3 (skill set 1-5, new member = N/A) and win average of 45.8%. They are 25 members in the league… my first test thus is to see how well I do in this Saturday’s tournament…

Wish me luck y’all

P.S. here are the links to my other blogs:
http://personomist.blogspot.com/
http://think-daily.blogspot.com/