Tourneys
Topic: GB9 British Grand Prix - 16 July

As far as I know almost every rack score has been real time updates since the quarters.

well done karl unlucky daz

Great venue and great atmos this weekend, just got home from a very long and hard weekend.

Must say my pool this weekend was shockingly bad but well played to the guys who used me as a punch bag.

Set up was hard work on the Thursday but a good team effort made sure that the venue was the best it could have been and allowed for a small amount of relaxing on the Friday. I dont feel as though i have ever ached as much as i did Thursday night and Friday and if i see another ladder before the next event i think i might flip but all in all the best weekend so far this season.

Well done to Adam, Imran & Karl for good wins this weekend too.

Room just about clear now and I'm just about to load car up. Having trouble uploading stuff to web from here so will do when I get home. Too much to say about the weekend so will come back later. Needless to say we always welcome feedback so we look forward to hearing what everyone thought but of course if you have any comments relating to our sponsors, supporters or suppliers that must be done privately.

Excellent facilities, really well organised and its an honour to play for such a tour. The whole European tour and the national media need to realise such how good our top uk players are and GB9 is the greatest advert for this ! Well done all

yep well done to the winners and to daz and shane both making a final unlucky not to nick one of them and the 3 kicks daz had crazy this pool lol.
no probs with the live scoring today esp from quarters ..lee and big thx to cuesport tv for the streaming fist class. job well done to all involved..

The weekend was awesome and everybody involved with GB9 be it a player or organiser should be very proud of themselves! I had a good laugh and there was plenty of entertainment to be had but my efforts must now be doubled as I've now lost 4/4 since joining GB9!

Great weekend, great venue best yet and everything seem to run very smoothly and on time. I even tried to disrupt the schedule by having the longest match ever but that didn't even seem to upset things!

Thankyou GB9 team, perfect.

Well done to Karl, Adam and good to see Imran back to his best.

How long was your match ? Who against ? i had one over 2 1/2 hrs !

On 2010-07-19 09:08 , contrakid Wrote:
Thanks Simon. Match schedule is something we pay a lot of attention too and fine tune each event as I know it it an important aspect of the player experience. I have a report produced by the tournament software at the end of the event to show us the peaks and troughs and averages and I must admit it nearly crashed my computer when it analysed the stats for that match lol!

Thankfully I knew the winner had a walkover in the next round due to a seeded player pulling out last minute so I was able to give you some slack as you would not be holding up the next round.

Hi Lee,

With the above in mind can I ask why my game with Neil Cummins was put on the clock when the next match on the table was in the plate event which seemed to start a good 20-25 mins after we finished?

If clocks are to be used in my opinion they should be brought in after a specified time in ANY match, regardless of the subsequent use of the table and the stage of the tournament.

With all due respect, it just doesn't seem right that Simon and Caroline were allowed to play for a good 2 and a half hours without the pressure of a shot clock whereas myself and Neil were put on it at a later stage in the event where decisions generally do tend to be lengthened because of the situation.

This post isn't sour grapes or anything as Neil overall played better and deserved to win but I just think the rule has to be applied evenly across the board, it just isn't fair to allow matches to have more time if circumstances allow for it.

Is that really Morray Dolan on the tour. Is that another top English pool player who has packed it in. Top bloke and reckon he could do very well at 9ball if he has.

On 2010-07-19 11:04 , Buckster_uk Wrote:


I for one would love to see the shot clock introduced - personally I think some players are taking far too long between shots and it's slowing the game down far too much.....I think 1 minute (buzzer) + 30 sec's is long enough for anyone to play a shot in pool....in fact - 45 sec's (buzzer) + 20 sec's is enough.......hard to introduce tho' when you got 16 buzzers going off all over the hall...
    


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The Agent

I think they went easy on us Chris as we were having loads of trouble racking them.

I would would be up for a shot clock, you could do it a bit like chess and have a big timer on the desk that you opponent starts before each shot.

No don't think it would really be poss at these events.

On 2010-07-19 12:38 , coasting Wrote:

yes it is but he hasnt packed in with english pool though

On 2010-07-19 11:04 , Buckster_uk Wrote:

Chris,

First of all thanks for the feedback and I know you well enough so I know you lost a close and hard fought match with good grace and it's not sour grapes. Your question was why was your match put on the shot clock and Simon's was not which I'll try and answer.

I actually hate using the shot clock and we rarely do it because we do not want to spoil or affect the outcome of a match by doing so. The rules say "the referee may at his/her sole discretion warn the players to increase their speed of play or introduce the shot clock." So how do we exercise this discretion? Well I can assure you it's not anything personal about one player or another.

We do it as a last resort where a) we think a match is going to run so far behind schedule at an important part of the day that it will affect subsequent sessions when we can't easily recover it or b) one player is playing so slowly that it's an unfair disadvantage to the other. Obviously in your case it was a) as neither of you wanted the shot clock.

Simon's match could not affect the schedule for the reason I mentioned above. In the case of your match it was not about freeing up the table for a subsequent plate match, it was about getting a result so one of you could start the last 32 on time and not delay that session. I've learned that midday on Sunday is a critical time in terms of making sure we keep things moving to avoid a knock on impact to the end of the main event.

I tend to agree with you about consistency and the idea of introducing the shot clock across the board but that is not always feasible and this weekend in particular it was difficult as we were one down on our tournament staff.

Everytime something like this happens it makes me look at it to see how we can do it better and this is no exception. I've already changed the wording of how the shot clock will be applied in our rules (not published yet) and I will talk to the staff about the feasibility and appropriateness of introducing it more regularly, even on matches where we think it's not going to make a lot of difference to subsequent match times, so it's fair to everyone. The problem with this is that this might generate even more complaints.

The other way to make things more consistent is to not use it at all but that is definately is not an option, especially on the Sunday where we MUST finish on time due to the logistics of the end of day take down operation.

So, in summary what happened in the case of yours and Neil's match is that we looked at the situation with all other matches in the last 64 at that time and made a judgement that if your match was excessively late it could adversely affect the timings for rest of the day.

Thanks for the response Lee.

Good to hear that the shot clock will be looked into further; I am certainly not against it as the scheduling is of massive importance as to how the tournaments are run, I just feel that if it is implemented in one match after a certain period of time then on fairness grounds it should really be used in all others regardless of the round/situation etc.

Obviously logistically this might not be possible, but hopefully it can be looked into.

Well done to GB9 for another well run tournament, getting better and better.

Chris you should just play faster like us speed demons.......ermmmmm sorry count me out of that comment.....i'm more like Terry Griffiths

Lee - Fab event! the best by far..........roll on September!!!!

Cracking venue. Best so far. Good to have all 16 tables in the one room.

Will the dates for the next event be changing with the China Open being held around the same dates?

to be honest I think the shot clock makes for much more exciting pool,not only to play but to watch too !....I think lessons can be learned from snooker,in the fact that snooker is now a boring game to watch with too much safety and not enough aggressive attacking play......having watched the World Cup Of Pool 2009 I found this great to watch as players were put under more pressure to play quicker and even then there is the opportunity for a "time out" if needed......I think if 9 Ball is to progress over here (UK) especially where the Media is involved - then it needs to be more"audience" friendly by becoming faster to be more appealing to view.It can only be good for the game IMO.
There were some matches over the weekend that I had to get up and walk away as some players were taking 3 or 4 minutes to play a shot .....


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The Agent