The Three Pint Rule

My recent sufferings at the Pool Bar - unable to 'find' my game without the mild alcohol-befuddlement with which I usually approach the table - have reminded me of one of my key early theories of playing the game: The 'Three Pint' Rule.

I first proclaimed this theory way back in my undergraduate days, during the golden era of my favourite-ever bar, The Temple in East Oxford. It wasn't much of a 'theory', really, in that it did not aspire to any general applicability. It was merely an observation on myself: I tended to play my best pool during or shortly after my third pint of the evening.

I speculated that perhaps this was an ideal amount of alcohol to have on board in order to lubricate the joints, focus the mind, and conjure the fickle goddess of the pool table. It's enough to settle any nerves, relax any stiffness, and start booting into touch the cares and distractions of the working day; but not enough to impair vision or balance.

In fact, though, I suspect it really had rather less to do with the drink per se than with playing oneself in. In those days, I'd typically have a raging thirst on me by the time we got to the first drink of the evening (not least because The Temple didn't open until 7pm..... and not a very prompt 7pm either): Pint No. 1 would usually disappear in under 15 minutes, sometimes in barely 10; Pint No. 2 would go in under 20, and Pint No. 3 in not very much more. After that, I'd settle into a less frenetic rhythm of about 1 pint every 25 minutes; and in the later stages of the evening, when I started to feel 'the bloat', that might slow down to 1 every 30 minutes or so.

So, I'd typically be starting my 'magical' third pint within 30 or 40 minutes of arrival, and finishing just before the hour mark. Since my pals and I would usually start playing pool straight away, I might have got two or three games under my belt already in that time. It was enough to find my rhythm and composure, to judge the speed of the cloth, to get used to any daily quirks of the table (that table in The Temple was a remarkably consistent one; but any table has quirks - variations in the drift of the nap, the bounce of the cushion rails, the characteristics of the 'rattle' in the pocket jaws - that change from week to week and day to day with subtle shifts in the temperature, humidity, etc.). Enough time, too - assuming I was playing reasonably well, and winning - to build up some confidence.

And then, of course, it was between 7.30 and 8.00 that the first of the formidable regulars would start to show up, and it might be on my third or fourth pint that I would face my first real test of the evening in trying to defeat one of them. I think that challenge tended to raise my game, gave me the extra focus that I've always tended to lack when just playing against friends.

So, yes, probably it didn't have that much to do with the alcohol at all. But it became a kind of superstition with me. In many other bars over the last 20 years I've found that my game just doesn't quite click when I start playing sober; that I need to be feeling the first sharp buzz of alcohol before things come together.

And maybe there is something about getting that buzz on.... After the first hour of drinking, I tend to slow down to a rate of consumption where I can - more or less - metabolise my alcohol as fast as I'm drinking it. In that first hour, though, I almost always significantly exceed that tolerance (and the liver probably takes a little while to kick in and get up to speed in disposing of the toxins I'm chucking at it)..... and so I quickly start to get just very mildly, rather pleasantly drunk. Thereafter, if I'm careful about my drinking and keep my wits about me, I can maintain myself in that mellow zone for quite a few hours, without succumbing to too much of the degeneration in mental function or physical coordination which drunkenness proper brings with it. And it is this (crucially alcohol-assisted) happily relaxed and carefree mood in which I invariably seem to play my best pool.

These days I think I probably need to adapt the 'rule' to take account of my slightly declining alcohol tolerance, and of the fact that I am very seldom drinking pints any more. As a broad guideline, though, it still holds good: I know that I need to shove a few drinks down my throat in quick succession before I can show my best stuff with the cue.