Hi readers, (real or imagined) this weekend me and my team participated in the WCVNEA championships. I did less than stellar in the single elimination singles Tournament losing my first match 4-1 and thus being knocked out of play. Ugh!! I may have felt a little better about it if I had played my best however I stunk.
My teammates performed about the same, and that was a bit of forshadowing for what was about to come for the team event. I have to say we played our 1st match quite strong and was very pleased with that. We had a very large lead on the the other team and the match ended early in the 4th round with us gaining enough points to make it mathematically impossible for them to come back. That was Friday night. Our next match wasn't until Saturday afternoon. This is because we had a bye in the first round and won our match in the second round and they needed time to play b side matches.
Our first match on Saturday was a heart breaker with us starting out with an early lead, most of the team was playing well and I had even had a really nice break and run. Trouble popped it's really ugly head up early in the 3rd round when the other team had a couple of back to back runouts, and we went from being in the drivers seat to playing catch up. My game in the 3rd round wasn't going well and had turned into a safety battle after my opponent had run off 7 of his balls and missed his shape on the 8. I cleared of a few balls but the 8 and 4 of my balls were in an ugly cluster along the side rail so I had to play safe after I cleaned up the loose balls(Matches were decided by total points or balls sunk so I wanted to make sure I got whatever easy points were available before I played safe)
Below is a diagram of the layout after I had played a few safeties and had finally had a chance to knock one of my balls out.
When I realized what my opponent was lining up, I told him I'd like to have a referree present. It was somewhat obvious to me that he was lining up a carom off the 5 onto the 8. The ref came over, and asked him what his shot was, he replied he was going to try cut the 8 in the corner.
I stood back and watched, the ref stood over the shot, my opponent shot, it looked like he had in fact hit the 5 first so I looked to the ref who momentarily had a had a puzzled look on his face then he declared it was a good shot. Ok, the fact that the ref made the wrong call in my mind I can live with, the fact that my opponent got a lucky kiss off my 1 ball to win the game totally ticked me off. That's pool, if your sitting there's nothing you can do, there's always the chance that you're going to lose everytime you give your opponent control of the table(no matter how limited).
After that lose, I think we picked up another win and it looked like things were going to be ok as our other teammate was well on his way to winning his games. We watched intently until he got down to the 8 ball. Now some of you readers know that VNEA rules indicate that when shooting on the 8ball you must call the pocket by placing a patch beside it. I'm sure you figured out from that last statement what happened. Yes, our player who's been playing since October in this league and you'd think would be well versed in the rules by now was lining up the shot and hadn't patched the pocket. We looked on with dread because, we knew based on his play during the regular season that he had a problem with remembering the patch.
Team Rule #43.21 If a player loses a game because he has neglected to patch the pocket he must purchase his teammates a beverage of thier choice.
I had a beer. It helped catch my tears after we lost that match. This had happened somewhere around noon. We went and looked at the bracket to find out when our next match was, we were somewhat shocked to find out it wasn't until 11:00 PM. Oh Joy!!!!
I finished my beer and discovered that my lovely girlfriend had expected us to play a little longer so she had had a couple of beers too and we weren't going to be driving anywhere anytime soon. So I mentioned that some other players we know were playing a match in the Masters room and we could go watch for a while and sober up.
A little while later we went for a walk and discovered a Persian grocery store and went in to find out what they had for sale. The lady working the counter spotted us immediately and decided that we needed a guided tour along with a commentary on how each food complimented Iranian culture. We felt so well treated that we emptied our pockets and purchased all sorts of lovely food including rice filled vine leaves, wild cucumber pickles, rose water and some sort of salsa looking canned concoction you're supposed to serve on rice. We did pass on the carbonated yogurt drink. I'm sorry I wasn't that adventurous so I can't tell you what it tasted like. I know you're all dying to know.
We would have purchased some of thier safron which is Orange, not yellow like spanish safron. My girlfriend insists it's red, but it's not and one of the guys that was at the store (family memeber?) also insisted it was orange, but it wasn't within my modest budget for the weekend. We will be going back and maybe by that time I will have worked up enough courage to try the carbonated yogurt drink.
11:00PM.......
We all played well, nobody made any serious mistakes but unfortunatly we lost by several points. It all came down to the last game and our players opponent played a really good safety to get ball in hand and end the game much to our disgust.
We'll get the Basta....... next time. :)
My teammates performed about the same, and that was a bit of forshadowing for what was about to come for the team event. I have to say we played our 1st match quite strong and was very pleased with that. We had a very large lead on the the other team and the match ended early in the 4th round with us gaining enough points to make it mathematically impossible for them to come back. That was Friday night. Our next match wasn't until Saturday afternoon. This is because we had a bye in the first round and won our match in the second round and they needed time to play b side matches.
Our first match on Saturday was a heart breaker with us starting out with an early lead, most of the team was playing well and I had even had a really nice break and run. Trouble popped it's really ugly head up early in the 3rd round when the other team had a couple of back to back runouts, and we went from being in the drivers seat to playing catch up. My game in the 3rd round wasn't going well and had turned into a safety battle after my opponent had run off 7 of his balls and missed his shape on the 8. I cleared of a few balls but the 8 and 4 of my balls were in an ugly cluster along the side rail so I had to play safe after I cleaned up the loose balls(Matches were decided by total points or balls sunk so I wanted to make sure I got whatever easy points were available before I played safe)
Below is a diagram of the layout after I had played a few safeties and had finally had a chance to knock one of my balls out.
When I realized what my opponent was lining up, I told him I'd like to have a referree present. It was somewhat obvious to me that he was lining up a carom off the 5 onto the 8. The ref came over, and asked him what his shot was, he replied he was going to try cut the 8 in the corner.
I stood back and watched, the ref stood over the shot, my opponent shot, it looked like he had in fact hit the 5 first so I looked to the ref who momentarily had a had a puzzled look on his face then he declared it was a good shot. Ok, the fact that the ref made the wrong call in my mind I can live with, the fact that my opponent got a lucky kiss off my 1 ball to win the game totally ticked me off. That's pool, if your sitting there's nothing you can do, there's always the chance that you're going to lose everytime you give your opponent control of the table(no matter how limited).
After that lose, I think we picked up another win and it looked like things were going to be ok as our other teammate was well on his way to winning his games. We watched intently until he got down to the 8 ball. Now some of you readers know that VNEA rules indicate that when shooting on the 8ball you must call the pocket by placing a patch beside it. I'm sure you figured out from that last statement what happened. Yes, our player who's been playing since October in this league and you'd think would be well versed in the rules by now was lining up the shot and hadn't patched the pocket. We looked on with dread because, we knew based on his play during the regular season that he had a problem with remembering the patch.
Team Rule #43.21 If a player loses a game because he has neglected to patch the pocket he must purchase his teammates a beverage of thier choice.
I had a beer. It helped catch my tears after we lost that match. This had happened somewhere around noon. We went and looked at the bracket to find out when our next match was, we were somewhat shocked to find out it wasn't until 11:00 PM. Oh Joy!!!!
I finished my beer and discovered that my lovely girlfriend had expected us to play a little longer so she had had a couple of beers too and we weren't going to be driving anywhere anytime soon. So I mentioned that some other players we know were playing a match in the Masters room and we could go watch for a while and sober up.
A little while later we went for a walk and discovered a Persian grocery store and went in to find out what they had for sale. The lady working the counter spotted us immediately and decided that we needed a guided tour along with a commentary on how each food complimented Iranian culture. We felt so well treated that we emptied our pockets and purchased all sorts of lovely food including rice filled vine leaves, wild cucumber pickles, rose water and some sort of salsa looking canned concoction you're supposed to serve on rice. We did pass on the carbonated yogurt drink. I'm sorry I wasn't that adventurous so I can't tell you what it tasted like. I know you're all dying to know.
We would have purchased some of thier safron which is Orange, not yellow like spanish safron. My girlfriend insists it's red, but it's not and one of the guys that was at the store (family memeber?) also insisted it was orange, but it wasn't within my modest budget for the weekend. We will be going back and maybe by that time I will have worked up enough courage to try the carbonated yogurt drink.
11:00PM.......
We all played well, nobody made any serious mistakes but unfortunatly we lost by several points. It all came down to the last game and our players opponent played a really good safety to get ball in hand and end the game much to our disgust.
We'll get the Basta....... next time. :)
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