The road to Ally Pally: late 2021 pool

[Sam]

Part of my prediction has already gone right: this year's Mosconi will be less one-sided than last year's. USA lead 5–4 at the end of day 2, but will be pondering on the fact it really should be 6–3: Chris Reinhold rattled the jaws with a 5 ball that was going to set him and Jeremy Jones up for a win in the final doubles match of the day and instead allowed David Alcaide and Eklent Kaçi to come back from 4–1 down and win a hill–hill thriller 5–4.

Jayson Shaw got Europe off to a good start with a 5–3 win over Shane Van Boening in the fans' choice match, before Skyler Woodward won by the same scoreline against a very out-of-sorts Albin Ouschan to put the States back in front. In the first doubles match Van Boening got some revenge over Shaw, as he and Woodward beat Shaw and Ouschan 5–4, and then Tyler Styer recorded the biggest shock so far, beating Joshua Filler 5–3. That put the States 5–3 up overall, so for Europe to come back and win it was huge. Reinhold's unlikely to sleep well tonight.

In terms of who looks like they're having fun and who doesn't: Shaw is clearly enjoying himself, as is Woodward. Both have been MVPs before at the Mosconi (players are awarded one point for each singles win and half a point for each doubles win they're involved in, and the player with the most points at the end of the event is named the MVP), and look well at home. Van Boening looks his usual calm and solid self, but is still struggling a bit, as he often has in the Mosconi Cup – he's got a career losing record in the competition, which considering how much stuff he's won is amazing. Styer will be feeling ten feet tall after beating Filler, and Jones seems to have got a very impressive feel of the table for someone who until yesterday hadn't played a competitive match for at least five years. On the European side, we've not yet seen Alcaide and Kaçi in singles, but Kaçi looks really out of form and like he's trying a bit too hard to make things happen by playing his way back into it – just trying to do things the complicated way at times when a simpler option is available. Alcaide was bouncing around in the last couple of racks of the doubles win just now. We'll see both of them in singles action on Thursday. Ouschan looked really down in the dumps during his singles loss to Woodward, and again during the doubles match immediately afterwards. It's nicely set up for day 3.

[Sam]

In case anyone's following along here but isn't able to watch the action, a reminder that the Matchroom Pool YouTube channel have potted highlights at the end of each day. Albeit my previous grumbles about how they don't really give you much of a sense of the drama apply (the first video below reduces a fascinating safety exchange between Shaw and Van Boening during the team match to footage of a single shot).

They also have short (ten-ish minutes) previews and daily reviews with their expert commentators (reigning women's world 9-ball champion Kelly Fisher and three-time Mosconi Cup MVP Niels Feijen). But I'll leave you to head over there if you want to watch those.

Day 1:

Day 2:

[Sam]

Amazing scenes at the end of Thursday's play (whole final rack below, and it's got everything. HUGE spoilers for both videos in this post follow).

David Alcaide v Jeremy Jones went to the deciding rack and a lengthy safety battle which seemed to go on forever eventually ended when Jones, who was bearing down on a rail shot with not the easiest positional play, asked for the cue ball to be cleaned with 12 seconds left on the shot clock, not realising that the shot clock wouldn't be paused while the ref cleaned the ball. The ref scrubbed it as fast as he could and got it back but Jones would have had to hit it almost as soon as he put it down to avoid a time foul, and Alcaide had ball in hand for a simple 6–7–8–9 runout to win a thrilling match.

It completed a whitewash day for Europe, who started with back-to-back 5–2 wins (Jayson Shaw over Chris Reinhold, then Shaw and Joshua Filler over Skyler Woodward and Tyler Styer), saw Eklent Kaçi finally join the party with a 5–3 win over Shane Van Boening, then had Albin Ouschan and David Alcaide beat SVB and Styer 5–1. That leaves Europe 9–5 up overnight and just two matches away from retaining the cup. I'm not sure whether the fans' choice doubles match tomorrow is going to be moved to the top of the schedule; at the moment they've got it as the very last match, but it looks very unlikely it'll go that far. Europe's captain and vice captain, Alex Lely and Karl Boyes, apparently tore into the players in the practice room on Wednesday night, and it's certainly worked. Everyone looked a lot hungrier and more on their game today; after his and Alcaide's doubles win Ouschan admitted that the news of Earl Strickland having to isolate had probably caused Team Europe to relax more than they should have, although he quickly corrected himself and said that was just him really (I'd say he was being very kind to Kaçi!).

Day 3 highlights

[multipleman78]

Looks to me like the referee applied the rules perfectly and even rushed his cleaning of the ball to give Jones a shot. You can hear the referee tell Jones that they are told about this rule constantly.

It's a rubbish way to end a match but it could be put down as a case of a player having a brain freeze when faced with the possibility of winning.

[Sam]

Your first paragraph is exactly what happened, yes – but I think the second is a bit harsh; it's not a brain freeze so much as not having played a professional pool match in literally years! He's only stepped in due to Earl Strickland's science denial, remember, and never expected to actually be playing in this. At some competitions the shot clock is paused while the ball is cleaned, and it clearly didn't occur to him it wouldn't be this time. Although there was some talk that he might have tried to call an extension, forgetting (as it had been such a long rack) that he'd already used the one he had. I don't think that's what happened, as I'd expect to hear the ref tell him it had been used.

So yeah, it's all by the book, but impossible not to feel gutted for Jones under the circumstances (even as a Europe fan, given that him winning that match would still leave us heavy favourites to get across the line tomorrow).

[multipleman78]

As team captain, I presume Jones has sat in meetings where the rules for this event were discussed and laid out. He will have known that rule but due to the circumstances you listed, he forgot. That is why I called it a brain freeze. I don't mean to be harsh, I just think this wasn't a case of being mistaken, I think it slipped his mind at the crucial moment.

[Sam]

Yeah, that's a good point. He also does plenty of commentary and whatnot as well, so it's not like he's been away from pool entirely in recent years. The shot clock continuing to run when a ball is being cleaned has become quite common, apparently, since some big 9-ball tournament in the early 2010s when this guy manufactured a load of extra time extensions for himself by asking for the cue ball to be cleaned before almost every shot.

Such a shame that such a great match – and rack – had to (effectively) end like that, though. There was still at least one good shot to be played, because from where he was it wasn't going to be easy to pot the 6 and hold for the 7.

[Sam]

Anyone watching live might be wondering why the commentators kept talking – especially on day 1 – about how slick the cloth was, and whether it really makes that much of a difference to how the table plays. Well, Niels Feijen got his home table reclothed recently and decided to make a video in which he set up a bunch of shots from game situations on the old cloth, recorded himself playing them, and then set up the exact same layouts on the new cloth and first shows himself playing the exact same shot he'd played before, then (because it's an instructional video for players) offers a couple of alternative solutions for when you're playing on new cloth. It's about 23 minutes long and I thought one or two people might find it interesting.

[Sporting]

Good posts, these. Haven't watched the latest video but will try to make time.

[multipleman78]

I think it's fantastic that a player got round the shot clock by continually asking for the white to be cleaned. It doesn't matter what rules you set in sport, some cheeky git will always exploit them.

Perhaps they could agree one ball cleansing, with a 10 second addition for the ref, per frame or match.

It really is gutting for the guy. The guy who won probably feels that he didn't earn that point even although its not his fault.

[Sam]

All the European players went over to Jones to console him afterwards, which was nice to see.

On day 4, Europe claimed the cup in three matches. Jayson Shaw and Joshua Filler got things rolling in the fans' choice (rolled over from last night to avoid the possibility that Europe would have needed to win just one match today) against SVB and Skyler Woodward, winning 5–4. Woodward then played a great match to beat Shaw 5–2 in the singles and keep US hopes alive, but in the very next match Filler and SVB went to a deciding rack which was clinched by Filler. SVB had had a chance to win earlier, but left a hanger. His poor Mosconi Cup record continues, and Europe win 11–6.

I've had a bit of a look at a couple of pool forums the last couple of nights and the American fans really don't seem happy with the team in general (lots of talk about Reinhold and Styer not really deserving their places) and with Van Boening in particular; he's built a real reputation for bottling big moments in this competition. Last night during Jones's match against Alcaide he was the only player on either team who wasn't out watching and supporting, too. It's a bit of a dilemma because on the one hand it seems like he has something of a mental block with this competition and on the other he's the only indisputably world-elite-level player the US can call upon. For a long time he was the only American who really travelled internationally to take part in non-domestic tournaments, and I know American pundits wished their other players would have the same attitude. But with the Euro Tour now being at such a high level and so many of the US local- and state-level tournaments operating on all sorts of different equipment – different table sizes, cloths, pocket sizes, sets of rules etc. – it must be harder to build consistency (not that it seems to stop Jayson Shaw, who lives in the States).

Next year the Mosconi Cup goes back to Las Vegas. I fear putting together a full calendar of events is going to be tricky, but at some point I'll start a 2022 pool thread and try to pick out the main international events (there's always some competition or other going on in the States, such is the depth of the game there).

[Sam]

An addition to the above post: after writing that, I watched the post-Mosconi Cup press conference on the Matchroom YouTube channel, and at the end of that Emily Frazer mentioned that next week Matchroom Pool will be releasing some exciting news regarding events in 2022. She's made abundantly clear in the past that Matchroom are only interested in 9-ball, so I'm not going to hold my breath for getting to see 8-ball or 10-ball, but I have seen whispers (though I forget where) about a UK or European Open event in the style of the US Open (though inevitably smaller in scale, one would think), which would be brilliant.

Another thing I think ought to happen, although I haven't heard anything about this and it's entirely inside my own head, is for an event similar in style to the Mosconi but incorporating a team from Asia. For one thing (with apologies to ursus and any other lurking American posters on this thread) an Asian team would provide far more competition for Europe than the USA can muster at the moment (in fact if the Mosconi were a three-team round robin played over, say, 9 or 10 days, an Asia team including, say, Naoyuki Oi, Carlo Biado, Roberto Gomez, Aloysius Yapp and Dennis Orcollo would have started as favourites for my money). The arguments against are that Matchroom aren't bothered about the Asian market (or I assume they aren't, given they've never seemed to go after it and those of us who follow snooker and pool all know how much they want the US market) and – just perhaps – that the language barrier might be an issue in doubles play, with Oi at least not speaking much English (he's Japanese, Yapp is Singaporean, the other three I've suggested are Filipino).

Anyway, that's one guess of what might be announced and one fantasy that definitely won't be. I shall probably start the 2022 thread with Matchroom's announcements next week, when they come out.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I agree about the relative strength of an Asian team. Would it improve the US's chances any if they could pick Canadian players? Are there any that would make the side?

[Sam]

There are plenty of American fans who'd say they should start by picking the right Americans. But yes, Alex Pagulayan and John Morra would both walk into the team, I would think. I have to confess to not having seen Morra play, but he's had some more impressive results in his career as a whole and this year than Chris Reinhold for sure, and over the last 12 months than Earl Strickland/Jeremy Jones.

[Sam]

I, er, haven't forgotten this, by the way. They just didn't announce anything last week.

[Sam]

Just finishing watching a YouTube video of a podcast featuring the two Mosconi captains, Jayson Shaw, Matchroom presenter Michael Bridge and Matchroom Multisport's MD Emily Frazer. Frazer has COVID, which is apparently why nothing ended up getting announced last week. She says the big exciting announcements will now come when the calendar for 2022 is released in the new year – but she's confirmed there will be a 2022 UK Open, which as I think I said upthread has been rumoured for a while. She said there are going to be other announcements coming up too, without saying what they'd be. Next year's Mosconi will see three players on each team qualify through performance in (presumably Matchroom) ranking events; I think previously it's just been the top-ranked player who qualifies automatically, with the other four all being captains' picks.

And she mentioned, in a way that made me unsure whether it was being put forward as something they're thinking about seriously or just her throwing ideas about off the top of her head, that it might be fun to have the USA v Europe in the Mosconi Cup followed by a 'Reyes Cup' in which the Mosconi winners take on an Asian team. Be still, my beating heart. And if they do that, they'd better chuck a hundred grand Efren Reyes's way to convince him to play an exhibition match before the competition, and stream that as well. If the white heat of intense team competition doesn't get TV fans to love pool, watching a nearly 70-year-old Filipino guy call and then make a series of almost impossible multi-rail kick and bank shots, all while grinning and laughing about how lucky he keeps getting, ought to do it.

[Sam]

Anyway, in other exciting, if significantly lower quality, pool news I've been getting the Subte (Buenos Aires metro) to BA's finest pool and billiards venue recently to actually practise, having downloaded an app with loads of drills to play. I have confirmed two things I already knew: first, I'm crap, and second, if you spend two or three hours practising on a World Championship nine-foot table (with admittedly rather old cloth) and then walk to your local bar and play a few games on a seven-foot bar table with looser pockets, you're going to look and feel like an amazing player. On the big table it's a struggle to hit a proper stop shot when there are five feet between the cue ball and object ball; on the smaller one I can pretty much do the equivalent (i.e. a four-or-so-foot distance) at will. Can't get a controlled draw shot at all on either table, though. I'm hoping to be able to keep this up by going to practise at least once a week, but we'll see what COVID and the increased workload I'm likely to have once the new year starts do to those plans.