Reasons not to practice:

My back hurts
I’m tired
I need to do laundry
I’m hungry
I want to watch my son’s karate class
I need to clean my apartment
I already practiced 16 hours this weekend

Reasons to practice:

I want to show my son that anything is possible

Back to work.

Part of being a professional player is maintaining professionalism when the chips are down. Not displaying anger at the table, being gracious when losing, and interacting pleasantly with fans after a tough loss are a few of the things that I feel I have mastered over the years. In short, part of my responsibility in being a pro player is acting like one, but now that I’m competing with the men more, I’m finding that sometimes I need to haul out my inner thug.

Now don’t get me wrong…I’m an absolute lady as long as my opponent is respectful, but when that line is crossed my short tempered Italian roots start to show, and I can’t be held responsible for the foul mouthed insults that roll off my razor sharp tongue.

This past weekend I played in a men’s open/pro event, and ended up with a second place finish. All in all my opponents were respectful and some were even complimentary, and although I appreciate their professionalism, those aren’t the ones I want to talk about. I really want to talk about my first opponent. A pool cue toting gorilla with a spray tan and “blue” eyes, who, appropriately enough, works for the department of sanitation, and could easily be cast in a new reality show called The Real Garbage Men of the Jersey Shore. To protect his identity I will call him Stanky Fernandez.

Stanky and I have some history that he may or may not remember, and for many years I looked right through him like the greasy, fingerprinted plexiglass in the Chinese takeout. That incident occurred back when they still had a womens pro event in Las Vegas. I was out in the arena playing my heart out, and after coming back from a big deficit, I found myself shooting a tough backwards cut on the 7 to close the match. I’m locked on the shot when a loud voice echoes across the arena “There’s no way she’s making this shot!”. I get up, and look into the stands. Stanky. Now keep in mind, before this point I had never spoken a word to him. We were just fellow New Yorkers who occasionally ended up in the same pool room. I felt fury rise up inside me as those sitting to his right and left admonished him for his loud outburst. I refocused. Now that the whole arena knew what he thought, I was determined to prove him wrong. I cut the ball in, ran out and won the set, but from that moment on, Stanky ceased to exist in the world of Jenn Barretta.

It would have been nice to keep it that way, but once I started competing in open events, our paths were destined to cross, and I would not only be forced to interact with him, but to (shudder) make physical contact. Stanky and I played each other in the last open event, when he found himself on the sitting end of the handshake. He promptly ran crying to anyone who would listen that he lost because he’s a rhythm player and I play so slow that he falls into my rhythm and blah, blah, wahhh! Whatever. In my estimation, he lost because his cueball is whack, and despite his big gorilla break, the balls don’t always land right outside the holes, but who am I to judge?

Fast forward to last Sunday. I walked into the venue and began to warm up. One table over I noticed that Stanky had arrived, and was also warming up. I watched the draw and saw that I got a first round bye, but noticed that Stanky had to play a good local player, and if he won, we would be squaring off again. I watched some of their match, and when his opponent was up 7-3 in a race to 8, Stanky attempted a thin cut safe, but missed the whole ball. His opponent, who is a portrait of good sportsmanship, asked, “ball in hand?”, Stanky, not surprisingly, replied, “I hit it.” As his antics are intended to do, his opponent promptly fell to pieces and lost 8-7. Believe it or not, I was happy with Stanky’s victory because, even though I would be forced to (shudder) touch him, I felt Stanky was a much better draw for me, and would have gotten his garbage collecting ass handed to him in the first round, if he didn’t cheat.

So here comes the rematch. We flip the coin, and I win the toss. Thankfully, it’s rack your own, which I’m sure the tournament director put in place just for him. I rack the balls, break and push out. Stanky looks at it for 5 minutes, making a big show of chalking his cue and taking extra sips of water before he gives it back. I play safe. Stanky looks at it for another 7 minutes. Ok, I get it. But what he doesn’t get, is that I play on the women’s tour. We’re on the shot clock in almost every match. I am 100% comfortable with it. In fact, I hope we get the shot clock because I doubt he’ll feel the same way. Stanky may run the balls quickly, but he’s going to need some serious time to make his sparse brain cells smoke when I put him in uncomfortable positions.

The match continues at a snails pace, when I break, make two balls and hang the ten in the corner. The cueball lands a foot away from the ten, and the one is in front of that. I look into the gorilla’s beady, blue contact clad eyes, point to the ten ball, and say “I’m going to call the ten”. I draw the cueball off the one, and pocket the ten. I go to rack the balls when he gets out of his chair. “You didn’t call that.” . (SNAP!) I can feel the breach in my temporal lobe, which normally curbs my animalistic impulses. “Don’t start with me, Stanky! Sit down and shut the fuck up, because I’m going to rack right now,” I yell, “this is the only way you could beat me. You have to cheat!”. (oh, god, did i really just say that?) He proceeds to call me a fucking bitch (Why yes, I am, thank you), and runs crying to the tournament director, who, being used to his nonsense, basically told him to go away. I rack the balls, and continue playing.

At 4-3 me, Stanky runs to the tournament director again, and asks for a shot clock. Is he really that terrified of losing to me? The tournament director was watching his earlier antics and, once again, Stanky was forced to do the walk of shame back to his chair. The score was soon 7-5. Now that his final bid for nonsense was rejected, he decided to play some pool. He used his big gorilla break, and broke and ran 2 racks. Good for him. You can win, but you’re going to have to play, son. He breaks the final rack, gets a shot at the one but, as what usually happen with people that have a weak cue ball, he gets in trouble on the 3, makes it, and sends his rock right at the hole. I get ball in hand and shoot a 4-10 combo for the win.

I walk hesitantly over to Stanky and debate whether I should shake his hand. He extends his first and I let my fingertips barely graze his as the gallery awkwardly snickers. I’m glad I got the W, but, just to make sure I didn’t get anything else, I ran for the hand sanitizer. The rest of my story can be read on NYCgrind.

Thug life, forever.

ps…while the above incidents are accurate and true, they are to be considered for entertainment purposes only, are not meant to be a character assassination, and do not reflect any ill will toward my opponent. Yeah, right.

pps…I’m not proud of my behavior but…oh, that’s such a lie. Never mind.

So anyway, back to China. When I got the invite to the tournament I didn’t know who my partner would be. Good chemistry goes a long way in a doubles tournament, so when I found out my doubles partner was Hunter Lombardo, I was thrilled. Hunter and I have know each other from around the pool scene for many years, and while we never played pool together, every time we are in the same room we end up laughing until our sides hurt. I like people who are open, impulsive and can go with the flow, so he was the perfect partner for me. Imagine my surprise when we discovered that we both travel with the same exact hair dryer. A match made in heaven.

Considering we never played together, we played pretty well. Good doubles partners never point fingers, and help their partners get out of messes. We did that well, and when we lost, it was as a team. We ended up losing our first match to a team from Taipei. We played well, but so did they, and we ended up losing. Our next match was televised. The TV arena was on the ground floor of a mall in Taipei, and the production was extremely well done. I’m always impressed at how Dragon Promotions does live events so seamlessly. Recently I got some photos from that match that ran in a Chinese newspaper..

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In the next match we played team Japan, and got off to a great start. We played really well together and got a big lead. Then while we were on the hill, the wheels fell off. We both started making mistakes, and just couldn’t get out. In the end we couldn’t get it done, and we lost. We finished 9-12 out of a field of 16, but I think we had more fun than the other players.

And we definitely had the best hair.

Secrets of Consistency

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

Enjoy!

Thoughts from the Electric Chair

My top ten things are mostly tongue in cheek, but there is at least a grain of truth in each one. Of course these are all generalizations, and there will be exceptions to every rule, so please refrain from telling me about your mom’s second cousin’s ex husband who is a world champion even though he regularly snaps cues in half when he misses.

10 Signs You Are A Great Player…Or Not

1. A great player doesn’t whine. Do people run from you when your matches conclude, especially if you lose? Do you go trolling for the first sympathetic ear that wants to listen to every layout, every roll, every game you gave away? News flash: Nobody wants to listen to that. Great players know it, and when they are asked about matches they usually respond in 3 word answers. I played bad. He played great. I got lucky. Any more than that is TMI.

2. A great player always takes responsibility for losses. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people cry about losing to their opponents rolls. Hell, when I was a younger player I used to do the same thing (sorry to everyone who had to listen to that). Let’s face it, yes, people get rolls in pool, and yes, sometimes they seem to cost you the match, but it’s very rare that you have no opportunities or make no mistakes. It’s just part of the game, especially when you’re opponent is playing well and you’re not.

3. A great player sees the match clearly, and gives credit where credit is due. If your opponent is running racks and you miss a 2 ball in one of your three opportunities at the table, you should recognize that you were outplayed and you didn’t lose because you played like crap. Which leads me to the next point…

4. A great player either speaks kind words to their opponent at the end of a match, or shakes hands and says nothing at all. They don’t say “I played like shit” or “you got so lucky” or the cringeworthy “wow, I played so bad I can’t believe I won.”

5. A great player never throws temper tantrums at the table. Unless they’re Earl Strickland.

6. A great player has contempt for their opponent on the table and respect for them off the table. It is ok to want to bludgeon your opponent with the dull side of an axe while you’re playing, but great players never engage in fights, name calling, or the silent treatment simply because they lost the match.

7. A great player usually plays with a fairly simple cue. Top players are usually sponsored by cue companies that make cues for the masses. Occasionally a great cue maker will sponsor a player, but usually they really don’t make enough money to do so. People with large collections of expensive cues, or people who switch cues like Imelda Marcos switched shoes are probably not great players because great players know that it ain’t the arrow, it’s the injun.

8. A great player is a great sportsman. Everyone has their own line to draw here, but truly great players will call fouls on themselves. Most will tell their opponent if they are shooting the wrong ball or breaking out of turn. Many will give advice on shots that came up during the match when they are playing weaker players. All of them will look their opponent in the eyes and give a firm handshake at the conclusion of the match, win or lose.

9. Great players don’t disparage other people’s games. Most great players know how difficult pool really is, and know that there is a slow progression to greatness. Most of them remember being at the lowest levels of the game, and remember what it took to get to the highest level. Players who cut other players games down are just projecting their own insecurities.

10. Great players have fans, but more importantly, haters. Yes, that’s right, you haven’t really made it into the upper echelon of pool until someone you’ve never met is disparaging you on the Internet. So the next time you’re on the pool forums and you read about how someone’s grandma could give you the orange crush and your girlfriend looks like Jocelyn Wildenstein, just sit back and revel in the fact that you’ve finally made it.

“I want to let you know if you don’t already, you are a Champion!”

I don’t know what possessed him to write this letter, but it is dated 2/28/05. It was a time in my career when I was just starting to achieve success, and it seemed like everyone around me was breaking me down. We were on a 9 ball team together, and we ended up winning that season. At some point, he brought this letter to me. I think he saw the pain that all of the adversity was causing me, or maybe he saw my self-doubt (something I never, ever saw in him), but whatever it was, it meant the world to me. I carried it in my case for years until I became afraid of losing it. Very recently I told him how much it meant to me and he told me that a great player once wrote the same kind of letter to him.

“Don’t ever quit. Maybe you lose, but don’t ever just give up.”

I have so many memories with him: A road trip to Turning Stone, scotch doubles death matches, him watching me demolish a very good player and rooting me on the whole way, playing on nine ball teams together, listening to his crazy jokes, commentating the final rack of a tournament over the phone to him, practicing for hours, then going to eat, then back to practice…I really can’t believe my friend is gone. I’m just happy that he left me this little piece of himself.

“I want you to reread this letter. Words you might forget, but you’ll always have this letter to look back on.”

And I will Ginky. Thank you.

Anyway, I just got back from the WPBA Masters in Michigan where I had my highest finish since I took a year off. All that practice must be paying off, right? Well, if it is, it certainly didn’t show in my play. I mean, I played downright awful. I struggled with controlling my cueball, I struggled with pocketing, I struggled with staying composed. All in all it was a disaster, but I was lucky enough to draw opponents who were in the same throes of inconsistency. The funny thing is, in the past few events, I’ve been playing great and losing. Maybe this was payback for that? Whatever it is, I’ll take it.

In the meantime, I’m going to do a serious self evaluation to try to figure out why I self destruct from time to time and how to rescue myself when I’m drowning in poor play. I’m going to work on the flaws in my physical game and try to make them strengths. I’m going to start working out again because a strong body equals a strong mind for me. I’m going to compete as much as possible and watch Accu-stats matches. And yes, I’m going to update my blog regularly, and be as brutally honest as I possibly can because there is something cathartic about putting all of your fears and insecurities into a post and sending them out into the blogosphere.

Ah, the Valley Forge Expo! Thousands of pool players converge for a long weekend of pool, pool merchandise, pool players, and to display what is, quite possibly, the greatest array of funny tee shirts ever to be housed in one building. These were my top 3. (Photo props to Erin Mc Manus for hunting down the guy in the middle.)

One of the coolest things you can ever see, that will make all the hard work worth it, is a giant picture of yourself in your sponsor’s booth. (Photo props to Justin Collett)

I mostly did the usual stuff while I was there…ran into old friends

Signed some autographs

Stopped by my friends’ booths

Took some abuse from a gleeful New Yorker

Unleashed some abuse on an innocent bystander

Signed a cue ball

Tried out some cute clothes

Attempted my first big masse in front of a crowd

And did I mention that I played in a tournament? I finished 7/8. I ended up losing to that annoying chick sitting in the upper left corner.

Thanks to Henry Balincongan for the last 8 photos!