Part 4 - Dry Run

I lingered around for a few hours.  It wasn’t even 6pm, and the league wasn’t coming in until 8, then I’d probably have to wait for them finish, so I had some time to kill.  I hit some balls around, then tried out the mexican place.

Now, I’ve never had good mexican food.  A while back,  I thought, maybe there is no good mexican food.  But this place really wasn’t bad.  They said it was Cali-Mex whereas most places you go to are Tex-Mex, or maybe it was the other way around.

When I get back to the pool hall, the scene had changed.  It was alternating between rap and death metal on the jukebox.  Lots of facial hair and calf tattoos gathered around a couple tables.  Most weren’t playing, just sitting around drinking beers out of coolers they brought.

I watched for a while, then the key matchup took place.  You could tell by the strut and swagger of the one young guy that he was the captain.  His opponent looked nervous and was getting a lot of encouraging words from his teammates.

Swagger broke pretty well, but came up dry, but kind of got lucky because all he left was a bank to open.  Nerves approached the table and after a long thought cross banked the 6-ball in the side.  After a series of gutsy shots he had cleared his group and was down to the 8-ball.  He tried a short rail long bank, but missed.

I heard someone say Swagger was a 10 to 1 favorite to get out from here.  Swagger jumped up and started running his balls out.  Starting with the easy shots.  He made the 11-ball hanger in the corner and went two rails for the 14 in the same pocket but ended up nestled on one of his other balls.  No problem, he just shot his insurance ball that was hanging in the opposite corner pocket.  He made that and was trying to get on the 15 for the corner, but overran that so he settled for the 10 in the side.  Nerves was shaking his head.  Now the 15 in the opposite side.  He tried to follow that with top right to get on the 13 on the top rail but the spin didn’t take so now he had to make a tough cut on the 14.  He made that but only left himself a long bank on the 13, which he made just barely and when he came around with natural shape for an 8-ball hanger.  He slammed it in and fist-pumped his way back over to his team, this time with even more swagger.

After it cleared out a little, Larry went over and mentioned something about they were thinking of starting a new in-house league with a this new  game.  I was motioned over.

I kind of started with the basics, leaving Willie out of it.  When I got to the part about the most boring part of 8-ball someone jumped in.

“Bro, that’s the whole key to 8 ball strategy.  If someone runs their group out but can’t make the 8, they f***ed up.  That’s when I bring the pain.  That’s the fun part.”

For you that is, I thought to myself.  I looked over at Swagger who was nodding and I was very tempted to mention his lucky run-out but kept it hypothetical.

“Well, all I’m saying is, if you add some sequential aspect to it maybe it would increase the interest and maybe decrease the luck you know, like if someone is going for one ball and then changes plans every shot.”  I had hoped Swagger wouldn’t catch on.  He didn’t.

“I’m an APA 7,” someone else said (in my experience, that’s usually not an auspicious start to a conversation),  “and obviously you don’t know the first thing about 8-ball, ” he continued.  “Like J.R. was saying, there’s a whole 8-ball strategy you’re not getting.  Besides, having to run a few balls in order isn’t gonna make a difference to any halfway decent player, let alone say me and J.R.”

But actually, after I convinced them to try a couple of racks, it did make a difference.  The one rack was a lot like Nerves against Swagger, but this time when he got out of line, he sold out and Nerves sank the 8.  Now, it really didn’t change the match score but you could tell something was going on here.  The 4 seemed to always feel like he was in it, like he had a chance.  The 7 just wanted to prove that the sequential aspect was no problem, that it didn’t matter.  Of course, when the roles were reversed it was even harder for the 4 to run out his last sequential balls, but as long as he could get a couple balls down and force a sequential ending phase from the 7 he felt he had a chance.

After 2 hours, it was still going on.  In fact a couple other players were trying it on some other tables.

Larry said to me “I was just B.S.-ing about starting a league, but maybe we should really try it.”

Then a couple of regular 9-ball players showed up for their regular game, and Larry grabbed them.  Pretty soon they were matching up with the APA players.  It was interesting to watch how the 8-ball players seemed comfortable with a lot of balls on the table, breaking clusters, but when it started to open up and turn to sequential the 9-ball players looked more at ease moving the cue ball around.