Masters was close, now the 10-ball

World Pool Masters, The 16-player invitational:

I had a nice run at the Masters as well, coming out strong in the first round against reigning World Champion Darryl Peach.
I played ver consistently, putting pressure on him early on. I managed to win with a nice 8-2 first round finally making it past 1st round in the Masters. I have had a weird history with it. some freaky rolls

Anyways, match Nr.2 presented Corey Deuel. I have played Corey a lot recently and most of the time coming out ahead. I am pretty sure he doesn't fancy playing me by now.
The beging of the match I made some stupid mistakes like missing the 9 to go up 2-0.
It was a little infra-red beam that took my eye of the ball though. Fans, you have to be carefull not to have that red-eye reduction on when you shoot pool shots LIVE. It really can mess up any shot almost worse than the flash.
ANother mistake I made was an easy 8-ball. I simply rushed it. I think I took one stroke. Might have been the nerves. But its not like me. Lately I have been focosing on my technique like taking at least three practise strokes before pulling the trigger.
At 4-2 in Corey's favor he made a position error to get to the seven lleaving himself jacked up on the rail with 7 straight in on the other end, diagonally across the table.
He missed it, leaving me a routine run-out and closing the gap 3-4. I then took a time-out, splashed my face with some cool water, gave myself a good slap on the face to redeem myself. No more unforced errors, and preferably no errors at all.
Then next rack I played a good safe, but Corey in return kicksafed me back. I did have a pretty routine kick but I accidentally kicked the ball in the side, leaving myself a table length Jump-shot. object ball close to the rail at least two diamonds from the pocket...I made it! Then I still had a tough cut on the six. I made it too and 7, 8 and 9 was pretty standard clearance. I took the next rack as well, but Corey fired back to make it 5-5. From there I didn't look back I ran out and broke and ran 2 to complete the match 8-5.

In the Semi's I was up against the Taiwanese sensation Ko Pin-yi, who's earlier victories included Souquet (8-3) and Drago (8-4).

This match was more strategy, since the break was dry most of the time. I somehow with experience hanged in, though I was down 4-2. For the first time in the tournament I saw him falter a bit. He is human after all. I played my opportunities well keeping him on the defense the rest of the match. The fact that the 9 was on the spot instead of the 1 worked in my favor. Taiwanese are known to crush the break from the side but this time there was very little advantage in doing so. The wingball went high and 1 went past the side. Anyways, the match ended 8-4.

Then I played the finals against my MEZZ Teammate Alex Pagulayan.

I took charge early by copying Alex's break. It was a cut-break with draw and some right english. At 3-1 I had easy lay-out but I rattled the 3 in the corner. Should have hit softer. I was over-confident.I still managed to keep the lead even extending it to 6-3, but the Pool Gods decided I had had enough:
I broke, made a ball but got only one ball past "the kitchen". It meant loss of turn due to "illegal break". The rule is suppose to be there to just eliminate soft breaks but in this case even though I was breaking hard, the balls went on a collision course downtable preventing anything from going uptable.
So I had to suck it up and watch Alex run four consecutive racks. He had nice lay-outs, no clusters. It put me in a bit of a coma. Alex scratched at 7-6, and of course even ball in hand, I didn't have an open table. Getting to the 2 balI was the key. I made a 1-3 combo followed by a horrible overstroke draw. Cueball scratched opposite corner. With ball in hand for Alex on the key ball, it was a routine run-out.

Well, what can I say? Congrats Alex, looking forward for a re-match. Somehow, somewhere.