Honesty is the Best Policy

Last Monday night was the last night of the season for the ACS league I participate in. Last week was the last team competition (we were edged out of first place on the last night) and this was an optional singles tournament and payout of prize money.

I played OK, but I made a couple of suboptimal choices which I think can serve as educational material, even though they’re not particularly flattering to me. I so look forward to the day when I can play in real time with the ability and smarts I like to think I have in hindsight.

I needed to take ownership of this loss, rather than write it off to bad luck.

The first thing that happened relates to how I initially perceived and then re-evaluated my 1st loss. The game is 8 Ball and my opponent missed a long shot by 6 inches, but the resulting ball rearrangement damaged my prospects enormously. Prior to his shot all 3 of my balls were easily makeable and the 8 was on a long rail but blocked by one of my balls. After the miss, the 8 was moved off the rail with more than one open pocket, and an opponent’s ball was now completely blocking my access to what had been a duck with an easy path to the other two balls just a moment before.

My 1st reaction was to curse my bad luck under my breath. I played a safety, trying to hide behind the previous duck, but hit it a bit too hard and left a shot. My opponent ran out and I again, silently, cursed my bad luck.

A few minutes later, thinking about this, I realized that I needed to take ownership of this loss, rather than write it off to bad luck. I had an open table when I first approached it, and should have run out. I left myself mediocre position on the 3rd ball which escalated into poor position on the 4th, which led directly to a miss on the 5th ball. Also, I had an excellent safety opportunity on my next shot but didn’t convert. Being honest with myself and taking responsibility for my mistakes, as learning opportunities not reasons to beat myself up, will help me progress. Focusing on my “bad luck” will instead just give me an excuse not to improve.

Focusing on “bad luck” will just give me an excuse not to improve.

The second thing is an example of being too aggressive when the odds don’t favor it. In a game I wound up winning only through a mistake by my opponent, I saw an opportunity to execute a tough run out and went for it. The difficulty was that one of my balls and the 8 ball were unmakable as they sat before I started. There was a way to break them both out on the same shot if I got the right position on a particular other ball. I executed my plan well and got perfect shape on the key ball for the breakout. I made the ball and broke the two balls out, but the 8 ball was partially hidden and would only go in one pocket and the position zone for a good shot on it was narrow. As you no doubt expected, I missed shape on the 8 and my opponent, with all his balls on the table, played cat and mouse with me.

I so look forward to the day when I can play in real time with the ability and smarts I like to think I have in hindsight.

In his second good safety he left me on the long rail with the 8 on the other section of the same long rail with two clustered balls of his as blockers. Instead of kicking, which was low risk but had little offensive opportunity, I went for a partial massé, a shot I’m not particularly adept at. It had the potential upside of not only possibly pocketing the 8, but of moving it close to the pocket and raising my chances of getting out of the game with a win. What I didn’t take into consideration, but obviously should have, was how the massé could go wrong. I clipped the cluster on my way to the 8, broke his balls out into the open and gave him ball in hand. By not honestly evaluating the true risks of the shot, I almost threw the game away. By being unreasonably optimistic about the likely outcome of the breakout (multiple things had to go right) and by saving that breakout until the end of the run, I screwed myself when it didn’t turn out perfectly.

Being honest with myself, or rather the lack of doing so, contributed heavily to my less than stellar tournament. Don’t let it happen to you.

6 Responses to “Honesty is the Best Policy”

  1. Pete WilliamsNo Gravatar - January 17th, 2009

    I have to say I am not quite sure how I ended up on this blog, but I am so glad I found it. Very well written and easy on the eye when it comes to reading.

    I look forward to future posts – keep up the good work.

  2. John BiddleNo Gravatar - January 17th, 2009

    Thanks for the kind words, I’m glad you liked it enough to comment and to come back. I wouldn’t be at all offended if you told all your pool-playing friends of the good thing you found .

  3. KillerqNo Gravatar - January 18th, 2009

    Hi John, Great job assesing the whole bad luck thing. Pool is not a game between players All the time, alot of times it is just a game between you and the Table. Ownership and Honesty are of the utmost if you want to play good pool.

  4. John BiddleNo Gravatar - January 18th, 2009

    Killerq, I think you’re right, though I’d put a slightly different spin on it. Clearly one always has to face the lay of the table, and shouldn’t focus at all on how it got that way. That way leads to nothing but trouble in many variations.

    I think there is a difference, though, in how one approaches playing an opponent and how one practices, and it’s because the goals are completely different. The object of playing a match is to win and the object of practice is to improve.

    In playing, shot selection is determined in part by many factors, how hard the shot choices are, what the pattern possibilities are and the difficulty of getting shape from ball to ball, how will I leave my opponent if I miss this shot, what are my opponent’s weaknesses and can I exploit them, should I play defense of offense this shot, etc, etc.

    In practice none of that is relevant at all. You are simply focusing on doing some particular thing better than you have been doing it before. That’s why I don’t think just playing is a very good way to improve, because improvement has no place in playing. There is a small amount of improvement that comes simply from having made more shots, but it’s a very inefficient way of getting better.

    Where I think honesty plays the biggest roll is in helping us understand what our skill level truly is, and especially what our weaknesses are, so that when we do get time to practice, we work on the right things. And we need to take the big picture approach to that, so we realize our weakness is getting position, say, rather than the inability to make bank after bank.

  5. Pete WilliamsNo Gravatar - January 18th, 2009

    Regarding the ‘practice’ part you mention. I recently interviewed top UK player Imran Majid whilst at the opening event of the UK season.

    Last year he dominated the main tour winning four of the 6 events and topping the rankings by 32 points come the end of the year.

    One of the things I asked him was what advice he would offer to any new players to the tour. His response was interesting and comes down to practice, he talks about players he see’s down his local club that just throw the balls out and run the balls. He said at the top of your game you know you can pot the balls so you should be working on weaknesses. He will spend a couple of hours perfecting the break (something that led to his success last year) where he will get someone to rack up for him say 100 breaks in a row. This is where you start to make your own luck or have a good chance of eliminating it altogether.

  6. Samm DNo Gravatar - January 18th, 2009

    Well said! And, very well written!

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