Some sort of intro

Hi all just wanna take a few words to introduce myself. Most of you’s will probably know me or have seen me around, since I’ve probably played in more inter-league tournaments by now than I’ve had hot dinners; but if ya dunno me, I’m Ogges, I play with Pool Fiction and I’m one of the worst players they’ve ever had appear on their team-sheet (after Jason :p). I wasn’t gonna help him out on his blog this season because frankly there are plenty of people around pool these days more qualified than me to tell you about inter-leagues – they are a lot more informed about all the different leagues and which players they use and more importantly how good they are – but since it looks like I’m gonna be reffing a game every week now I suppose I might learn a bit and it won’t do any damage posting some insight on WPC.

And looking forward to Season 3, it promises to be a very original and interesting one with a lot of exciting new leagues joining up, a new format for the tournaments, and as Jason has already pointed out, this new rule allowing captains to coach their players. I think people have respect for WPC because it truly is a unique inter-league. For example, in the play-offs with the situation that can arise where the two captains (who may or may not have already won or lost) are forced to play when tied at 3-3 in a game 7 match decider, WPC has brought a new dimension to the usual best of 7 format that we all are surely well used to by now – so you have to commend these admins for being imaginative and trying to make the inter-league as new and as refreshing as possible. However, to me there is perhaps an issue surrounding this introduction of captains being allowed to coach and I think the rule is perhaps overly complicated by restricting it to only the captains.

At the end of the day, what is going to stop people from abusing this rule? The temptation will surely get the better of some players who will use YM to help their captain, by messaging them and advising them on what shot he/she should suggest to their team-mate at the table, perhaps when they are in a tricky situation that the captain has no solution to. My concern would be that if players are going to choose to do this, there will be no way of combating it, or even proving it, without having each captain record the whole match-up, to show they are not being aided by other team-mates while coaching their player at the table. We surely can’t be expected to trust that other leagues will be honest and not exploit this chance – for instance, if Dream Pool were in WPC some of them would be getting all excited just at the mere thought of finding a new way of cheating at Y!Pool :)

Seriously though, even in play-off games, only the two players involved in the game are required to record their screens, so if a captain was to illegally confer with his team-mates on YM before coaching their player it would not be captured on Camtasia (only what the captain ends up saying to the player will be recorded). I have to say it is a very surprising rule – one that I have never heard of before anywhere else anyway - and I’m curious to see how the admins plan to enforce it this season and especially in the play-offs. I wonder if it would not surely be easier to simply enable everyone and anyone to coach rather than just captains (or to just leave coaching as an outlawed part of the game).

Now that I’ve shared my ideas on the new rule, I may as well give you’s some idea of what else will be happening on ‘Sports Scene’ this season. As usual Jason will be bringing predictions for all the matches and I guess he’ll be reviewing some of them after they have panned out towards the end of the week. But new to this season, with the help of Kevin, WPC’s Head Admin, the two of them are going to be compiling a set of odds (which I in no way endorse :p) for how likely each league is to win the WPC World Cup, and also how likely each of a certain group of players is to be selected as WPC’s most valuable player come the end of the season. These odds will hopefully updated every week - just like a bookmakers except no one on the WPC admin team can afford to pay out if anyone puts on a winning bet. As for my role, each week I’ll hopefully be able to write up a report from the match I referee, so once the fixture list is announced for week one I will probably do a prediction for the match I get and maybe, if I have the time, I’ll post some predictions for the other match-ups.

So there you have it; everything seems ready for lift-off in the new season, and all that’s left to do is find out who and when you’re playing in week one, and hope that there’s gonna be a good turn-out for the Kick-Off Tournament on Friday (at 5pm EST). I suppose having lost in the finals of the World Cup, 2 seasons in a row, I’m not really too sure I particularly like playing in this inter-league much to begin with, but nonetheless it will be intriguing to see whether or not captains are popping up at tables trying to coach their players during tournament games :) Best of luck to everyone involved with WPC Season 3, have fun and most importantly, don’t be cheating by coaching your captains when they are coaching your team-mates! Thanks for reading, but if you got this far, unfortunately, like me, you clearly have no life at all :p

In a bit. Ogges.