Last night my 14.1 season came to an end. Being my first season, I was pretty happy with the results. In our straight pool league, the top eight point leaders are invited to participate in an end of the season playoff tournament to determine the league champion. I was lucky enough to qualify. In the first round of the tournament, both I and my opponent played pretty well. I started off a little slow and got behind, but was finally able to get my safety game going and eventually prevailed 100-48. In the second round, I played a guy who is arguably the best player in the league and I didn’t shoot so well. I was pretty tired (yeah, here come the excuses!), I was hitting the balls too hard, balls were rattling in the jaws, and my pattern play was not very good. Yuck! He was shooting pretty good and eventually beat me 120-70. Oh well! I took 3rd/4th place and was happy with that. I also got lucky and ended up taking the season high run title at 40 balls, so I was very happy with that!
I look forward to playing more straight pool. I have definitely seen benefits in my 8 ball game as a result of my experience with 14.1 as I now see opportunities to break clusters whereas formerly I did not see them. I’ve also seen improvements in my soft speed control and small position movements of the cue ball. I highly recommend getting involved in straight pool as I’m sure you will see improvments as well.
Angle of Reflection 
Mike, you are right. He is the best guy around at LSB. I happen to draw him last session and the session before that. This time I was fortunate to not cross paths with him :P. Oh and BTW I didn’t make it to the finals. Lost 94-35 in a steep 100-35 race.
I also agree with you that it is tiresome to play two back to back matches. One thing I do is on last week before the playoffs, I play 2 matches (race to 100 for me at least). That way I get a bit used to playing 4-5 hours of straight pool before playoffs.