Pool Cue News and Review

The GenerationPool air dates have been announced by the BCA. It looks like we’ll be having a pool marathon on July 19th. Here’s how it all breaks down hour by hour on ESPN.

2008 GenerationPool.com 9-Ball Championships ESPN Schedule:

This is a huge improvement over last year when ESPN buried the men’s programming in the middle of the night (that was the one where Van Boring got skunked 7-0 in the finals). The Archer v Wiseman match should be pretty interesting, especially if they capture the whole “sharking” thing that got Wiseman’s panties in a bunch.

Well… the final numbers are out for the BCA Expo and they aren’t good.

Exhibitors - 178 down from 234
Booths - 626 down from 1003
Buyers - 1111 down from 2156

In my efforts to not to be such a “callous dick” as one of my readers called me, I’m not going to go doom and gloom on this. Well, really I’m not going doom and gloom because there’s no need, but I’ll use this as an opportunity to show that I’m all sunshine and lollipops anyway.

So here’s the deal. Charlotte was a disaster before the ink on the contract even dried. You can’t move this show out of Vegas and the old regime who booked this and Houston should’ve known better.  It could’ve been worse… much worse.  A lot of the smaller booths on the edges looked pretty miserable, but there was some brisk business going on with the bigger players.

All I can say on this one is live and learn.  Next year, the show moves back to Las Vegas where it belongs.  Attendance will be up because store owners in every industry use the annual trade show as an excuse to write off a vacation as a business expense.  No one wanted to go to Houston for a vacation and Charlotte in the summertime is a pretty miserable experience.  Next year the show will be at The Sands on the strip, people will come to the show, get loaded, lose lots of lettuce gambling and will have a good time.

In my somewhat drunken rant about Brit-Anna, I forgot to mention that the finals are set. For the men, Jeremy Jones will be playing Ronnie Wiseman. I’m 0-4 on predictions so far, but based on how Jones played yesterday, I’ve got to think that Wiseman is going to take the match.

On the ladies side, its Ga Young Kim vs. Xiao Ting Pan. GYK looked unreal against Jasmin last night and was an absolute machine. If GYK is on her game like she was yesterday (she only missed 2 balls in the entire match), she’s gonna sizzle again tonight.

On a side note, I had no idea how foxy GYK was until I saw her yesterday. I have yet to see a picture that does her justice, because she was an absolute knockout. The announcer was teasing her about some gameshow she was on where she was shooting fruit, so I had to go find it. Pretty entertaining stuff, even if I can’t understand what they’re saying.

Yeah, I’ll be going to Charlotte next week for the BCA Expo. Looking at the current exhibitor list, there’s going to be 185 companies there showing off their wares, but the real question is whether or not there will be anything that’s actually “new”. I know Predator will be showing off their new P3 cues and after the unmitigated disaster that was Poison, they could use a hit (although I heard they did sell one or two of those 314 shafts last year). Of course you wouldn’t know that they actually want the P3 to sell well considering the fact that the “countdown” image is linked to their cases page…

In addition to the new P3’s, I’m sure I’ll be treated to the annual glut of the exact same cues with new stickers. You can’t blame the companies though. After all, it is the lower end cue that drives this industry. The market for the custom cue continues to shrink, so there’s no reason for companies to not roll out the same cue with a different design.

This all begs the question: Does this industry really need an annual trade show? There’s rarely anything that’s actually “new”, so why have a show every year? The technology is still the same, there haven’t been any decent training tools released in years and its not like people are going to the show to write orders.

At any rate, I’ll be running around the show snapping pictures and checking out the new stuff, so I’ll be sure to have lots of posts following the show. Sorry about not posting much this week, but the industry is taking its annual summertime snooze and that real life thing managed to catch up to me.

Another major Pro and Amateur showcase, another “success” from the BEF. According to various reports, the Billiards Education Foundation brought in about four grand at their fundraiser. While this is quite a bit higher than the $2,300 they raised at the Super Billiards Expo, the fact remains that this is far, far below what they should be able to raise. With over 7,000 players competing at the BCAPL championships along with their friends and family that came along for the Vegas trip, you’ve gotta figure there were close to 10,000 people at the Riv throughout the week. It seems like you could average a buck a person in your sleep. Hell, just partner up with some of the booths and ask them to upsell a BEF donation of a buck or two with purchase. That alone would get you more jack than the $4,000 they raised.

No matter how you slice it, the BEF is just not getting it done from a fundraising perspective. Especially when you have a captive audience of 7,000+ people. On a more positive note, foxy Samm Diep does a nice interview with Allison Fisher, who does an absolute shitton of stuff for the BEF. People like Jeanette Lee should take note of how Allison continually pays back the industry that has given her so much.