1st Edition of the One Pocket Series was a great success!
1 Day | 32 Players | 59 Matches | 16 Shoot Outs | Marc Bijsterbosch as Winner | Good Food | Great People | It couldn’t be better!
Last Sunday we held the 1st of 4 tournaments of the One Pocket Series in Hague 5. It was a great success! We were really happy about how everything worked out. The 1-day tournament started with a full field of 32 players, who all paid up front via CueScore. It’s great software to work with. I think it adds to managing your tournament and to analyzing data afterwards. Check out the link to see what it looks like and to check the results of the first tournament.
The tournament started at 11 am and ended before 12 at night, which I think is a very good result for a 1-day one pocket tournament with 32 players.
The OPS Shoot Out
We were all a little excited about how the shoot out would work out and how the players would react to it. The shoot out (in the form of the game ‘up & down’ (see image)) is played on hill-hill (in a race to 3) until the final. Only the final was a race to 3 without a shoot out. The players need to lag to determine who begins the shoot out. The winner of the lag decides who starts. The starting player has pocket A, the opponent is Pocket F. The first to make the ball in his pocket wins the shoot out. Every foul results in loss of the shoot out and thereby the match. When the object ball is pocketed in a different pocket it’s being spotted in the middle of the table.
It’s a new element, inspired by the World Pool Series, with which the players weren’t familiar, so we were not sure what to expect. Eventually, the shoot out worked out very well and we had a lot of positive reactions! There were 16 shoot out and no arguments at all. When players had to play a shoot out on hill-hill in a race to 3 they’ve already had a pretty good battle and they felt like the shoot out didn’t ruin the feeling of playing a one pocket match. Next to that, it saved us exactly the right amount of time to keep it all manageable.
I also made a separate ‘OPS Shout Out Ranking’, next to the OPS ranking which determines who qualifies for the Grand Finale. Check the OPS ranking here and the Shout Out Ranking here.
Last 8 of the 1st OPS tournament
Check the One Pocket Series Facebook page for more photos.
We arranged a special menu for the players to have a proper lunch and dinner, which Hague 5 is famous for in the Netherlands. We need that energy to stay focused during a long day of playing one pocket.
The next edition is on the 23rd of July and we’ve already received the first 9 enrollments, so I think that means we did a pretty good job. There were even 3 players from Germany, and I heard there will be more the next tournament.
So, that was my update on the One Pocket Series. What do you guys think of it? What do you think of using such a shoot out? Leave your comment below and keep an eye on the Poolhead blog for One Pocket Series updates in the near future.