You Play Where the Game Leads You

Last week a reader of this blog had a suggestion that I write about some of my experiences traveling around playing in the 1990's.

I have a million great stories from that time so I had no real idea which one to choose until I read his request a little further and he said, "throw in a few stories south of the border."

Aha!  Yes, I grew up playing in El Paso, Texas and I do have a good story about playing a guy in Juarez, Mexico.

I can see the question marks forming over people's heads.

Isn't Juarez where they ::gulp:: KILL people at an alarming rate?

Yep, that's the place.  Except back then it was MUCH different.

Safe and entertaining if you knew the language.

A few friends decided that it was time to take me over to a bar in Juarez and see if they could get a certain player there to match up with me.  I don't remember the guy's name, but he was a dentist and had a nickname that had to do with that.

Now, for some background.

Four of us decided to head over on a Friday night.

We comprised one Mexican guy who spoke almost no Spanish at all.  And three gringos of whom only one spoke Spanish.  Me.


We get to the bar and are getting the fish eye from every corner of the building and it was making me damn nervous.

I wanted out and I told my friends we should leave.

They ignored me and asked flat out for the player we were looking to play.  A guy who looked like he might have gotten out of prison that afternoon came and told us in Spanish that the player would be there in 30 minutes or so and we should just relax and order drinks.

My friends order drinks and I am stunned.  I feel I should educate them on the wonders of getting jarred in a place like that but they just laugh and tell me I'm the one playing and who cares if they get jarred so long as I don't.

Keep in mind I am the only one who speaks Spanish and I am constantly refusing when patrons and even the bartender are offering to buy me drinks.  Needless to say I wasn't that popular.

Long story short the guy finally arrives and we match up to play some Bank 8-Ball (the game of choice in
Mexican bars) even for $50 a game.

The original plan was I was going to play off the wall if he did, and get my cue out of the car if he brought out a cue of his own.  He had a case with him so I went and got my cue.

I beat the guy three games in a row and he decides we should play Last Pocket 8-Ball (Plan B in Mexican bars).

I beat him the first game at that and suddenly his backers don't want to pay the last game off, they want a spot, blah blah blah.

I am the only one communicating since no else speaks Spanish and I offer to play the guy a set and give him a game on the wire.  He wants more.

I offer him two games on the wire and after talking about it with his backers and pointing angrily at me and my friends one of his posse comes over, pays off the last $50 and tells me we should get the hell out of there.

Gladly.

In the car my friends are PISSED.  They keep asking me what I was telling the guy and why we got kicked out of the place only $200 winner (a decent score I thought though it would only have been $50 apiece).

I told them that we were negotiating weight when the guy came over and kicked us out.

They started laughing hysterically and telling me what an idiot I was for offering the guy anything.

One friend told me, "You insulted him by offering him a spot.  We're damn lucky we got out of there at all."

I yelled back, "The guy ASKED for weight and then asked for MORE! You morons weren't even paying attention!  What the hell was I supposed to do?!?!"

"The guy was just stalling.  He would have played even all night and not said a word," they explained.

I just sat back in the car seat shaking my head.

And then another friend chimed in and drove the knife just a wee bit further into my gut...

"Oh, and you left about $1000 in there.  That guy is a go off and he loses to every American road player that stops by and they clear a minimum of like $700.  They think you're a rude, arrogant prick and you'll never get action in Juarez again.  Who's hungry?"

Excuse me...  Point of order...

Perhaps we should have discussed all this before going.

Ya think?

Red Flags - They're Trying to Tell Me Something But What?

Last week was a setback in my pool playing.

I played terrible, I knew I was playing terrible and I just couldn't do a thing about it.  Horrifying.

And like most instances where I sense that I am struggling sometimes the results don't reflect that.

But there are always red flags and they were telling me something was very wrong.

My week started with a combination APA Masters league and APA 8-Ball league that I play on Wednesday night.  Two leagues, same night, same building.

I won my Masters match 7-0.  All is well with the world, right?  No.

I played poorly and was just lucky.  And I knew it.

Next up 8-Ball where I won my match 5-1.

A guy who wins matches 7-0 and 5-1 can't be playing poorly certainly.  Except, yes he can.

There were red flags.  Plenty of them.  More on that later.

So we come to Thursday night where I played two matches of BCA Masters 8-Ball.  A regular match and a make-up match from the first week of the session.

In the regular match I broke and ran the first rack in crazy out of line, out of sorts fashion against an excellent player.  And then the wheels shot off.  As they were bound to.

I lost the next four games dogging my brains out at every turn and just playing like a chump against more excellent players.

On to the make-up match where I played slightly better (3-2) against excellent players again but still something wasn't right.

Red flags.

For me I have three proven indicators that I am off.

1) Balls I miss fly around and go into other pockets (literally NEVER happens if I am right)
2) I constantly barely hook myself on position shots that require touch
3) I scratch anywhere and everywhere

Sometimes it is just one of these red flags and sometimes, like this last week, it is all of them.

When these things start to pop up in my game I know I am in trouble and I go through all the normal routines of checking fundamentals, taking extra time, etc.

But last week it didn't work.

Staying down on the ball helped some of it, but not all.

The red flags were trying to tell me something and I just couldn't figure out what.

So Sunday I consciously worked on staying down, level stroke, eye pattern and many other things but nothing really improved...  I just got more and more frustrated.

I then got to thinking that I might be doing myself more harm trying to push though a bad spell when it clearly wasn't working.  Would I just ingrain a bad habit I couldn't recognize by continuing to play?

So I walked away and I won't play again until this Wednesday.

In the past I have always snapped out of slumps like this and played really well coming out them.

Here's hoping that's what's going to happen here as well.

I just hope my red flags are a little more clear in communicating with me in the future and I am a little more diligent in figuring out what it is they are trying to say.