The Pool Ref's Blog

Have you missed it? I know I have.

Covid caught us all sleeping and little did I know that when I was refereeing the professional final of the IPA tour in Bournemouth 12 months ago, that would be the last time I wore a pair of gloves or touched a cue for over a year. I'm sure many of you are the same - if you are lucky enough to own your own table at home I'm very jealous!

But as you can see there is now light at the end of the tunnel. The lockdown easing measures are set which means we can all start planning on getting back to normal - the IPA has wasted no time in reorganising a full 5 tour schedule as normal (with the Grand Finals just pushed into the beginning of 2022) which is an incredible achievement in such a short time, and more event dates such as the Pro Super Series featuring Jimmy White will be rescheduled soon. Even better, if you book any hotels for your stays during IPA events before the end of March, the room rate is discounted by up to £56 per tour weekend (depending on room type and number of days you are staying), meaning you could save up to a massive £280 on your costs by booking up as early as possible! All the details are on the IPA website as usual - link below.

I'll see you all soon!!

So, a big update this time as there's lots to talk about - especially with regards to the IPA. I'm so happy I'm actually able to speak about things now, I was finding it really difficult to keep quiet about the new developments and I nearly spoiled the surprises!

Before all that though, let's go back to the end of August and the Pigeon Pool Promotions Money Match Day in Essex. Legends Sports Bar served up one of the best kept pool tables I've reffed on, they really look after them. Two long money matches (you can view here and here) made for a tiring day for myself, with exceptional performances by Shaun "Bedtime" Storry (great nickname but he hates it!) and Aiden Owens. Aiden in particular played better than I've ever seen anyone play over such a long distance, his opponent didn't stand a chance and I don't think it would have mattered who he was playing. I was asked to use the Shark Rack for the first match and I still have the same issue with it - whilst it undoubtedly provides a rack where all the balls are touching which is great for breaking, it is still my opinion that having a piece of plastic on the playing surface negates years of research into cloth technology, and also throws balls off line if they run into it at a slow speed. If you have a decent ref, you rarely get issues with "bad" racks anyway so it's completely unnecessary. And marking two or three balls just to remove the rack? I just think the rack solves a problem that isn't really there, while causing more issues that should never happen. Give me a decent triangle like a Racker any day. I've watched parts of both matches back and I can't see any differences in splits from using the Shark rack and the RackRight (which I used for the second game).

Anyway, rant over. I also want to give a quick nod to the IPA Premier League fans in Nottingham.I went to referee week 8 and the amount of people that came out to watch pool on a Monday night is incredible. It was easily one of the biggest Premier League audiences, and it made for an amazing night of pool. The crowd were so supportive of the sport in the right way - applauding good shots, getting behind their favourite players - I have no doubt that it will be chosen as a venue for the second league stage in October/November and we'll be back very soon!

On to the big changes then - Tour event 4 (the International Open) in Tynemouth was almost a "reboot" for the IPA. We saw the introduction of a couple of major developments - the first (and easily the most talked about) being the newly revealed IPA Championship Pool Table. These have been in development for around a year, with prototypes coming to our events every so often (which we've had to hide somewhere - normally in plain sight but not many people noticed!). From these prototypes the team have been making improvements, and finally the finished article was put out for everyone to try. Now, I personally LOVE a Supreme table - they've been the standard bearers for years and we know that they are value, quality tables that can be relied upon. But it is frustrating when the same issues crop up year after year and nothing seems to be done about them. Tables sagging in the middle where there's no support (ever noticed a table will roll away from both side cushions? This is why). Balls bouncing out of pockets. The insistence of putting a metal bead between frame and cushion (which is only there to cover the huge gaps between them and the result is that you can't see when the cushion isn't fitted correctly).

The IPA table has been designed to not just play as well as the competition, but is available at a lower price whilst also addressing these issues levelled at other tables. The full list of features can be found here.

So, we had 20 IPA tables all set up in the venue and, although we liked them, we were all anxious to find out what the verdict was from the most important people - the players.

The overwhelming majority of responses were hugely positive. Certainly, everyone praised the removal of the bead between frame and cushion. Players can now hit the cue ball with a straighter cue in most situations. There was also praise that the pockets played slightly tighter meaning players had to be more accurate - hitting the near cushion now means balls are more likely to sit in the jaws of the pocket rather than drop in - if you miss, you miss. On a similar theme, jaws won't "spit out" a perfect pot just because you've played it too hard - so you can hammer balls in down the rail for example. This gives players more positional choice on shots such as these, and we saw the top players adapting to it very quickly. Bounce outs also seem to be minimised - I heard of one bounce out all weekend which isnt bad for over 1,000 hours of tournament play.

The other major development may not have even been noticed by many, but the IPA and 24/7 TV team made huge efforts to turn the broadcast product into a complete "programme" rather than just a succession of pool matches. The new studio area gave the team a more relaxed environment to interview players between matches, build up to major finals, analyse shots etc. Watching some of it back (see here) I think it was a huge success and something to really build on in the future - even though we're rapidly approaching the tour finals there is still a lot of IPA pool to be broadcast live before the World Championships in February (Weekly Premier League, Masters (December), World Team Trophy (January) etc.).

And finally (phew!) a note about another great new product development from IPA referee sponsor, The Racker. I have been puzzled forever really as to why very slippery ball markers have no ridge to grip them - I can't imagine anything worse than trying to pick up a marker on live TV wearing gloves, only for it to slip and move a ball (it nearly happened to me in the World Championships, but luckily the marker fell short of the table!). Therefore I've been modifying my ball markers for a while now, like this:

The drilled holes create a ridge to pick up the marker - but they don't look very professional.

Enter The Racker! The new, simple design has a ridge to grip the marker. It is big and heavy enough that you can comfortably press down on it when replacing balls, which is essential. It is simply the best ball marker I have ever used, and it will soon be available to buy from the Racker website!

I think that's it! Don't forget the BitcoinSV IPA Premier League is on Mondays at 7pm on FreeSports.

As well as this, I was asked to referee one of the main event Semi Finals. As an event with such prestige, that is a massive honour. Hopefully soon I will be lucky enough to be chosen to referee the final of one of these events (fingers crossed!).

Finally, I have to mention the Challenge 2 Final. Once again I was given the appointment to referee this, and it was an absolute cracker of a match between Kinga Rauk and Ryan Wissett. You can watch it on Facebook via this link (just go to 51 minutes in as it's straight after the first match) - I'm not going to spoil it, it's well worth the watch and was a great way to end the weekend!