As I mentioned in another post (at my political blog) Monday is my APA 8-ball pool league. There is nothing more rewarding than playing a match that is hard fought and challenging.
Normally I have video of these matches, but today I was behind the 8 ball (bad pun I know). The election had me a bit off balance. But what I can say is that I am now 12 out of 12 matches, and leading my league in individual performance. Of course I have also been raised by a level too (now a skill level 5 and just beat a skill level 7 tonight).
Now I have been asked what is the attraction of playing in a pool league, and why the American Poolplayers Association? Good question.
I have been playing pool for about 26 years now, on and off. So I enjoy being challenged in my matches. Often playing on a regular bar table is less than enjoyable since these tables are generally not kept up. Add to that the problem with drunk players and by-standers and the joy quickly evaporates. And if you are good, or on a winning streak you can get branded a pool shark – which never has positive results.
So a pool league cuts out many of the problems. And it provides players that can have a fun time, and still be very serious about their game. Thus you get to be around like-minded people, have competition, and no one ends up with broken thumbs.
As for which pool league, well that depends on where you are. In my area there are only 2 options. APA or Southern Tier. In Southern Tier there are teams and only 4 players play a match. The games are split between partner play and singles matches. There are a total of 17 games with each player guaranteed to play 3 times with at least 2 partner matches. One player gets the extra game, first team to 10 wins.
Sounds fine except there is a catch. The games are preset. By that I mean the matches go like follows:
Team 1 players 1 & 2 vs Team 2 players 1 & 2
Team 1 players 3 & 4 vs Team 2 players 3 & 4
Team 1 player 2 vs Team 2 player 2
And so on
Thus no one player gets to play consecutive games, nor more than 1 game versus any individual player. And you might get a match where horrible teammate #3 is your partner against the best 2 players of the opposing team. It can be a mess and takes forever. There is no momentum, and after the season ends you might get a bit of money back as a prize. That’s it.
In the APA you get a bit more. You have teams with no more than 8 players. Each player has a skill level between 2 – 9 (higher is better). New players get assigned a 4 for men and 3 for women. You can play any opponent and play a seires of games.
Ie.
Team 1 player 5, level 4 vs Team 2 player 2, level 2
This would be a match with a race to first to 4 games for player 5 or 2 games for player 2.
This goes on for 5 matches (in 8-ball), each worth 2 points. If you get to within 1 game of winning you get 1 point, winning is worth 2 (you can’t get more than 2). The team with the most points wins.
Now this is great because you get to play several games at once. You get to play against the same opponent. And you get a fair chance to win even against great players. In fact you might very well want to put a 2 up against a 7 because the 2 would need to win 2 games before the 7 won 5.
Now at the end of the season, the top teams have a playoff. The winner of that goes on to play a regional match, like the say the Central New York State finals. If you win that, you win a full paid for trip to Las Vegas to compete for the National Competition. And that means lots of money, depending on how high you finish there as a team.
Now which would you prefer, bar pool with the drunk guy that thinks you are a shark, Southern Tier where you play maybe 4 games over 5 hours, or APA where you can get in maybe 3 – 5 games depending on skill levels in maybe 3 – 4 hours for the entire team, and you might get the chance to go to Vegas.
So now you can see my enthusiasm and consistency for my pool league. My teams only problem is that we are all good enough that we are all getting moved up slowly and thus harder to win games.
Oh well. Video from 9-ball after my match on Wednesday.
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