Welcome to Table Talk Issue 6: Having a Breakthrough Moment

 

One night during my second year or so playing in my amateur eight ball league, I got matched up against a fella named Bobby G. This was quite a long time ago, back when I was just finally understanding how to play pool well, and had earned a (tiny!) reputation for myself as a lucky risk-taker who was pretty accurate (Lord knows how I could shoot anything at all, since I liked to tug my baseball cap down low over my glasses when I was shooting). Bobby was a bit nervous to play me, and I didn’t really know at the time that he could get ‘a bit nervous’ playing just about anybody – he was prone to being superstitiously negative about his skills and luck.

Confidence and reckless shot-making were a couple of my halmarks back then. Heck, they still are today when I’m feeling frisky, but this particular pool night taught me how lacking my skill-development was, and how flawed my strategic thinking and pattern building was, and pushed me to grow even more as a pool player. So, I had noticed Bobby’s nervousness and fed that knowledge to my ego. I used the confidence boost to help me pull off a few ridiculous shots in our first game that left Bobby mumbling to himself after I took game 1.

Bootstraps hiked up someting fierce, Bobby turned game 2 into a nightmare for me. His soft break tied up everything, so I used up all my ducks, during a couple turns, to smash things apart trying to free up the 8 ball. When I finally did, I also missed the current shot, leaving Bobby with a nicely opened up table and 5 balls remaining. I shrugged, seeing a tough run-out my nervous opponent would probably botch and leave me an open key-ball and 8 for the win. But Bobby… shot 1 and safe, then 2 and safe, and then 2 and out in a sequence that never let me see my last ball.

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