All I Do Is Win Win Win

OK, it was just one match, but it was good to get another win in my 8 ball league last night, finally. It was a grueling match lasting over 2 hours. I was actually going to have one of my other teammates play instead, but she was showing up late and couldn't stay too long. I was giving up a ball per game in a 5-4 race, but quickly found myself down 2-0. I pulled one back luckily after finding myself in the horrible position on the 8 ball below. My opponent had a couple other stripes strewn across the table, but this was the gist of it. The 8 and 10 weren't quite frozen and I honestly didn't think it was lined up well into the side, but when you're on the 8 ball, you have nothing to lose by calling a pocket. So I made the call and the kick and was surprised as anyone that it actually went, especially from such an acute angle (see page 2).


He took the next game putting him on the hill at 3-1 while I needed to reel off 4 in a row. So I kind of turned to strategy over shotmaking for a while. One of the games presented me with this situation while I was on stripes. The 10 ball didn't really have a pocket so I needed to get it off the end rail. Both of his solids presented tough cuts from distance, so I caromed the cue ball off the 10 and brought it back down table for a pretty good safe, even if the 10 wouldn't have gotten partially in the way of his 5 on the next shot (page 2).


The match ended up dragging on for a bit, and later I was left with the following layout after he tried a safe. Again, there were a couple safety options but I opted for shotmaking this time. I couldn't cut the 10 ball straight, so I played the cue ball off the rail and spun it in to the 10 ball to make it in the corner, knowing the 7 ball would block the scratch (page 2). I didn't really have a plan for the following shot, but it left a decent cross side bank which I drilled for the win.