Play In It, You'll Like It

I had heard of this cool little 8ball tourney on Diamond bar tables for the April 2nd weekend, about 35 minutes from my house at a fairly new place that everyone keeps talking about.

I was VERY undecided if I wanted to play.  The idea of being in a confined place with potentially over 60 people all day wasn't my idea of fun, honestly.

The pool room has 8 of these beauty tables, and they weren't letting anyone play if you had a Fargo rating above 640.  So, I admit it was tempting, but still wasn't feeling it the whole two weeks before the tourney to even decide if I wanted to play or not.

I'm a planner, though, so usually I've decided weeks and weeks before an upcoming tourney if I'm playing or not.  I mark it on my calendar months in advance, lol.  But this time, I just didn't have a strong urge to play for some reason.  Plus, it was an "open" weekend for me and lately I've been spending my open Saturdays at the poker room at the closest Casino (an hour and 20 minutes away).

I was asked by a few people if I was going to play in it.  "I don't know, don't think so," was my repetitive reply to everyone the last two weeks.

Come Saturday morning, I woke up in a fairly unhappy mood.  I had decided I wasn't in a good enough frame of mind to play poker.  So, def wasn't even thinking about that tourney everyone kept asking me about.  I was just going to stay home I decided, and not do anything special but kinda hang out with my sappy mood.  lol

Then a good friend of mine sent me a message.  Here is the convo:

Friend:  Pool or poker?

Me:  Neither I guess.

Friend:  Neither? Why not?

Me:  Just gonna stay home. You playing in the tourney ? 

Friend:  Booo...yeah I'm going to play

Me:  Good! I hope you have fun and kick butt 

Friend:  Thank you...if you change your mind the Calcutta starts at 12...and if I can't buy you I got to start looking for a new horse...

Me:  No reason to buy me lol.

Friend:  Bar box 8 ball..in a 640 under tournament, you have to be top 5 pick

Me:  Damn u make me want to play lol

Friend:  You should be playing

Friend:  And it's on 7ft diamonds..

Friend:  It's the right game and the right table for you. .

Me:  Hmmm. Maybe I will now that you talked to me more abt it

Friend:  Get off your butt..and come knock this tournament off!

Me:  Hmm... well, seriously considering it now that you say all that.  Okay, sign me up please, I may not get there till noon.

Friend:  Will do

Me:  Thx for convincing me.... I think.

Friend:  It will be fun..

Me:  Oh yea, limited tables, small place, lots of people. Sounds like a blast.

Friend:  Hush it and get ready

I joked with him every so often on Saturday (he did end up buying me in the calcutta, btw) that I wouldn't thank him for convincing me to play until I played a few matches to see how the day went.  Depending on how the day went, I mighta wanted to kill him for convincing me to play lol.

Then on Sunday, after I find myself still on the winner's side!

Friend:  Good luck today...you got this!

Me:  Thank you.   And thanks for swindling me to play.  lol

Me:  Seriously, Thx again for getting me out. 
And, I'll be blogging abt it. 
I really really really appreciate it.

Friend:  I'm glad you played...you did very well for someone who has no interest in playing pool :-/ lol

Me:  Lmao!!!

It's amazing to me how many people have more faith in my game than I do.  I would never consider to be in the top 5 of this tourney against a host of great players (99% of them were guys, too).

And there I was, still on the winner's side Saturday night and making plans to return the next day to play in Day Two!  Wow.  I placed 5th out of 51 players and will write several blog entries of things that happened during this unplanned, spur of the moment tourney weekend.  Including details of my matches and also some bad etiquette that happened to me (fun times!).  

BIG thank you to my friend who got me out of the somber mood and around friends in the pool world last weekend.  It was needed. 

Further, I'm giving 8-ball lessons later this week to a team, so playing in this 8-ball event was super timely for that.