Ultimate Trick Shot Tour Stop #4: Willow Billiards, Hoboken, NJ Recap

Back on July 10, I competed in the Ultimate Trick Shot Tour Stop #4 at Willow Billiards in Hoboken, NJ. It's a nice little pool room with 11 9-ft Gold Crowns, mostly with Simonis, and a couple other tables out front. The tournament itself had a healthy 13 player turn out. We split up in to 3 groups and were guaranteed four matches each. I ended up playing Paul Danno, Dainius Stipinas, Jamey Gray, and Steve Markle.

Paul is a cagey veteran whose results don't justify his skills and our matches are always tight. This one was no different. I had a 4-2 lead heading in to the last three shots, but he persevered and pushed me to the limit. His final pick was a center spot, two diamond draw shot, which made me nervous as soon as he picked it. He made it on his third attempt to bring the score to 4-4. On my turn, I took a few warm up strokes, closed my eyes, and was as surprised as anyone as the cue ball drew back straight to the corner pocket and letting me escape with a victory.

My match against Dainius was only slightly more comfortable. The creativity in some of his shots was bewildering and I only made one of his challenges. Luckily, I made four of mine and rode those to a 5-3 win with one shot remaining.

I figured my match against reigning world champion Jamey Gray was going to be tough. Surprisingly, he only made one of his challenges and looked out of sorts as I thrashed him 6-1 with four shots left. I'm sure he'll use that motivation the next time I have to face him though.

My final match was against an impressive Steve Markle, fresh off a tie with Andy Segal. I didn't quite carry the momentum over from my previous match and had to gut it out at the end for a 5-3 victory on the final shot. Perhaps I got a bit fortunate as Steve missed a couple shots I'm sure he'd usually make 90% of the time.

That preliminary round left me undefeated and atop of my group, getting a quarterfinal matchup against Gil Olsen. He was hosting me for the weekend and we had driven down together, so it was a friendly affair. He shot well making five of his six challenges and I showed my lack of practice with the APTSA book shots. We were tied going in to the final shot, which was my choice, and I picked a double one-handed jump shot (jumping two balls with two cues in one hand simultaneously). I squeezed that one in and his unfamiliarity with even how to hold the cues was evident as I took a 7-6 victory.

That set up a semifinal showdown with Andy Segal, the reigning ESPN Trick Shot Magic champion. The first shot he pulled out against me was an extension of the double one-handed jump, except using both left and right hands and executing it twice with each hand. That was too much for me. He ended up making 5 of his 6 challenges while I made 3 of 5, neither of us making the other persons shots. There was no 3rd place match, so I shared the position with Bruce Barthelette.

All in all I thought it was a pretty good showing from me. I've never placed higher than 3rd though, so I'm still looking to crack the ceiling. Perhaps my downfall was choosing shots against Andy that I hadn't even attempted earlier in the tournament. I caved in to the pressure of picking shots I didn't think my opponent could make rather than just making my own. The next tournament will be the season ending Ultimate Trick Shot Tour Championships in Las Vegas in a few weeks!

Like Butter....

on a roll. Won my league match last night 5-1 in a straight up race. No real extravagant or audacious pool shots to diagram. It was nice and easy most of the way with some smart safes laid out by both of us and a couple of pattern mistakes here and there. I guess the match started rather ominously for my opponent when I broke dry and he ended up using the one ball as the cue ball. I took off fast with a 3-0 lead before he won his first match. Then I took the next two to seal the win. We also won as a team 4-1 for our first team victory this season as well.

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.

Whew

So quick recap of the last few weeks. League started up again and I lost my first match. Didn't play the second week, so we'll see how things go on Monday. In the meantime, I went through my doctoral hooding ceremony and got married on June 3. In between everything, I've been trying to figure out how to make a proper stacking ball, so I can balance one pool ball on top of another. Once I get it down, I'll try to post a video tutorial of it.

Prop and Pinball Shots

I just updated my website with a few new prop and pinball pool shots. The first one is the Circular Follow Pinball shot. It's an adaptation of the regular Circular Follow shot, but it gets the object ball to do just as much work as the cue ball. Pinball Wizard is another similar shot, with action going on all around the table. I first saw both of these through Andy 'The Magic Man' Segal. Gordon's Gauntlet is a nifty shot I picked up from Gordon 'The Wolf' Hedges. Finally, I put up a video of Ride The Bridge, a not-as-easy-as-it-looks shot that's been around for a while. These are some of the most creative pool and billiard shots you'll see!

Trick Shots in Billiards Digest

Check out the feature article in the May 2010 Billiards Digest! Trick shot tutorials featuring Mike Massey, Andy Segal, Stefano Pelinga, Nick Nikolaidis, and Tom Rossman!

Practice

Spent a lot of time this weekend working on some shots that I couldn't get during the last Ultimate Trick Shot tour stop. There's a double juggling speed shot which is still a work in progress. It works every now and again. Then there's a couple pinball type shots which I hoped to film yesterday before a loud party commenced in the room. And also some two-cues-in-one-hand jump shots, which aren't too bad. Finally, there's this neat shot I found posted on Samm Diep's blog, which I should take to some other tables to make sure the banks still work.