Monday Night APA League
Well, I play eight ball APA pool on Monday nights. It is a travel league. We play different teams at all sorts of different bars and taverns in the area, including our home tavern. (I am about to join a related nine ball team on Wednesday nights now that my Wednesday night in-house league is over.)
As promised, I’m posting about that, including anything really interesting or neat that happened that readers might be interested in. Unfortunately, not a lot happened that was really interesting, and there were no tips I could really bring anyone from that. The only thing I noticed is that many people are simply shooting too hard. I guess APA rules support people shooting too hard because the APA rules state that as long as you hit your ball first, if any of your balls go into a pocket, whether it was a planned shot or not, it’s still your turn. APA players call it “APA luck” or “APA love.”
I’ve also noticed one thing that bothers me a little. My team refuses to play “the numbers game.” Here’s what I mean: Eight ball APA players are rated from 2-7 based on skill. (Nine ball APA players can go down to a skill level of 1 if they are just that bad.) If a lower rated player plays a higher rated player, they have less wins required to win the match, based on said ratings. For instance, if a player rated 3 plays a player rated 7, the 7 has to win five games to take the match, while the 3 only has to win two games.
This is especially handy when you really want a win, and you have a very good 3 rated player. That 3, if on his game, can easily squeeze two matches from the 7, and you recorded a win. That’s called playing the numbers game. You match your players up, sometimes very unevenly, against players that are better than them (or worse than them), hoping that the numbers and some luck will see you through to a very victorious evening.
For some reason, the captain of my team refuses to play the numbers game. I’m only the co-captain, so I don’t have as much authority, otherwise we’d be taking more advantage of that, instead of playing everybody against their skill level, and praying we don’t have an unsuspected sandbagger against us. (Sandbag – To downplay or misrepresent one’s ability in a game or activity in order to deceive. A sandbagger is someone who intentionally loses matches early in a session to keep their rating low, giving an edge in the numbers game, later in the year.)
My APA team lost last night, the last night of the session, and did not make playoffs. I don’t have any active pool leagues until May, so I will be practicing and doing some research on more expert pool techniques so I can get back in fresh. I’ll keep posting here, hopefully everyday, about all of that and some other things. I want to get a forum going and get a real pool players’ community going here. Feel free to comment and feel free to contact me at: shooter(at)ishootpool(dot)com. (That was written the way it was to elude spam.)
Shooter