Playing Pool in Gibraltar

Gibraltar was the venue for the Betway Gibraltar Open tournament, a ranking event in the World Snooker Tour. Snooker was my first love as far as cue sports go. I played all the time as a teenager and by the time I was in my early twenties I was playing on the semi-pro circuit. I had potential, but not quite the essential mix of skill, dedication, determination and opportunity that combine to create a pro, let alone a champion of the callibre that we see on these tours. I had planned to go and watch the Gibraltar Open - what an opportunity to spend time watching some of the world's top players showcasing your favourite sport (besides pool!). Then Her Ladyship Indoors dislocated some bone or other in her foot and I ended up with the housework, shopping and dog-walking, as well as running around after the Teenage Tyrant. Damned domesticity getting in the way of life again! So, I watched it on TV instead - thank you Eurosport - and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Stuart Bingham rai...

Gibraltar Seniors at EBA World Championship 2018, Bridlington, photo courtesy Shaun Rumbado It's been a while since I've posted on this blog. And since I've played pool well. 2017 was a washout - too much on my mind to focus. And 2018 was an unmitigated disaster as far as playing any really decent frames were concerned. I tottered through two European Championships, one Nations Cup and one World Cup and emerged mostly feeling let down by my own relatively poor standard of playing. In fact, last week was the first time I played a proper match for months - I had toyed with the idea of simply giving up, but I enjoy the game too much! Age hurts - along with my fifties have come all those niggling little ailments, and those aches and pains: the joints creak almost audibly, especially during late matches, and the old lumbar twinges as I stand . And the eyes! Good grief, I used to have superb eyesight until what seems like only a few months ago. Now I bend to the table...

Dave Anderson and Dad (John Anderson) proudly wearing the Gibraltar national team tops at Bridlington We are here again: Bridlington, the European Blackball Championship.  I have to admit to feeling a bit dazed at being here, so much has happened in the past 12 months, most of it a distraction to playing good pool, so this year I have  a huge challenge ahead of me. This year has been full of personal distractions.  I started my own business and had to put heart and soul into getting that off the ground.  Playing pool was almost a form of relaxation rather than training for international games. Then, at the start of 2017, along with the joy of becoming a grandfather again with the birth of our first granddaughter, came the devastation of losing my mother to cancer.  It's hit me hard.  Suddenly, playing pool, training, competition, didn't seem so important.  It has been hard to pick up enthusiasm the past couple of months. My Mum and I ...

Event poster signed by the visiting players, courtesy of Paul Heard The EBA European Championship was looming closer as a dreary February led into March.  I have been getting regular practice, although as usual, never as much as I would like, and I have been taking regular exercise - well, walking the dog once a day.  But it was the visit to Gibraltar last weekend by the IPA Professional World Series that made the best warm up to a tournament I have ever experienced. Cue sports enthusiast and a good pool buddy, Paul Heard, of Premier Cue Sports in Gibraltar, had been negotiating with the IPA since the middle of last year to bring the World Series to Gibraltar.  The event created included the professional Gibraltar Final, the Gibraltar Open, a team competition between Team IPA and Gibraltar Select and a light-hearted Last Man Standing competition which all took place during Easter weekend in what was a festival of pool as well as a tremendous success.  ...

The beginning of January is full of resolutions and promises to self to make a new start, to do more of the right stuff and less of the naughty stuff (or in my case, in case Her Ladyship Indoors is reading,no naughty stuff at all.....and to do more stuff around the house). I get bored with the whole new year resolutions thing.  I set off with only a bit of tepid enthusiasm on New Year's Day and have broken most of them that very evening, never to resume giving them any attention again.  Hence why I still can be described as....ahem....portly.  But 2016 looks set to be a big year for my game of pool, so I am going to have to focus. Firstly, I was hugely relieved to have come through the rankings in 2015 to make the national squad and be invited to play in this year's international tournaments.  It was a tough call because I missed a number of games during the summer months when I was away spending time with family and supporting my wonderful Mum who was dia...

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 genuine...

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 ...