Poolgrimage

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 ...

Skill ranking is weird but appears to be a necessary evil in league play. There is a handicapping system based on a player’s average skill. I’ve dealt with something similar in bowling leagues or golf games I have been in before, so I was familiar with the process of handicapping. I’m currently ranked a four in APA eight ball and APA nine ball. That ranking was somewhat arbitrary and set by the league operator when I joined the league. Normally people start at a three rank, but she started me at a rank four due to my previous play. It’s really hard to determine what skill a starting level player is at until they get several games under their belt. I would assume that this handicapping of players is a difficult task. Especially because there are so few rankings. Eight ball ranking goes from skill number two to skill seven and nine ball goes from skill one to skill nine. There aren’t a lot of options in between. I’m not sure where I truly lie, and I think it may be several games before...

I found that there was a professional in my area that gives lessons. She owns a billiard store and looking at her wall there was a ton of trophies. It was quite impressive, and I was really interested in getting a different perspective on the game. She had taught billiards classes for sixteen years at the local university, so she also had a lot of experience teaching. So, of course, me being me and being all-in, I signed up for eight weeks of an hour lesson a week. I showed up and she was excited to show off her new table. She had just bought a new table for her instruction room. She had been it shipped to the United States and mentioned that it was the first seven-foot Rasson table in the US. The pockets were very similar to the Diamonds I’ve played on and maybe even a little tighter. I had to admit, that it was a pretty cool table. We started the lesson with me shooting a bunch of balls in at random. She just wanted me to make every shot an “easy shot” and see how I shot. I’ve been...

As the days went on from my initial three day intensive, it became harder to maintain the intensity. There were days that life came up and I couldn’t even practice at all. Without a schedule set in stone, I found that it was difficult to maintain a consistent practice. I decided that I needed to schedule my practice. I would make practice like any other thing in my life, if I set aside a particular time of day that was dedicated to practice, I would know that I was not practicing when I should be. Of course, me being me, I set the schedule too aggressively. After talking to Demetrius about my schedule we found that I was trying to do way too many drills before mastering any. I simplified my schedule a little and was able to start practicing a little more consistently. I didn’t make every practice session, but when I missed a scheduled practice, I knew that I was missing a scheduled practice. It held me accountable. Another league night came and this one was interesting. It was a nin...

After discussing with Demetrius a little more, an interesting question came up in our conversation. “Why was I getting so exhausted playing pool now?” Playing pool was much more of a challenge than it had ever been before, and it was good to question why. I was thinking about more than I ever had before, and concentrating more than I ever had before. The extreme focus could be draining. It was more of a challenge and it was interesting, but it had lost a little of its magic and fun. I needed to get that fun back. Afterall, that’s why I played pool in the first place. I feel it was becoming stressful because I was putting too much pressure on myself to win each individual match as if I lost the mat6ch I was no longer a good pool player. I was working towards both short and long-term goals of perfection, which wasn’t really an attainable goal at all. It was the wrong road to head down, and I was getting frustrated in matches with any simple mistake. I needed to work toward goals that we...

It’s not my plan to explain every league night I have, but more to explain when I learn things. This is mostly a reference for myself, so if anyone else is reading this bear with me. As league nights continue it is my assumption that I will learn less and less from each one. So, not only am I on a Monday nine-ball league, but I’m also on a Wednesday eight ball league. Luckily, both leagues have home bars that are kid friendly so that I can bring my son on home games on weeks that I have custody of him. He took the APA scorekeeper’s clinic and actually really enjoyed it. We played a bunch of fake matches pretending to be random people. It got us both practicing billiards, but also had a fun aspect to it. I had custody of him on Wednesday, and it was a home game, so we were both excited to go. I brought him a score sheet, so he didn’t get bored and he absolutely loved it. Our league captain made a note of this and they compared sheets at the end. In a weird rarity, both sheets matched ...

Upon arriving back in Boise, I went upstairs and started playing around on my seven-foot pool table. It looks so small and the size was concerning. It felt like I would have trouble getting to the level of skill that I was hoping for without the size of that larger table. Every shot seemed much easier; every shot seemed to rattle in. It was concerning, and I took a mental note of where I would need to be. I decided I still had a lot of work to do on position play and making the five basic shots. (Stun, follow, draw, punch follow, and punch draw) I would focus my first few months on focusing on that and would worry about the larger table as my game improved. The next day was league night, and after not being able to play pool at all, suddenly I was getting more opportunities to play. I was ready. My first APA match was a nine-ball match at a local bar. It was nothing like Minnesota. There were no rows of Diamond pool tables. There were only two tables in this bar and one of my new te...

Sunday morning came and I was wide awake at 7am. I rolled out of bed and headed to the shower. It was my goal to beat Demetrius to the table on the last day. Unfortunately, as I walked over to the shower, he was already downstairs, “Hey Matt, ready to go?” I hadn’t woken up even close to first. I showered quickly and started shooting balls in with the pocket reducers. I made a note to purchase those when I got back home. The pocket reducers really tightened up my aim and although my shotmaking was a little off, they helped a lot. After removing them, it was easier to aim for particular parts of the pocket rather than just considering it one pocket. There were lots of warm up drills and going over the content from days one and two. By lunch I was exhausted. At lunch we watched more pros play. The idea was that when I went home, I could watch these videos and know what to look for. I had a different mindset when watching the pro games. I was beginning to look at their play differently. ...

Demetrius knocked on my door at 8:30am ready to go for another day of billiards. I was exhausted from the day before; my muscles ached everywhere, but his passion for the game was contagious. I immediately jumped out of bed, took two ibuprofens, brushed my teeth, and started warm up drills. We reviewed all of the drills from the day before and worked more on my stroke and pre-shot routine. He was happy of my improvement and it seems that the things he taught me sunk in a little deeper after a night of rest. We reviewed a little about sidespin and then had lunch. During lunch we watched professionals play a few runouts on YouTube and he went over pattern play, position, and shot making. I wasn’t making shots like I had before. (My shotmaking actually still hasn’t fully returned yet.) I think it’s due to the changes in my stoke. My head placement and body position changed a little, and the hardness of my hits changed. My aiming was off. After decades of shooting like I have, I assumed...

Friday, September 6th started the first day of my poolgrimage. My effort to consciously improve my game and to become a better billiard player. It was finally time to go to Minneapolis and I packed my bags eagerly two days beforehand. In fact, I had to buy a new duffle bag on Amazon that was long enough to hold my pool cues. I woke up at 4am to make the 5am flight out of Boise and I was in Minniapolis by 9:30am or so. Demetrius picked me up from the airport and we geeked out talking about pool all the way to his house. There was a ton of excitement in both of us. We couldn’t wait to begin. When I arrived at his house, I set all of my bags in his basement. He actually had a really nice bedroom for me downstairs. There was even a sink to brush my teeth, a long bar, a nighstand with a reading light, a mini fridge stocked with a ton of bottled water, and plenty of space to relax. There was also a bathroom downstairs, so there really wasn’t a need to go upstairs except for meals. Down in ...

My love for the game of billiards started young. I grew up on an angus farm in western Oregon, and when I was in the eighth grade, my dad got a free 1906 Brunswick seven-foot pool table from a local men's fraternity. All we had to do was get that one-piece slate pool table out of their second story building and it was all ours for free. Boy, was that a job. We ended up putting it in our shop, and my brother and I would play that game for hours and hours every day. When I went to college in the mid 90’s, I was surprised by how much better I was playing than my friends. I felt like a superstar player and although I could only run a few balls at a time no one I ever played could run a rack, so I just thought that was something professionals did. I’d play at local bars and do pretty well against everyone I played. Later, I got married, moved to Boise, Idaho and purchased my own pool table, a 9-foot Brunswick, and I joined an APA eight ball pool league. I was rated somewhere betw...