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From the frying pan and into the fire

Ok. I’ve been on fire. I have only racked a single eight ball rack in all of November. I’ve won all but one rack. On that rack I scratched on the eight and beat myself. I’m not sure why I’m playing so well but it feels great. The problem is, that I feel I keep making improvements but it’s hard to tell if I actually am. I always learn a lot more from failure and I haven’t failed a lot lately (knock on wood right? Ha) While it feels good, I know that I’m not facing difficult competition. I need to just get owned once and put in my place. One weird thing happened though. My last match I was up 3-0 in a race to four and the weirdest thing happened. I barely missed the eight, hanging it in the pocket and my opponent walked up frustrated. He took three practice swings and accidentally tapped the cueball on his last swing. I called foul and he flipped out. He looked at me and said, “Really dude?” And made me feel like crap. I said, “sorry, but it’s a team game and I have a bunch of other
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Fear of failure

I had a serious bout of failure after my new stick came in. I’m not sure how much of it was me learning the new equipment, and how much of it was me falling into a fear of failure. A slump is an interesting thing and it felt to me more mental than physical. I'd been losing league nights since my equipment came in, and it's scary. One league night, I won the first game and scratched on the eight on the second game and mentally fell apart. My opponent just beat me rack after rack after that. I know equipment doesn’t make the player but sometimes if you dress the part you start feeling like a better player. I think, honestly, I was falsely afraid after doing so well that I was going to fall. I had a true fear of losing all of the progress I’ve made. Today helped. It was eight ball and a race to three. I won the lag and all three racks. I broke and ran the last rack up to the eight ball. Almost a break and run, but I played a safety on the eight because I couldn’t break it out
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New carbon fiber shaft - my thoughts

I’ve recently mode over to a Predator revo shaft from a much cheaper Viper cue. I really like the better equipment. There is a clear difference in quality and the biggest thing for me is the consistency of the hit. I’ve been pocketing more balls, and I’ve been able to consistently put spin on the cue ball. I've also been able to put more spin on the ball. This may partially be the placebo effect, but recently I drew a ball across the table from the other side of the table. I’d never been able to put draw on a ball that far away before. I feel that with my old viper cue I missed a shot in one of four ways. 1) I aimed incorrectly, 2) Mechanically, I hit the ball in a place that I wasn’t aiming, 3) I wasn’t adjusting for inconsistencies with the balls or table, 4) my equipment was inconsistent in hitting the ball. I feel with the revo, I’ve reduced and mitigated #4 so that it is a much less significant part of my game. When I miss where I was aiming at, it’s now almost always due t
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Merida, Mexico Trip - Billar Chochola sucursal Merida

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Well, I spent the last five days on a trip to Merida, Mexico visiting my daughter. She is studying abroad in college for a semester and it was wonderful to see her. When in Merida, I was able to stop by Billar Chochola sucursal Merida . This small billiard hall was fantastic. It had several dominos tables, four billiard tables (with green felt in picture), and about seven nine-foot three cushion carom tables (with blue felt in picture). No one was playing on the billiard tables, and I was about to get a table for 30 pesos and hour, which is about a dollar and a half USD. I forgot my glove, so they also sold me a billiard glove with the business logo on it for 70 pesos (about $2.10 USD). It was actually a pretty good quality billiard glove. Snacks and sodas were sold there also, so I picked myself up a coca cola in a bottle, and I played an hour of pool. The tables were in surprisingly good condition, the felt was clean and wasn’t torn or horribly worn at all. The billiard table
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The importance of challenge

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Last night was league night. I understand that I'm not a great player yet; heck, I may not even be a good player yet, but something weird happened last night. I didn't feel challenged at all in my match. There was no doubt in my mind at all that I was going to win that match. I had no fear of my opponent and I just kind of made the motions in finishing the games. I didn’t play all that well, and my stoke and pregame kept slipping. There wasn’t a doubt I was going to win that game at any point and I just coasted through it. Normally, my captain had been putting me against the tougher shooters but I think they were worried about my skill rank going up. This match didn't have any challenge in it at all and it felt too easy. It wasn’t as fun without the struggle. I've played lower ranked people that give it their all and because of the handicap system, I have been challenged and struggle in those matches. For some reason, last night that was not the case. I came out to s
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The power of concentration

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One of the things Demetrius mentioned to me and I forgot to put in my blog, was the power of concentration, and how much it improves one’s game. There was so much amazingness from that weekend. This really made me think about my own pool game, and why I was making excuses for not concentrating. First, a little background on me so you know where I’m coming from. I hold college degrees in computer science and psychology, so I tend to think of things very analytically. I’m also a lead cyber security engineer by trade so capitalizing on poor human decisions is also part of my job. I regularly craft phishing emails taking human behavior into account and utilizing things like game theory and Milgram’s studies on obedience to get people to click on things they shouldn’t. It’s obvious that concentrating on my game more will make me better, and I want to be a better player. So why was I making the bad decisions to drink a beer, play on my phone, or get chat with friends during a match
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The line of balls drill has my number

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There is a drill that no matter how hard I have tried I just can not complete. This line of balls drill is a drill where you line up the pool balls on the third diamond across the short side of the pool table. Then you use bottom position to stay on the same side of the balls and make them all in. You start behind the headstring on the edge ball. Anytime you touch another ball, end up in a position above the line of balls, or miss... you have to start the drill over. I have yet to complete this drill. Often I'll only get a single ball in. Other times I could be off on position with only one or two balls left. It's frustrating because I do so bad on this drill and I practice it for so long, that I'm certain I'm ingraining misses and bad position into my game. I'm set on a mission to eventually complete this drill. Today was Sunday. I didn't have custody of my kid, and I got all of my chores done yesterday. Today was going to be the day I beat this damn line
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