Pool Cue News and Review

If you haven’t been following this story, Jasmin Ouschan is seriously taking it to the men in the Straight Pool Championships.  After making it into the single elimination rounds, Jasmin took down Mika Immonen 200-174 and rolled Oliver Ortmann to the tune of 200-133.

This puts Jasmin in some very impressive company, next playing legend Francisco Bustamante in the semifinals.  The winner of the Ouschan/Bustamante match will play either Niels Feijen or Nick Van Den Berg.  Go get ‘em Jasmin and show ‘em what you’ve got!

As always, the updated brackets can be found on AZ Billiards.

Who needs spray paint when you can just use poo instead?  I love it when they try to class it up and call it “raw sewage”.  I do feel bad for Nita over at Mc Q’s Billiards though.  I’m pretty sure I’d rather clean up traditional tagging than poo smear.

Yes, deep down I am just a 12 year old boy.  Here’s the story from Washington if you want to read it.

http://www.kxly.com/Global/story.asp?S=8918140

I’ve been thinking about it and I think I’m done reporting on men’s pool.  The men don’t really have a tour and more importantly, I just don’t care about men’s pool.  They’re never on TV, which means that the only way to see them is watching the IPT or TAR and I really don’t like watching anything on my computer (except porn and YouTube of course).

Speaking of The Action Report (TAR for short), if you haven’t seen this stuff, you should totally check it out.  They do a really solid job shooting matches and there is something compelling about watching people go one on one with their own money on the line (and no, TAR isn’t paying me to pimp them… I just dig their stuff).  If you’re not convinced, check out their free broadcast of the foxy fashionista OMGWTF taking down three large in the AZ Billiards Death Match.

Well, it seems that the WPBA will be without one of their higher profile players next year.  Barretta has skipped almost every WPBA tournament this year, so unless the WPBA comes up with some special exemption, she’ll be losing her touring card and will have to go back to the Q-School.  As I understand it, you need to finish in the Top 40 to keep your WPBA tour card and with her current ranking of tied for 70th, we can safely work under the assumption that this is the last we’ll be seeing of Barretta for a while.

According to someone in the know (does some anonymous poster on AZ Billiards count as a source?) Ms. Barretta is going to focus on raising her kid and might do some league play in down the road.  No, I’m not going to bash Jennifer for quitting pool to focus on her kid.  I actually think its a pretty solid move.  She got about as far as she could in the WPBA and she’s doing solid by her family.  Nothing wrong with that, although I’m guessing some of her sponsors aren’t doing a jig knowing that she’s pretty much done with pool on a professional level.

Where I do have a problem though is with the WPBA.  See, the WPBA decided they would put Jennifer on the cover of their media guide alongside the two other faces of pool, Allison and J-Diddy.  If you want to put a hot chick on the cover of your magazine, at least choose someone who’s playing on the tour.  They had to know that Barretta wasn’t going to strap her kid in the BabyBjörn and hit the tables.

So why not put another hot chick up and comer on the cover.  Its not like you don’t have any to choose from.  Ga Young Kim, Xiao Ting Pan, Jasmin and of course the dreamy Liz Ford and Sarah Rousey.  Hell, I’d even be down with putting Anna K. on the cover.  Sure she doesn’t understand the concept of wearing appropriate clothes to matches, but she is pretty damn cute and is clearly a force on the tables.

WPBA, the times they are a changing.   You’ve gotta start focusing on the players who are highly visible and up and comers.  Who are people talking about?  Who is approachable?  Who hangs with the fans and does PR?  I don’t have a problem with the WPBA hanging on to J-Rida since she really is the face of women’s pool, but put her with two up and comers.  Don’t stick Allison on the cover for the 37th straight year.  Allison is the A-Rod of pool.  She’s extremely gifted, but completely unapproachable.  All she seems to want to do is play and get paid.

Bleh… I’m off ranting again.  Probably shouldn’t write before I’ve had my AM coffee.

So its been a busy couple of weeks for the always lovely Liz Ford. First, she shoots an episode of Time Warp for the Discovery Channel, then she gets another sponsorship to add to her collection. That makes a total of six companies that are giving Liz cash and prizes to play pool if I’m not mistaken. Yesterday, Liz announced that Dr. Gary C. Borge DDS is throwing her some lettuce. Yeah, I’m sure people are going to say “A Dentist? What up with that?” but if they do, they’re looking at it all wrong. You don’t have to be in the industry for a sponsorship to work. After all, what the hell does Wonder Bread have to do with NASCAR?

I’d say I don’t know how she does it, but I sort of do. Liz gets it. She’s exceptionally clear with her potential sponsors of what they get for their money. Plus, she offers multiple packages ranging from a couple hundred bucks to a couple grand. Now terms weren’t disclosed, but within a day the good doctor is already getting some action from this deal in the form of PR. AZ Billiards and Inside Pool picked it up, the WPBA pimped it and I’m sure if she said pretty please to Mason King and Shari Stauch, she’d get the story picked up by Billiards Digest and Pool & Billiards too (see Mason, I’ll pimp your mag even if you won’t share your RSS feed with me). Most importantly though, she got the story in the PCN blog… who am I kidding, I’d write a story on Liz if it was about nose blowing.

In all seriousness, one of the toughest things for a company looking to sponsor is trying to actually figure out what they’ll get for their money. The whole sponsorship thing is so well, abstract, that it seems that most companies won’t do it because they either don’t know what they’re going to get or they don’t know how to leverage the partnership. Even if what Liz offers isn’t what a sponsor is looking for, I’m guessing she’d be willing to negotiate and her menu gives potential sponsors a place to start. And with that, I leave you with some glorious eye candy (sorry for swiping the picture Liz, but you and Sarah Rousey tussling?  You knew I had to snag that one! Holler if you need me to take it down)…