As the Fall Session is coming to a close the MVP race was heating up.  The way that the APA does its MVP rating for 9 ball is based on how many Points Per Match average that you have.  I was currently in second place for the MVP with 14.125 PPM average very close to the person ahead of me who had an average of 14.2727 PPM.  So being a competitive person I wanted to play to earn that MVP spot.  

I talked with my 9 ball team and they all wanted me to play and try to win the MVP for the 2nd session in a row.  I was thankful that they decided to give me the chance to do it even though I had played the week before and it wasn't really my turn to play.  So in analyzing what I needed to do to overtake this persons PPM average I needed to win with a score of 16 to 4.  If I win but only get 15 points then my PPM average would be 14.2222 which would of been .05 games under the current MVP leader.  If I win and get the 16 points then my PPM average would be 14.3333, giving me the MVP spot by about .05 games.  

The team we played against only had 4 people so they had to play a ghost which after the 1st match we picked one of their 3's to play.  My captain decided that I was going to be playing this person in the 5th match.  This meant that as a 3 I had to keep him to 14 points in the match to win 16-4.

After the first game the score was 6 to 3 with a dead ball.  After the next rack the I am up 14 to 5.  Knowing I needed to keep him to around 2 to 3 points per rack helped me understand what I needed to do to pull this off and I was doing well with keeping it up.  After the 3rd rack the score was now 23 to 6.  The 4th and 5th racks he was able to get another 2 points in each with myself getting the rest so the score was now 39 to 10.  At this point in the race I needed to get 16 points before he was able to get just 5 more points.  The next rack I was able to hold him to getting just one point of the ten available points now making it 48 to 11.  So now I need to get 7 points before he gets 4 more points.  This next rack was a very interesting rack, I break and run four balls making it so I need just 3 more points to win but then I allow him back in the game.  He runs a few balls getting to 14 and he leaves himself a fairly straight reverse cut shot up the rail about half the length of the table.  He makes the shot on the 8 ball in the corner and the cue ball is rolling towards the other corner pocket.  It started to slow down but had enough momentum to fall into the pocket making that ball a dead ball giving me ball in hand on the 9 ball.  So I make the 9 ball and get up to break hoping I get one ball in on the break.  I break up the rack and it ends up being a dry break but the cue ball hides in such a way that he can not see the one ball directly.  He tries to go rail first but ends up hitting the six ball first giving me ball in hand on the one ball and at the same time pushing the one ball to the rail.  With ball in hand I setup to shoot the 1 ball into the corner pocket near where the 9 ball was sitting opening up the pocket even more.  

Having cemented another MVP for myself I was able to smile a little.  Being the league MVP is hard enough but to do it in back to back sessions feels really good. I am always working on and improving on my consistency more and more each session.  Understanding what you need to do is sometimes enough motivation to go and do it.  In this instance playing as best as you can was better than waiting around to see if you kept it.  I mean they could have played trying to improve their PPM to make sure they took the top MVP spot but chose not to play hoping I either did the same or didn't score high enough to over take them.  I would always rather be in a position to play for the win.  Well I am always looking to improve and I am:

Forever Learning the Art of Pool