Shoulder Issues:
In the last hour I had a cortisone shot in my right shoulder, which has been giving me too much discomfort over the last couple of months. I think I torqued it in my jump-shot lesson with Johnny Archer. I have been giving it a lot of rest by not breaking in 8 and 9 ball, and not doing power-draw shots in my practice sessions, but my shoulder has not responded to my own rest treatment. So, with only 26 days left before the US Amateur championship event, I figured it was time to get more pro-active with finding a fix for my shoulder.
Recent matches:
Last week I missed the finals at the Encinitas tournament. They don't play a double elimination format, so only the two players who had no loss played in the finals, due to time constraints. I gave up the break in one match, and the guy broke and ran on me. All I did was watch. There's a lesson in there: don't give up the break, especially when they are playing 8-ball with only 11 balls (instead of 15, so that the games go faster). I lost another one when I banked the 8, but it went two rails instead of one. Other than that, I did play very well in the other two matches that I won.
On Saturday I had a couple of guests, one from the internet, one local. Ricky B. is a reader of this blog, and was going to be on the west coast on business, so he drove down to the Fun House from Los Angeles and we played some "cut-throat" with 3rd player Earl S. (not Strickland) which I really enjoyed, probably because I won almost every game. We also shot some pill pool and some Honduran rotation, all uneventful.
Books on Pool?
Ricky B. surprised me with the question: "What pool books do you recommend?" What surprised me is that I think that I have heard that question maybe once before in the last 5 years. And that is just one more proof that pool shooters don't read. Except for you, the person reading this sentence, right now. But how many pool books have you read in the last year? Of course I could have referred Ricky to my Pool Library web page, where I rate each of the 86 books, DVDs, CDs, VHS, etc. But this time I just quickly looked through my shelves and brought out these excellent books as some of the best I've run across:
Pleasures of Small Motions by Bob Fancher, Ph. D.
Precision Pool (2nd edition) by Kanov & Stauch
The Illustrated Principles of Pool and Billiards by Dr. Dave Alciatore
The Pro Book by Bob Henning
The Advanced Pro Book by Bob Henning
Gold Crown IV
FastMikie's Fun House, Del Mar, California
3 comments:
You said you lost an 8 ball game where it banked 2 rails instead of 1. Are you saying it grazed the rail which is connected to the pocket? If so, this is why bar room rules can be so frustrating.
My feeling is that a rail next to the called pocket should not count (unless other rails are hit after that rail). For example, if you are playing "bank the 8" where kicking the 8 is interpreted like a bank, then you cannot just tap the cue ball rail first to back-cut the 8 ball in; the rail near the pocket should not count, I say. My rule is probably not written anywhere, because it is a bit technical.
Robert...
That's an interesting thought, but that's not what happened. It was a "double bank" where the 8 went into the opposite corner pocket.
Oh! Wrong pocket! Okay.
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