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can of whupa~* by a burger. or two.

when we talk about pool, it’s hard not to include food as an adjacent topic.  or any subject with food as the adjacent topic.  food, of course, is paramount to peak performance in pool.  allow me to post a short treatise on sustenance and performance.

on second thought, i’ll just post it without anyone’s allowance.

when tournament comes, i find it helpful to eat only familiar foods.  basically, foods i’ve eaten plenty times before and found it safe AND palatable, as well as easy on the innards.  there’s no worse feeling than to have stomach pains from bad food(s) in the middle of a f~*g match.  for me, when in tournament play, i stick with all the safe options.  granted the foods i pick may not be healthy (mostly due to availability), but they don’t cause problems to my system.  the seasoned veterans pack their own lunches and eat them between matches; this way they can control what food they consume, and tailor the recipe should they have specific needs (e.g., diabetes).  however you do it, it’s important to keep ourselves ready by getting some sustenance between play.

funny as this sounds, bland foods are quite good for tournaments.  for me, bland foods keep my focus on pool, since a delicious meal’s aftertaste tends to linger in my mouth and on my mind.  next thing i know . . . game over.  bland foods provide energy but don’t take our minds away from the game.  peanut-butter crackers, saltines, bananas, fruits are all pretty good choices.  a quick bowl of soup is also decent, provided it’s available near the venue and there’s enough time to consume it.  smoothies are good in a pinch.  bodybuilders tend to favor protein shakes of various kinds; that can work too.  (muscle milk!!)

volume and heaviness also come into play if there’s enough time for a sit-down meal.  we can have a heavy-tasting dish, provided the dish doesn’t bowl us over with its strong flavor and give us massive food coma or after-dinner sluggishness.  same thing with volume.  we eat too much and boom, food coma sets in, and we can kiss the match goodbye.  my good friend once went down the san diego area to play this dude (supposedly the gent ran with swanee back then, but don’t quote me on it).  i think they played 8- or 10-ahead, 9-ball.  after 5-6 hours, no one could get a solid lead, so they decided to break for dinner.  well, this gent was, ahem, more well-rounded than my friend.  so my buddy purposely ate just a burger (or a couple of small hot dogs, i’m not sure) for dinner.  (normally my friend could really pack them away; he almost ate an entire large pizza on one occasion.)  the gent ate a considerably bigger meal; several burgers, i believe.  when the match rejoined, it took my friend two hours to pull off the win.  after the match, i think my friend went out and ate quite well on the other guy’s dime.

yes, many things in pool may open cans of whupa~*s on us, including a hamburger.  or two.

waffles!

stopped by a neighborhood coffee bean & tea leaf store a few days ago.  i was surprised to see belgian waffles on display!  when i asked the counter girl about it, she said that the waffle would be served warm with nutella.  nutella, man!  on a warm waffle!  i couldn’t resist.  slathered the nutella right on the waffle and i chowed down.  i tell ya, nothing beats a hot cup of tea with warm belgian waffle topped with nutella during winter time.  if there’s a coffee bean near you, be sure to grab a piece.  i don’t know how long coffee bean will be offering the waffles, so get them while you can.  it’s a sweet and yummy treat that will defrost your body and warm your soul.

stylistic differences

i recently recorded the wpba’s pacific coast classic broadcasted on espn.  interesting matches; can’t say the pool was great, but it was pretty good.  however, i am continually being impressed by jasmin ouschan’s game.  i think she has one of the best forms in pool, along with kim davenport.  i think those two players are the only ones i’ve seen that can do the water bottle drill in high speed.  normally when i see people demonstrate the water bottle drill, they typically stroke the cue slowly.  ouschan can stroke the cue very rapidly and still the shaft won’t touch the insides of the water bottle.  now that is some straight stroke.  plus, when ouschan gets down on a shot, she looks absolutely like a robot.  how can one player’s form be so completely mechanical is beyond my understanding.  i think ouschan’s form is a thing of beauty; the phrase “repeatable precision” comes to mind.  (or maybe teutonic engineering.  )  davenport has the same kind of stroke.  nothing moved on cali kim when he played except his right lower arm.  you could probably put a bubble level on davenport’s cue and it would stay level.  as i said before, if you have to copy someone’s form, pick either ouschan or davenport.  you cannot screw up and harm your game when you go with their forms.

i’ve also been watching Xiaoting Pan’s game with some interest.  pan’s form makes absolutely no sense; it should never have worked.  somehow, she puts it together successfully.  when using the standard loop bridge, she seems to have a tendency to elevate her bridge and use only her fingers as support, as opposed to planting your entire hand and fingers on the table as support.  technically it’s a no-no, but again she seems to make it work a la louis ulrich.  (ulrich likes to elevate his bridge too for some reason.)  however, in this pacific coast classic tournament, pan seemed to elevate her bridge less than she did in the past.  it could be a sign that she’s improving; an encouraging thought.

i still haven’t figured out the rationale behind rubbing your chin on the cue.  allison fisher does it.  loree jon jones did it (and probably still does) when she competed.  obviously that works for those two players, but i just don’t understand the technique.  i’d think that your chin would impede the stroke, but fisher and jones make it work.  maybe they will explain it to me one day if i’m really lucky.

of course, bustamante’s form is strictly for bustamante only.  another form that should have never worked; in fact, if you’ve read ray martin’s 99 Critical Shots In Pool you’ll remember that martin listed busty’s grip as one of the things you don’t do.  martin called the busty-style grips “the butterfly” and he cautioned against using it.  nevertheless, django made it possible.

and who can forget allen hopkins’ poke stroke?  i’ll never understand that form in my lifetime.  mike davis has a weird form too, but he understands the game best with the form that he’s got, so i’m happy that he’s found something uniquely his own.

also, i look at the phenomenon of cross-eye dominance as an opportunity for big power.  in case that sounds confusing, cross-eye dominance is basically when you aim from the eye that’s opposite of your shooting hand.  a left-hander will aim out of his/her right eye, and vice versa.  since you have to twist your body a bit so you can aim out of your opposite eye, your shooting arm will naturally have more room to swing, and possibly generate more power.  i haven’t paid any attention to cross-eye dominance in pro players, but i’m going to keep my eye out (no pun intended) for it in the future.

this is a kind of random post; i just wanted to write about some of the observations i’ve made over the years.  when it comes to forms, i’m more an advocate for basic stances, grips, and swings.  the more outlandish styles cannot be taught; you either know how to use it instinctively or you run away from it like the plague.  if someone offers to teach you the slip stroke or busty’s grip, he/she is probably crazy.  act accordingly.

liberation

recently i went down to my fave PH to practice.  as such, i ended up shooting with this gent–let’s call him ufo.  (don’t f~* ask.)  i got a little miffed in the process.

we’ve practiced many times before, and one thing that sort of bothered me was that he liked to play races to whatever games of 9-ball.  the thing is, ufo doesn’t shoot very well.  actually, let me correct myself.  to me, he just seems to lack cueball knowledge.  by my estimation, roughly 70% of the times he doesn’t know where the cueball is going, or he can’t make the cueball go where he wants.  the lack of speed control takes care of the other 30%.  the result is that he shoots a series of haphazard shots that makes no sense, shape-wise, whatsoever.  apply that to playing a race & you can see how artificial the score becomes.  there’s no money on the line, he can’t forge together a meaningful runout, so what’s the point of a race?  when i practice with someone, i want the session to have good pool.  clean runouts.  creative shapes.  clever shot-making.  these are the things i try to do when i practice against someone; i feel guilty when i can’t shoot well against my opponent, since i feel like i’ve wasted my opponent’s time.  i get none of those with ufo.

i suppose i’ve reached a fed-up point, since i’m finally writing about it after many years of shooting with ufo.

and surprise, ufo likes to make inane remarks when he gets lucky with a shape, safety or shot, or acts like he means to shoot the lucky shot.  good grief.  smugness is not a personal trait i look for when i make friends.  i like it even less on a pool table.  f~*.

in contrast, i’ve had some really terrific practice sessions with a great player, even though we both played poorly.  (he hasn’t been playing competitively for a while now.)  although he wasn’t running out consistently, the shot selection and stroke were all delightful to watch and learn from.  that’s all i want out of a practice, really; learn something.  is that much to ask?

a logical result from this, of course, is that i’m not playing ufo anymore, or at least for the time being.  i don’t miss it a bit.  also, i figured that since ufo’s no beginner, and we can’t learn from each other, there’s no harm not playing him.  instead, i’ve been using the time to do drills and experiment with new shots; much more productive this way.  and i’m happier as a result.  i don’t think ufo likes the situation very much, but oh well.  there are many like-minded players as he, and i’m sure he’ll have no trouble getting a game.  as for me, i’m enjoying my time alone.

[addendum nov. 17, 2009:  i forgot to mention that ufo had taken upon himself to experiment with bustamante's two-finger grip for the past few weeks.  i'm liking my decision more and more now.  and i wish him the best of luck with busty's grip; he'll need it.  badly.]

win or good

in my opinion, good pool and winning pool don’t exist in the same plane.  there are times they overlap, which creates the illusion that good pool means winning pool.  i think the overlap remains exactly that though: an illusion.

a while back, this well-known wpba pro strolled into town.  normally you’d see her back east, but she happened to be visiting socal (personal trip i think) and decided to play in one of the local sunday 9-ball events.  in one of the matches she played, she drew a pretty good local player.  firepower-wise, i think the local dude could’ve handily overwhelmed her.  however, she played the well-known run-and-duck pool.  per inning, she pocketed a maximum of two balls before playing safety.  i mean that literally.  the safeties she played were your basic one-rail kick safeties; nothing too difficult to hit.  however, after literally playing 8-9 safeties PER GAME, every game, she wore down the local dude and promptly defeated him.  it was some of the most tedious, the most boringly craptastic pool i’ve seen.  that match would’ve made quasimodo look majestic.

as i posited earlier, winning pool isn’t necessarily good pool.  no guarantee that those two things will ever intersect.

i think winning pool comprises largely of what we’re willing to do to win.  if winning demands us to look like an a~* playing left-footed, then that’s what it takes, and whatever else it takes.  it means we’ll have to take shots we don’t want to take, suppress certain instincts/dispositions we don’t want to suppress, and bite our lips or open our mouths when we’re not so inclined.  largely, winning comes down to a battle of the bigger desire.  personally, because of this idea i believe in, i feel that tournaments and money matches belong firmly in the work category.  there’s nothing intrinsically fun about tournaments and money matches; it’s about winning, and nothing more.  we play for a certain goal; once we achieve the goal, we move on.

of course, the unscrupulous set would include cheating and sharking in the “whatever it takes” category.  for me, cheating and sharking taints the victory, should you come away with it.  doubtlessly, such reasoning will never stop the shady folks.  short of dishonorable tactics, winning pool demands heavily of us.  and it doesn’t always demand good pool.