Lucky Shots @ High-Timez, Tuesday @ 6pm EST, in Aneurysm

A couple of very contrasting leagues here – with Lucky Shots you have a team that has been playing in inter-leagues for quite a while now, have a few tried and tested players and should fairly know how to handle themselves in these kind of match-ups. Despite this, I see them as a changing team – looking at the shout-box earlier it showed that their on-form player of the recent MLP season, bmx.justin, has transferred to Pure Skillz; and when you compare the roster they have signed up on the WPC ladder to the team they had in MLP, they are missing a couple of shooters by the looks of things. According to the ladder they don’t have Simon or Jeremy signed up to play with them this season either, so it will be interesting to see who Bev is going to use to fill these three notable voids. You’d think LS will be looking to players such as Jason, Raymie and Tonz to be putting them on-course versus sides like HT, in a match they should be pin-pointing as the type they really could do with winning (if they have any aspirations of being in a play-off berth towards the end of the season). I don’t see them coming up against too much trouble here, they’ll want to make sure they don’t slip up on their first outing of the season, yet you can’t write off this unfamiliar HT side.

As for High-Timez, despite the league being a spin-off of my old home team Lava Pool Lounge, I haven’t had any contact with them for a while and don’t know very much about their current setup, like who plays there and which players they’re going to bring. I am pretty sure that this is one of, if not the first inter-league these guys have been part of - I’m sure they had a brief stint in MLP under the league name Booze-n-Spliffs, but I couldn’t tell you whether or not any of the players that played back then are still about. Also, to add to the lack of inter-league experience you can assume they have, I hear they are a no safety league nowadays so you have to probably say that this puts a question mark next to their name already. Given that, to me at least, their players are unknown and so I can’t just write them off at the start of the season before anyone’s even seen what they’re about – with almost enough players for two teams signed up on the ladder before they’ve been involved in a WPC event, you’d imagine at the very least they’ll come prepared and put 6 shooters in front of LS. As for their chances for the season, I really have no clue what they’re gonna do, but it will be interesting for me to see if any of the old guys are still kicking around, and if they can hack it in WPC.

Match Odds: LS (4/6) Fav. Draw (3/1) HT (3/1)

Match Prediction: LS 4 - 2 HT, with LS winning in 5

*Note my match odds will not always reflect my prediction – how strong I feel a team is, their season’s record, recent form and whether a side is at home or not will be taken into consideration for the odds. Whereas the prediction is just my gut-feeling for the game and I could well mix it up and go for the upset if I think it’s on the cards.

As for the rest of the match-ups, I think I’d be best off waiting until we’re a little further down the line this season and I’ve got a slightly clearer picture of all the leagues before I start doing predictions for the whole week. Two interesting looking matches to me though would be Monday’s Devine Cuez @ Poolcuez (who have some quality players and are seemingly performing well in other inter-leagues) and Tuesday’s affair between WPC Season 2 Champions, Latino Pool Legends, and the team that’s supposedly gonna be basically the spine of United Pool’s old side recycled, SexyPoolerz. Anyways, as the new WPC season gets underway it's looking like an exciting week in general. I’ll hopefully have my match report on LS @ HT by Wednesday morning. VGL to everyone in week one and have some fun. In a bit. Ogges.