Playing Pool in Gibraltar

Photo "Eight Ball Pool" by ArtJsan courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhoto.net It's over.  The summer, I mean, not my pool playing days.  Not only have the heavens opened to provide us with a long-overdue clean up of the streets, but the glamour of travelling to international competitions of the late summer is now over.  The pool playing season has started, and here we go, head down, cue lined up and...shoot. It was, though, if you can hold with my reminiscing a moment, a bloody good summer.  The EBA 2015 Nations Cup in Killarney was a brilliant event.  The location couldn't have been more perfect: what a lovely place Killarney is, and what friendly, welcoming people.  The venue was superb and what all competing pool players need when travelling is their physical comforts made easy so they can concentrate on their game. I couldn't fault the Gleneagles Hotel, nor the organisation of the tournament.  And then there was the fun.  I met some genuinely decent people,

Photo "Male Thinking" by David Castillo Dominici, courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhoto.net It's often been said that pool - among other sports - is as much a mind game as they it is a game of skill and strategy.  With only days to go to the EBA 2015 Nations Cup of Pool in Killarney, Ireland, now is as good a time as any to get going with the thinking. The problem many players have when they think ahead to a competition, especially an international tournament is that it makes them nervous.  Now, nerves aren't good, not in most situations, unless you are about to be attacked by a bear, in which case it is a wonderful thing for the fight or flight nervous impulse to kick in. Photo by Stuart Miles, courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net Being nervous before a major competition is pretty natural and everyone I know suffers from nerves to some extent.  Some players are really good at coping with them, at controling them, at using the energy of feeling nervous

Let's talk about growing older!  Photo "Did you know?" by Stockimages courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net So, it was quite something to be placed in the seniors by dint of just arriving on the cusp of being a veteran and not yet ready to be put out to grass.  It sounds pretty prestigious, doesn't it, being a Senior?  It reminds me of being at school and looking up at seniors who were older, cleverer and infinitely wiser.  And as for moving up to the Masters - well, that sounds even better.  A Master, eh?  It must mean that we have mastered our sport, are ready to pass on those skills and that wisdom to the younger players.  Doesn't it? Well, as I muse the matter, the answer is yes...and no.  Many of us in the Masters age group - 50 plus - have graduated there after years of playing in competitions, semi-professionally or professionally, are teaching, coaching or mentoring and still have a bit of an edge to our game that can take us successfully through c

Photo "Stress on Dynamite" by Stuart Miles courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net ....At playing pool? Well, not so much getting better and better, but at least playing a bit more.  No, I'm referring to the fact that I'm getting better from a bout of sickness I didn't know I had until I ended up wired up to machinery in A&E.  Sounds dramatic, but what they suspected at first was a heart attack was actually a panic attack brought on by a protracted period of stress, which was caused by anxiety caused by goodness knows what, but contributed to by a very demanding period of work. Photo "Stethoscope and ECG" by cooldesign courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net In fact, until this point, I had not realised I was a stress victim - and I don't use that term lightly any more, because I really was unwell, and recovering from this is taking a fair while.  Not only that, I'm generally quite an easy-going person and I don't usually get work

Photo: "Skills Definition Magnifier" by Stuart Miles courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net The only way to develop skills in anything, from potter to pianist to pool player, is to practise.  Stephen King, whose work I admire greatly, memorably said: "Talent is cheaper than table salt.  What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." Okay, so I'm not sure how to quantify talent, and I'm not sure if as I've grown older I can regain that youthful confidence in my own talent I once had, but since pool is something I enjoy playing so much, I'm more than happy to put in the practise.  I've yet to take that quantum leap from practise matches to hard work, but as I reorganise my life - and we can't get away from the fact that if you are committed to something you have to make your life work round that thing and not the other way around - I am beginning to make time for more practise.  This week I played i

Photo: "Pool Game" by Serge Bertasius Photography from www.freedigitalphotos.net   Thirty-five years is a long time.  Too long for keeping up with skills learnt in my mid-teens.  Still, I loved the sport and in the depths of the stress of family life and work, home and finance and all that modern, rat-race stuff, I needed to get back to something I loved doing. At the age of 14 or 15, a friend of mine invited me up to the local snooker hall where I lived in Medway.  It was the snooker hall upstairs from Burtons on Gillingham High Street - not the most salubrious place in town - but the place where I was introduced to a sport I was to grow to love.  For a fairly quiet lad, it was a bit of a venture out to me, but I quickly warmed to the place and found that snooker came easily.  That's not a boast, being good at snooker was very tough, but I got the hang of the game pretty quickly, and pretty quickly I was beating my mates.  I had the ability to control the cue and