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

Thank you for visiting I Shoot Pool, my blog all about my billiard hobby. I’m Shooter. (Yes, a pool shooter named Shooter. It’s very funny.) I shoot on a travel APA team and an in-house team, both from the same tavern. Although there are five nights of the week I’m not shooting in a league, I like to practice a couple of those nights. I’m not the best pool player that ever lived, but I’m pretty good. Here I’ll be blogging about the games I shoot, things about pool, my history in pool, and all the tips and tricks I know and learn along the way. Feel free to join the discussion. Soon I plan to create a small forum and, in essence, a nice little community for pool players of all walks of life, communities, and rules. I don’t care if it’s eight ball, nine ball, or whatever. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care who I’m shooting or what I’m shooting. I want to shoot it and talk about it.

Right now you’re reading my initial post, which is just an introduction. Tonight I will be shooting on my APA league, and tomorrow I will make sure to update with a good post about how it went, and whatever I learned. Remember that you should bring something new away from every shot. If you’re always paying attention, you should always be learning.

Everytime you miss a shot, you should make sure you learn how to make that shot the next time, or at least what you did wrong, before you walk away from the pool tables for the night. You should always be paying attention to shooters who are better than you, because there is always something about angles, english, or strategy that you can always walk away with. That’s the kind of stuff I’ll be talking about, in the most interesting way I can.

There is a little news to talk about. My winter men’s in-house league just won the playoffs. We are the top team in our tavern. The end-of-season banquet was Saturday night, we were announced as the top team and all the teams were honored with a great night of free food, drinks, and pool games. It was a lot of fun, and the season was incredible.

Remember to check back tomorrow for another post. I hope to post on this blog nearly everyday, so check back as often as you can or want to. I love pool, and I hope to get many more people here that love it as much as I do!