Pro9 - Europe's No.1 Pool Player Resource

MickeyFlynns American Pool
103 Mill Road
Cambridge
CB1 2AZ
Tel: 01223 309 000
www.mickeyflynns.co.uk

Sunday 30 November 2008

Straight Pool or Ten Ball? You couldn't make it up!!!

All credit to Mickey Flynns for being bold enough to stage the UK's very first straight pool tournament. It was always going to be a risky affair, but apparently even riskier than we first thought, as a "straw poll" of the early birds revealed that most had only practiced straight pool for the first time this week and with only moderate success.

There were some notable exceptions. David Walsh claims to be a straight pool genius, and Imran Majid only practiced for a few hours earlier this week, but managed a very respectable 120 break, but the majority were fairly uncertain of the rules despite a quick briefing by the Tournament Director and there were plenty of questions to be handled during play.

BUT... (And here's the mad thing)... After the first round of 14.1 over-ran it's allotted time, the whole tournament has reverted to Ten Ball.. AND NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON ARGUED!!! Can you believe that of pool players?

Sure, everyone agreed it was a very weird thing to happen, to turn up for a straight pool event, and then it changes to 10-Ball after the first round, but even weirder is that there were no scenes of discord, just good humoured acceptance all round!

"Read More..." for the details.

Well, OK... after a little more digging I did find one or two players who probably wouldn't have turned up if this was advertised as just another ten-ball tournament, but hey, it's amazing to have three pool players agree on anything normally, let alone the majority of the field, and as someone said, "we've learned a great deal today". Specifically that a Straight Pool Race-To-100 Double Elimination all the way to the quarter-finals would have been an exceptionally late finish.

Straight Pool certainly seems agreeable enough - the players seemed to really enjoy their "tiptoe" in the new game. Opinions varied from "really enjoyed it, but then I was at the table a lot of the time" to "it's too like snooker, I moved away from that for something new.... I like the big break".

High breaks from the single round included Chris Buckmaster's 50, and an 84 from Tony Drago topped the list... Not bad from a single round.

THE STATS

TOTAL PRIZE FUND: �840-00
Winner x 1	�330-00
Runner-Up x 1	�130-00
Semi-Finalists x 2	�80-00
Quarter-Finalists x 4	�55-00

THE PLAYERS

Lloyd Matining
Anthony Ginn
Craig Osborne
Alan Millership
Adam Clarke
Alex Lely
Mark Gray
George Brown
Neil Margossian
Tony Drago
Andy D'Alessandro
Andy Nicholson
Steve Folan
Dave Walsh
Chris Buckmaster
Ricardo Jones
Danny Prentis
Simon Clarke
Lewis Clarke
Courtney Symons
Jonathan Mathers
Colin Rennison
Bartek Czapski
Mickey Lambert
Gareth Esprit
Scott Foley
Rico Diks
Imran Majid

THE QUARTER-FINALS
Mark Gray	8 : 2	Anthony Ginn
Tony Drago	8 : 4	Chris Buckmaster
David Walsh	8 : 4	Adam Clarke
Imran Majid	8 : 3	Alex Lely

THE SEMI-FINALS
Tony Drago	8 : 4	Mark Gray
Imran Majid	8 : 6	David Walsh

THE FINAL
Tony Drago	SPLIT	Imran Majid

Check out the Pro9.co.uk calendar for details of the next Mickey Flynns events.

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