Fine! I guess three weeks is long enough to be away from that filthy town to finally recap about my VNEA & ACS experiences.

First, I’d like to announce, which I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, that I am not at this year’s BCA expo. I’m a little bitter sweet about it. The thought of returning to Vegas right now utterly repulses me, but how will I know what the latest new catchy toys are on the market? If you’ll be attending, please pick me up some extra SWAG (the first definintion).

Regarding VNEA…

Disclaimer: I would like to clarify that I feel I have an obligation to my readers to always give my absolute honest opinion on all matters related to pool. You, as the reader, are welcome to accept my opinion as fact or determine the truth for yourself. Though my reflections from the VNEA nationals from last year were not necessarily positive, they were my own and they were in my honest opinion. I am not saying that VNEA is not for everyone, I’m only stating that it’s not for ME. Anything that you read here comes from me and does not reflect the opinions of my colleagues, employers, media contacts, etc.

With that being said (written), everything I wrote from last year still applies. I still believe that the VNEA nationals and the equipment that it’s played on are inferior to the BCA nationals (again, my personal opinion) and here are some reasons why:

• Again, there is still no dress code and the refs are still not properly trained. On more than two occasions, I witnessed or was informed of refs approaching a table for a call and making unnecessary comments, e.g. “You called me over for this?” or “That’s not even gonna be close.” Seriously, what happened to impartial and unbiased? I guess that doesn’t apply in this league!
• All the finals were scheduled in the pit overlapping one another making streaming of all the matches impossible. This gripe goes for the BCA too. Finals match times for the various divisions should be staggered whenever possible in all fairness to the spectators (and in my direct case, the viewers at home).
• Many of the finals matches were even scheduled at 9 o’clock in the morning. First, who other than the players want to get up for a 9a.m. match?!?? And, how did they decide who the sacrificial 9a.m.-ers were? The lesser important divisions? None of these matches got streamed since most of the time we were up way late streaming semi-final matches from the previous night. I guess they just wanted to make sure the matches were over with in time as not to interfere with the suds mixer and banquet start times. No further comments on this one.
• The VNEA payouts are not great. After a closer look, they’re not that bad in relation to the field sizes, but their entries are less than half of the BCA. Personally, as a player, I would forgo the free beer, live band, and fireworks to receive more prize money. But that’s just me.
• There’s still no free chalk provided for the players. Seriously?
• The VNEA website is a complete joke! I never had to spend so much time on their site until I was working on the tournament write up afterwards this year. The information is incomplete, disorganized, and often incorrect. There’s a link from the home page that says, “Click Here to View Event Top Finishes.” Once you click there, you see an unsorted list to your left of all the different divisions from the event. They are in NO particular order. Teams do not show player names, some of the prize money is mistyped (e.g. $400 instead of $4,000) and a couple names are misspelled. The divisions are not even referred to by the same official names. Classic, Seniors, Super Seniors, huh??? And don’t even think about looking for online brackets anywhere to see who played whom. That’s way too sophisticated for this site!

Don’t worry. It’s not all negative. Here are some positive thoughts from this year’s VNEA nationals:

• Two words: GREENS FEE!!! Now, is it greens fee, greens fees, or green fees? Well, whatever you want to call it, you know what I’m talking about and I love it!! As a player, I am now a huge fan of the greens fee. It sped up matches, I could practice all I wanted for free, and frankly it’s just less weight in my pool case and on my shoulders. In fact, I can’t believe there were not more players in there practicing after hours and between matches. That’s just silly!
• RYO! The VNEA has now switched to racking for yourself. I’m a huge fan of this, particularly for 8-ball.
• Scratch on the 8 ball is not a loss, it’s just ball in hand. It’s just one rule closer to the BCA. Don’t worry – you still have to patch your pocket though. One distinct VNEA rule that I do like better than the BCA is that the 8 ball is neutral off the break. That has come in handy before.

Now it’s the ACS’s turn for a tongue lashing. Sorry, no one is safe.

This year, we decided to support John Lewis and his ACS league by participating in the ACS singles. The ACS was also sponsoring a UPA event called the World Summit of Pool (which was also a pretty big joke – I’ll explain later). Since Diamond was co-sponsoring the event, Mark Griffin and his crew stopped by a couple times. At one point, John and Mark stood within feet from each other both talking to Mike and me. I never thought I’d witness that in a million years.

• First – This was really supposed to be a big break-through year for the ACS seeing as how they pushed their start date to be the day after the completion of the VNEA event in hopes to get a bigger turn out. But alas, my month in Vegas went from great to fair to worse.
• And speaking of earlier start date, I did not really appreciate the beeping forklifts in my backstroke and not knowing if my cues were going to get knocked over by the tables and curtains still being set up around me. I can understand the pro arena not being set up yet because that didn’t start for a few days, but you can’t tell me you can’t take down half the tables from the room over night. They didn’t even have to set anything up or move anything. Gimme a break!
• What’s the point of playing ACS league throughout the year to get qualified for nationals when they take signups on the day of the event?!?? What’s so national and official about that??
• Also, they didn’t start any matches after 7p.m. but you were almost guaranteed to have a 9a.m. match. WTH?!??? Don’t they know we’re pool players & we’re in Vegas?!??? Come on now! I’d WAY rather play at 10 & 10 than at 7 & 9!
• Oh, and what was up with the 3-piece band and attempted faux beer mixer while I was attempting to play in a mini tournament?!??? Once again, those things are not important to me, personally so I wouldn’t have minded that budget going towards the prize fund.

One positive thing about the ACS was that many of the BCA referees were there so at least I could trust having a hit called. I also enjoyed the snooker challenge in the front room. Though I personally don’t play, I do appreciate the diversity. I also ran into a VERY good friend Tara Kimble & her husband Jeff from Louisiana. I was so worried about them after Katrina and didn’t even know if they were alive because I had completely lost touch with them. I was so happy to see her.

Sadly, I consider John Lewis a friend, along with many of the ACS staffers. It’s unfortunately however, that his league is shrinking and the state of our economy is not helping his cause either. I will probably not be participating in an ACS national event again until it picks up because it is too tough to justify the expense. I do wish them the best because the more pool out there, the better, even if I can’t be involved.

Regarding the UPA’s World Summit of Pool event:

• First, congratulations to Mike Dechaine (with an “E” at the end of Dechaine) for snapping off the thing! He’s a good kid and deserved the win, even though it was over my buddy Toasti in the finals. But seriously, how do you send out a press release announcing the winner of your own event and not even spell his name correctly?!??? That’s just inexcusable!
• $20,000 was added to this event by the ACS and the UPA’s own staff didn’t even know where the money was coming from. I wouldn’t be too happy about that if I were the ACS. The whole point of adding that much money is in hopes of getting the exposure from it. The whole debacle was pretty poorly run and advertised if you ask me (and a handful of the players that participated, not mentioning any names).
• $10 a day to watch matches. No comment.
• Justin from TAR had his own encounter with the righteous Frank Alvarez.
• It’s a shame because I am big fan of Darrin Brown. He was formerly with Predator and has recently moved to Phoenix to help with the UPA. I believe Darrin is very competent and will hopefully help the men get their sh*t together, tour-wise.

And speaking of that $20,000 added, here were the payouts:
$6,000 for 1^st
$4,600 for 2^nd
$3,500 for 3^rd
$2,500 for 4^th
$1,600 for 5-6^th
$1,250 for 7-8^th
$675 for 9-12^th
Total: $25,000
There were 31 players. The entry fee was $425 and $125 of that went toward “administrative” expenses.
31 x $300 = $9,300, plus the $20,000 in added money. What happened to the other $4,300???
$5,000 divided by 31 players means that only $161 of everyone’s $425 entry fee went into the payout.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to play in a tournament where less than half of my entry fee went towards the total prize fund. But again, that’s just me.

Lastly, my overall crabbiness during and regarding the entire VNEA & ACS experience was heightened by my miserable bedbug experience. Yes, I said “bedbugs.” I lived with the most uncomfortable giant hive-like itchy, painful welts that covered my arms, back, and feet for nearly two weeks before realizing that it could be something in the room. In the Las Vegas heat, I wore long sleeves and pants everyday. I even went to the clinic and got some prescriptions that didn’t help. It wasn’t until day 10 that Mike finally started getting some bumps and we packed up all our stuff and moved to a different room with two nights left.

So, no matter how much I vent about my experiences at the tournaments, none of it was worse than dealing with the bedbugs. I have since asked for a UV Wand Sanitizer for my Birthday (thanks for the heads up, Ricky!)

Lastly, here are the photos:

2009 VNEA & ACS Nationals

2009 VNEA & ACS Nationals
May 22 - June 4, 2009
Las Vegas, Nevada

25 Photos

 

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