There was a bright, pool-playing youngster on English Kozoom chat the other day, watching 3-cushion with appreciation. He was critical of the equalizing inning. With typical 20-year old overconfidence, he said: “Completely idiotic system, if you are the first to cross the finish line, you win. Who wants a draw in sports anyway? Why even play the lag, if there is no advantage in winning it?” Let me say it again, it was a smart kid. But his comments proved he was clueless about the psychology of billiards. An equal-innings match is a thing of beauty. If you’ve played a thousand of ‘em, you know. Continue reading Equal innings, what’s the point?→
Our prized possession, our trusted friend, the tool of our craft. Most of us even own more than one, and they are good ones. We are like a chef and his knives, or a Tiger and his woods. Billiard players relate to their cue as to their car: not only should it get them from A to B, it should also tell the world who they are.
So this is what we do: we buy a good cue, and then a better one. A few years later: another one, even better still. We are adults for a while, realising the rest is up to us, it’s not going to be the cue’s fault from now on. This is our stick, we are proud of it. Then one day, there is a cue brand that convinces us they have made a significant improvement of some sort. A world class player uses their cue, and his game is fingerlickin’ good. We are a kid again. We want that cue. Continue reading The stick we never seem to be able to stick with→
We all use chalk on our tip, to prevent a miscue. If we do miscue though, we do not blame the chalk. We blame the tip. We put on our “I hate this shaft – face” and take another one from our bag. This second shaft is not as good as the first one; we started the match with the other one for a reason. The substitution is merely to tell the audience that the miscue was not our fault. (It was).
If you are under 50, it’s likely that every high jump you have ever seen on TV was a Fosbury-style jump, known as the “flop”. It’s the standard now, has been since Mexico 1968 where Dick Fosbury won the Olympic gold. Hard to believe that they used the scissors-style jump and the straddle jump for centuries, isn’t it? Imagine it’s 1965, and put yourself in Fosbury’s shoes for a second. When he decided to committ all his training to the “flop” (he did not invent it, but he convinced the world it worked), he had not won anything with it yet. It’s not as if he fiddled with a detail and found a small improvement. He changed the run-up. He changed the take-off. He changed the turn, and the landing. How confident must you be, to travel so deep to the left, into uncharted territory, when to the right there is a tested concept? He did it, because high jumping had stopped developing. It had hit a ceiling, and Dick Fosbury broke through it.
The traditional season opener in Belgium is the Superprestige tournament in early September. This year’s edition will no doubt start with a minute of silence, as one of the main sponsors and great friends of the event, Ferre van Loco, passed away last week. The billiard community in the Low Countries will remember his warmth, his love of food and wine, of billiards, of life. He will be missed.
The Superprestige is not unlike the Dutch “Masters” in its format: 4 flights of 4 round robin, from the last 8 on knock-out in QF, SF and F. Those of you with a Kozoom premium pass can look forward to an interesting week (1-6 September). Here’s the field: Continue reading Sixteen red devils with a cue→
The final two days of the 2014 Verhoeven Open were not so much about Salazar, Sidhom, Cataño and Ly The Vinh, who predictably ended 8,7,6 and 5. They did well though, to make it that far and to help create an average for the final 8-player round robin of 1,698, which is only slightly lower than was produced in the best years of the Crystal Kelly in Monte Carlo. But the focus was on the top 4: Caudron, Blomdahl, Merckx and Jaspers. Continue reading The Blomdahl era: far from over→
The Verhoeven Open, formerly the Sang Lee Memorial, is a three-stage tournament with both seeded players (4) and a draw. The bigger names invariably make it through the first round, but only then do the seeds enter the tournament. In this 2014 edition, last year’s winner Caudron was seeded, as well as the world nr. 2 Torbjörn Blomdahl, the world nr. 5 Dick Jaspers, and the legendary Raymond Ceulemans. Hard to argue with those choices? Actually, no. Unseeded, as a result of the organization’s respectful gesture to RC, were Murat Naci Coklu (17th on the world ranking), Tayfun Tasdemir (12th), Kyung Roul Kim (8th) and last year’s runner-up Eddy Merckx (4th). Continue reading Murat never complains, and neither does Tayfun→
Yes, Jean Paul de Bruijn and Frédéric Caudron are currently the best players in the world, in that discipline. If you wanted to argue that they are the two best in history, you could make a good case. But we’ll talk about these gentlemen a bit later. The “two faces” also refers to 1-cushion itself, which is both beautiful and brutal. Here’s a little more about that enigmatic, unjust, sadistically difficult game.
One-cushion is enigmatic, because some good players, in either 3-cushion (the older brother) or balkline (the younger brother) don’t do very well in 1-cushion, and some slightly lesser players in either of the two other disciplines can hold their own. Continue reading The two faces of 1-cushion→
You can’t win any prizes in our sport for having a stylish game. If you make the points, the referee will count them, regardless of your technique. But I can’t help myself: I usually root for the player who makes the game look good.
Many things can ruin the “look” of your play, and when I say “things”, I am referring mostly to body parts that move. If you watch beautiful 3-cushion, you always see a cue moving and a player standing still. And even that cue moves in minimalist fashion: back and forth only, straight as an arrow. It will not move up and down, it will not go sideways. Watch just a few minutes of an old Raymond Ceulemans match on YouTube, and you know what I mean. Feet planted, body frozen, left hand like a rock. He taught us all. Continue reading There’s no such thing as good ugly 3-cushion→
The now 7-time national champion of the USA, Pedro Piedrabuena, has not shown his face in Antalya, Hurghada or Suwon in years. I fully understand his reasoning: he has a business to run, plane tickets cost an arm and a leg, and the prize money is pathetic. But still: what a shame it is. His general average in Houston last week (1.892) was not just “good”. It was extraordinary, would easily put him in the world’s top 10 if it was his regular playing strength. I think it’s too early to consider him a 1.9 player, but certainly a good time to give him due praise. Continue reading A quiet man from Montevideo (and San Diego)→
The game is bigger than everyone else! "Torbjorn Blomdahl"
There was a bright, pool-playing youngster on English Kozoom chat the other day, watching 3-cushion with appreciation. He was critical of the equalizing inning. With typical 20-year old overconfidence, he said: “Completely idiotic system, if you are the first to cross the finish line, you win. Who wants a draw in sports anyway? Why even play the lag, if there is no advantage in winning it?” Let me say it again, it was a smart kid. But his comments proved he was clueless about the psychology of billiards. An equal-innings match is a thing of beauty. If you’ve played a thousand of ‘em, you know. Continue reading Equal innings, what’s the point?