The Tip Jar

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My Unlucky Day

Rarely will you catch me complaining about rolls or my life in general. I take what I get and if I played badly, I played badly. I do what I can, but Saturday was a pretty rotten day. It didn’t start out too bad. I played exceptionally well against a very sweet lady called Claudia in my first round of the day. I won 9-1 and her one game was a 10 ball break. Before our match started, she just kept telling me how much she appreciated my articles and how she reads them all the time. That’s so awesome! I probably only made one or two mistakes in that match. I felt great!

My next match was against Emily from Florida. I had warmed up with her Thursday night and knew she was a tough competitor so I felt great going into that match knowing that I was hitting the ball so well. Some goofy stuff happened in the first couple games, but I didn’t let it get to me, I felt really good! I was down 2-1, her break (rack-your-own), and while she was racking, I could see that she was visibly in pain. She had tears in her eyes and in the game before that, she was hunched over in her seat. After she broke, I asked if she needed a break.

As it turned out, she had a horrible pain in her stomach either from eating something bad or who knows what??? She ended up taking a long break and the tournament directors finally came over to me to let me know they were giving her 5 more minutes. In the meantime, poor Sunny was having the same problems across the room while playing Grace. Whether it was something they ate or some sort of bug is still a mystery.

When she finally returned to our match, I had completely lost focus and concentration. No amount of training or preparation in the world could prepare you for your opponent getting sick in the midst of a match while you just sit at the table and wonder if she’s okay. As you can imagine, I was pretty distracted by the circumstances. I was making mistake after mistake. The next thing I knew, the score was 5-1. I struggled to regain that feeling I had when the match began and when I was finally feeling in-stroke again, I was down 8-5 and she broke and almost pocketed the 10 ball. It was hanging in the corner pocket.

I played a bad push-out off her break. In fact, I hooked myself on the 1 ball, kicked at it, missed, got lucky to pocket it anyway as it was sitting in the middle of the table. Here’s what I ended up leaving her:

Now, if I were playing against a much weaker player, that may not be as savvy, I probably would’ve called a ref over to watch this hit. However, I knew she was a smart enough player to understand what a double-hit was and saw she was jacking up enough to where she should have been able to execute this with no problems. However, this is where the cue ball ended up:

There was absolutely NO WAY that she could’ve made a good hit the way that she hit it and had the cue ball follow forward to the middle of the table. I was so disgusted but it was my own fault for not calling a ref to watch the hit. Lesson learned… (hopefully)

THEN! While I was watching Heather beat her in the next round, all of a sudden I had hot coffee in my lap. Apparently, Grace was just coming up behind me and the guy sitting beside me was telling a very enthusiastic story and bumped right into her coffee and it ended up all over me…

I should have just gone straight to bed after all that, but I thought it might make me feel better to play some blackjack. It’s the only card game I play and did so well with it in Vegas during nationals that I joked about giving up pool for blackjack. Well, I’m sure glad I didn’t. I had three bad sessions. Of course.

Theme for the day: UNLUCKY

Final results from the tourney and full write-up:

1st - Susan Williams (YEAH!)
2nd - Grace Nakamura
3rd - Heather Lloyd
4th - Bernie Store
5th - Sue Lance / Sunny Griffin
7th - Leandria Gaff / Emily Wilmoth
9th - Samm Diep / Bonnie Plowman / Kathleen Lawless / Terry Johnson-McCauley

Photos (I thought the melting theme was appropriate since I was in AZ):

Here were some of my favorite things (in no particular order) about the Mazatzal (pronounced “mad as h*ll”, even by the locals) Hotel & Casino:

• Our suite was so nice. It was like a little apartment. It’s a place you want to stay for three weeks, not three days.
• The reasonable rates.
• No taxes on anything.
• The down pillows and comfortable pillow-top mattress.
• The flat screen TV’s everywhere.
• The little living room with pull-out couch and chair. (we could’ve slept up to 6 people)
• There were three phones in our room (all our names on them).
• The wet bar in our room and cute little mini fridge.
• The cute little mugs, glasses, and complimentary coffee, AND TEA!
• The personalized name greetings on our phone. It even had caller ID on it so you could see the names of the person calling you too.
• The nice tile work in the bathroom.
• The excellent shower w/ real shower curtains.
• The great ice (you know, the fun, crunchy stuff that doesn’t hurt your teeth)!!!
• The digital thermostat.
• The granite counter tops.
• The two desks and plenty of mirrors and storage.

I look forward to coming back next year and HIGHLY recommend anyone looking for a little AZ getaway to check this place out.

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