Zen & the Art of Playing Pool

I've never been much of a man for playing games. Pool is the major exception.

I've never, in general, been any good at games. Pool is the major exception.

I don't usually get sentimental or philosphical or superstitious or mystical about games.

Pool is the major exception.

I have a strong basic technique (the result of being able to practise snooker free for many years - only for 10 minutes a day, but regularly throughout my childhood - since I assisted my mother in her early morning cleaning job at the premises of a local club). I have a decent tactical sense. I have, at times, an exuberant inventiveness in shotmaking (inspired by the grandstanding of the great, demented, self-destructive Irish snooker player, Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins, another of my unsuitable childhood idols). I am a good judge of the angles of the table ('doubles' - potting balls by bouncing them off one or more of the cushion rails - are my speciality). Best of all, I am a shrewd judge of my opponents' strengths and weaknesses, both technically and psychologically. And I can - on occasion - tap into a surprisingly ruthless vein of determination to win. (And to think The Artist was worried about the steeliness I sometimes show when quizzing! Ha!)

When I put all of that together - on the rare occasions when I do so - it somehow creates something more than the sum of the separate parts. Here's the astonishing thing: I can beat people who are better than me.

The trouble is that I don't often play people better than me. Well, these days, I don't play very often at all. And I've relatively seldom played against many people who could really give me a good game. Most of the time, I just play against my friends - who are, with a few exceptions, not quite at the same level as me. Sometimes I'll deliberately hold back a little, to encourage them, to make it more of a contest. I wouldn't say I'll actually 'throw' games, but I'll certainly rein myself in quite a bit..... maybe occasionally I'll even go so far as to 'throw' the odd shot or two. And even if these guys are capable of giving me a good game, even if I'm losing - somehow the fire just isn't there. I don't mind losing to my friends.

Ah, but when I play someone I don't really know (or even better, someone I take an instant dislike to), and they have a good game - then, something very spooky and mysterious happens: an ordinarily completely buried facet of my personality emerges..... I become "all business".

When you play the game at this level, it becomes very calm, meditative, transcendental - there is almost no conscious thought about anything.... no sense of self..... only the game, only the game.

It is a beautiful feeling to know - before you even get down over the shot - exactly what you are going to do, exactly what executing the shot will feel like..... to experience the satisfaction (perhaps in a slightly more muted way) of making the shot successfully before you have hit it. It's a curious blurring of the usual temporal boundaries: anticipation and reflection become fused with the event itself, almost indistinguishable from each other.

Of course, the flipside of this joy of knowing that you are going to make a shot is that, when your game isn't quite there, you also know that you are not going to make the shot.

It is a wretched feeling to lose your 'mojo' like this, to have almost all the elements of your 'game' still there in place, but just not be able to 'see' the shots. It feels like the very worst of 'bad karma'!! Sometimes you can overcome this through patience, perseverance, meditation, slowly get your head right and win your 'mojo' back. But, most of the time, with me, if it's gone, it's gone, and I'd be better off not playing on such days.

The really disturbing thing about these 'black days' is that they are uncannily diagnostic of my general levels of confidence, vigour.... and luck. Sometimes they will be obviously associated with my already feeling fatigued, stressed, depressed, or ill. But at other times, they will seem to be more subtly predictive of an only-just-emerging future trend. It is as if the desertion of my pool 'mojo' is a 'canary in the coalmine', a sensitive early warning of a plunge in my biorhythms, an obstruction of my qi, an inauspicious alignment of my karma.... or whatever it is that occasionally leads The Universe to shit on you from a great height for several days together.

Yep, although I am profoundly sceptical of most forms of divination and other such mumbo-jumbo, I have learned over the years to trust the signs I sense in my pool-playing. If my game is really there, then I can be confident that Luck will be a lady and that the world is my oyster for the rest of that evening, and probably for a few days to come. If, on the other hand, I can't hit for shit, then...... it will definitely be a bad time to apply for a new job, to ask a girl out, or to plan a long journey.....

Of course, you may say that the expectation engenders the reality, that I could avoid most of this 'bad luck' by refusing to believe in this personal horoscope of the pool table. It may be so, it may be so....