2013 US Open One Pocket Championship

It’s December 31^st, a day when most folks ponder memories of the past year and set goals for the next.  I’m no different.  2013 was a great pool year for me.  I didn’t play that much pool, maybe one day a week on average, but I did manage to check one item off my bucket list:  Playing in a US Open event!  I started playing One Pocket in January 2013 and immediately fell in love with the game.  I even decided (foolishly?) to enter the US Open One Pocket Championship in July of 2013 to see just how good the pros play the game.  It was a fantastic experience and one I will never forget.  I spent almost a full week in Vegas playing One Pocket and also playing in various 8 and 9 ball mini tournaments sponsored by the BCA.  Here’s a photo of the venue at 2:30am the morning before tournament play began.  I think I was the only player hitting balls and was so excited I couldn’t sleep.  Can you hear the theme music from The Color of Money?  Yeah, me too.  Pool 24/7.  My version of heaven!  In my next post I’ll tell you about my second biggest highlight from 2013:  My US Open One Pocket Championship match again Dennis Orcollo, the top money player on the planet.

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One Pocket Complexity

I’ve been practicing to improve my One Pocket game over the last several weeks, but haven’t posted in almost a month.  I’ve been struggling to figure out the best way to break the game down into its primary components.  What do I work on first, second, third, etc.?  In my last post, I listed several core shots and skills that I needed to improve.  I’ve been working on those intermittently and working on some other skills as well:

1.  Crossover bank shots – Bank shots where the cue ball passes through the future path of the object ball before the object ball gets there (and avoids the kiss).

2.  Standard spot shots – A single ball is spotted on the foot spot and you have ball in hand in the kitchen.

3.  Double ball spot shots – Two balls are spotted (with the first ball on the foot spot) and you have ball in hand in the kitchen.

4.  Kick-aways – Kicking the cue ball off the bottom rail, then knocking an object ball away from your opponent’s pocket and sending it up-table.

5.  Dig outs – Successfully removing a ball that is basically within the jaws of your opponent’s pocket without scratching.

6.  Intentional Scratches – Your opponent has a ball deep within the jaws of his pocket, and there’s no way to remove it, so you pocket your opponent’s ball and make the cue ball follow into the same pocket for an intentional scratch.  Since you scratched on the shot, your opponent’s ball gets spotted, and you have to spot one of your balls as well.

7.  Spin Safes – Yeah, I invented some of these terms.  What I mean by ‘Spin Safes’ is being able to spin the cue ball off of any object ball anywhere on the table and have the cue ball go back one or more rails and come to rest on or within a couple inches of the bottom rail.

8.  Ending your inning on your own terms (a.k.a “Leaving your opponent stuck against an object ball with virtually no viable shot other than to try to return a safety”) – The need for this skill has been drilled into my head (and wallet) repeatedly over the last month.  If you are going to leave the table, you’d better make sure when your opponent gets to the table, he/she has virtually no offensive options.

This covers most of the key skills I’ve been working on, but I haven’t even talked about learning some of ‘the moves’ yet.  I guess I’ll cover that difficult subject in a future post.