Tag Archive for blackball

Live 8-Ball: Quality Field for Newbury Open

I released details of this event on the blog back on May 1st, now it is nearly upon us, in fact it is on Sunday 20th May and will be live on Cuesport TV from around 11:00am.

Duane Puttock has done a tremendous job to pull together a 32 player field of the highest quality to do battle for an £800 first prize. Played to Blackball rules it has been interesting to see former IPA Tour number 1, Rob Chilton – noted as a World Rules player, put his name down for this one. It could perhaps be the start of something in England as the line between both rule sets is slowly (very slowly!) starting to fade, it is my belief that this, in part, has been caused by the rejuvenation of the IPA Tour.

Chilton, although being the most recognised player due to the IPA TV coverage is not the only notable player to be participating with many of the top English Blackball players in attendance. The list includes all of the England Men’s A team that won the 2012 European Championships (except for Andy Lucas who had to pull out due to other commitments) and the likes of 2011 National Champion Adam Brown and 2011 BAPTO Champion Shane Thompson.

The matches will all be of the highest quality (I have no doubt!) with it being very difficult to pick a winner, you can watch the action live and from the comfort of your own home for just £1.49 for the whole day – less than a pint of beer! Just visit Cuesport TV for the details. What more would you want to do with your Sunday?

Live 8-Ball Pool: £50-per-man Event gets Coverage on Cuesport TV

England International Ian Ali in actionEngland men’s International Blackball Pool Player, Duane Puttock, has pulled together some of the best players in England to compete in the first ‘Newbury Open’ (the tournament didn’t have a name so that is what I have dubbed it!)

The 8-ball pool tournament played to Blackball rules takes place on Sunday 20th May at the Crucible Sports and Social Club in Newbury, Berkshire.

The limited 32 player field has turned out to be an awesome array of the best that Blackball has to offer in England with reigning national champion John Chambers and 2011 National Champion Adam Brown both in attendance. These two are joined by BAPTO Champion, Shane Thompson, and England ‘A’ Internationals Ian Ali, Aidan Finch and European Championship runner-up Jack Whelan.

All of the action from this event, that carries an £800 first prize, will be shown live on Cuesport TV for the pay-per-view price of just £1.49. Matches start at around midday and will be best of 15 frames.

Buy the PPV here: Newbury Blackball Pool Open Live Streaming

Full List of Entries:

Aaron Watts
Jonjo Sharkey
Robbie Self
Ian Ali
Dom Yates
Adam Brown
Matthew Challen
Ben Mackie
Jamey street
Tim Williamson
Ben Tillin
Mark Priest
Luke Johnson
Dave Shaw
Dan Davy
Dave Graham
Shane Thompson
Kieran Hawkins
Ryan Houston
Paul Broome
Mark Alexander
Dave Hood
Kevin Vane
Gary Taylor
Mike Piper
Aidan Finch
Micky Turner
Richard Blackmore
Heath Messer
Bali Jans
John Chambers
Jack Whelan

Buy the PPV here: Newbury Blackball Pool Open Live Streaming

Watch Blackball Videos: Blackball Pool on Cuesport TV

When Will You See Your Videos?

I get asked quite often via Facebook and Twitter when certain videos or even whole series of videos are going to be available for viewing.

So I thought I would post some sort of guide in the blog to give you a rough idea of when you can start to see things coming through, plus I thought I would also describe the process here at Cuesport TV.

‘The Process’

Pretty much everything that is shown on the TV table at a given live event will also be recorded ‘as live’ directly to our system’s hard drive. I say ‘pretty much’ simply because on occasions matches do not get recorded.

After this recording the video files are then imported into our editing suite and most of the time shortened to cut out all the re-racking and boring bits! This in itself can take a fair amount of time for each match, sometimes up to 2 hours.

From here the video file is then exported into a suitable digital format to give us a decent quality file for use on the web. It is this file that is then used to create other multiple file formats. The export process takes between 20 and 60 minutes dependent on the file size.

The files are then ready for upload to our system, this is the bit that takes a lot of time, a 1GB video file takes around 4 hours to upload as we are constrained by the connection speed we have here.

The records are then created on the website that the video’s slot into (or nothing would play) and the files are transcoded, this makes them available in a variety of formats for when we create an app or change video player.

That’s pretty much the whole process and you can see that one video file takes around 10 hours to complete (most of that done by a computer in fairness).

Release Dates

UPC-BUCS 8-Ball Championships 2012 -10 videos from this event have already been released in the 8-Ball Pool Video category. You will need to go to around page 16 to find the videos until the search feature is enabled.

The rest of the UPC content will be available by: Wednesday May 2nd

EBPF County Finals 2012 – I have brought in an extra editor to complete this series of matches to try and speed up the process a little bit and to clear a bit of the backlog.

Available by: Monday May 14th

European Blackball Championships 2012 - This is a popular series of videos as so many players got to play in front of the Cuesport TV camera’s, this series will be edited straight after the completion of the UPC-BUCS videos and will start to come through the system by mid-May.

Available by: Thursday May 31st

GB9 Paul Medati Trophy – Two matches have already been made available from this tournament but in un-edited form, these are the final and semi-final of the Pro Cup event. The rest of the matches from the Pro Cup and the main event will be edited and made available by mid-June.

Available by: Friday June 15th

Any other videos from other events will be after this date. I know we are still due to complete some GB9 content from last year plus we have another live event set for 20th May as well so please bear with us.

I hope this post gives you an indication of what and when you can expect certain things from Cuesport TV, and please do hold me accountable for the dates!

European Blackball Champs – Live Stream Schedule

The first day of the European Blackball Championships is upon us listed below is the TV match schedule for the 27th March (it will be added to throughout the day):

11:00am – Scotland B1 v Scotland B2 – Seniors

1:15pm – England B2 v Ireland B1 – Men’s B

3:30pm – England v Wales – Men’s A

5:45pm – Scotland v England – Men’s Senior A

8:00pm – England v Wales – Ladies A

CLOSE 10:00pm

Wednesday 28th March

12:15pm – Northern Ireland v Scotland – Under 23 A Team

2:30pm – Scotland v Wales – Specials A Team

4:45pm – Under 18 A Individuals

6:15pm – Under 23 A Individuals

9:30pm – Men’s A Individuals

Thursday 29th March

9:30am – Catalonia v Gibraltar – Men’s A

11:45am – Northern Ireland v Scotland – Specials B

2:00pm – Northern Ireland v Wales – Seniors A

4:15pm – Wales B1 v Southern Ireland B1 – Men’s B

6:30pm – Southern Ireland B1 v Scotland B2 – Seniors B

8:45pm – Singles Matches

CLOSE – 10:00pm approx

Friday 30th March

9:30am – Wales v N. Ireland – Specials ‘A’

11:45am – Scotland v England – Under 23 ‘A’

2:00pm – Scotland v Catalonia – Men’s ‘A’

4:15pm – Isle of Man v England – Ladies ‘A’

6:30pm – Wales v Scotland – Under 23 ‘A’ (NO LIVE SCORING)

8:45PM – N. Ireland v Scotland – Men’s ‘A’

CLOSE – 10:00pm approx

Saturday 31st March

11:45am – David Rooney v Thompson/Dunster – Under 23 ‘A’ Final

1:45pm – Under 23 ‘A’ Team Semi Final – Scotland v England

4:00pm – Men’s ‘A’ Team Semi Final – Wales v Northern Ireland

6:30pm – Men’s Singles Final

8:30pm – Men’s ‘A’ Team Final

Close – 10:30pm Approx

 

Blackball County – Live Match Schedule

Below are the matches that have been selected by the organisers as live table matches, times are approximate but should be reasonably accurate.

Friday 2nd March

9:00am – MENS B – Wiltshire v West Berkshire

10:45am – LADIES A – Oxfordshire v Hampshire B

12:45pm – MENS A – East London v Cumbria

2:30pm – LADIES A – Wiltshire v Staffordshire A1

4:30pm – MENS B – Cumbria v Hampshire

6:00pm – Men’s Individuals (Matches to be decided)

Saturday 3rd March

11:00am – MENS A – London v Berkshire

12:45pm – MENS C – Bristol C2 v Oxfordshire

2:30pm – SENIORS – Cambridgeshire v Bristol

4:30pm – MENS A – West Yorkshire v Middlesex

6:15pm – LADIES A – Essex v Derbyshire

8:15pm – MENS B – Derbyshire v Berkshire

10:00pm – Individuals – Matches TBC

Sunday 4th March

9:00am – Individuals

1:00pm – MENS B Semi Final

3:00pm – Mens Individual Final

4:45pm – MENS A – Team Final

English National 8-Ball Pool Tour Finals – Live Streaming

We have our first live stream of 2012 this coming weekend with the culmination of the EBPF National Tour. All of the qualifiers from the regional tours come together for the tour finals in Leicester.

There will be some very high quality pool to watch across the two days with players including 2011 Singles Champion Adam Brown, 2011 BAPTO Champion Shane Thompson, Former World Champion Andy Lucas and of course Sarah Trudgett in the ladies event.

Our coverage kicks off at 12 noon on Saturday 18th Feb with the Senior’s and Junior singles events.

On Sunday 19th February we have action once again from 12 noon this time in the men’s and ladies event.

The event is only £3.00 on PPV and you can buy it here: EBPF National Tour Finals

Two New Live Events

The last live event that we broadcast on Cuesport TV goes back to the beginning of November last year with a GB9 event, but they are now back!

In February we now have two great live events for you on PPV.

The first is the English Blackball Pool Federation National Tour Finals from Club 147 in Leicester, this new event to our calendar features all of the qualifiers from the Regional Blackball Tours in 2011.

Some of the names featured will be former World and European Champion, Andy Lucas and National Singles winner, Adam Brown.

There will be live action from the Juniors and Seniors on the Saturday (18th February) and from the Ladies and Men’s event on the Sunday (19th February).

The action will only cost you £3.00 to view for the whole weekend and you can purchase on the link above.

Our second event of the month comes from the UPC BUCS 8-Ball Championships in Great Yarmouth. We have covered the University event now since 2009 and it is always a very entertaining weekend. The singles and team events get stronger and attract more new teams and players each year.

This year the action is live from Thursday 23rd February until Sunday 26th February and will cost just £3.00 for the whole event on the link above.

Please join us on these events your input is very welcome.

6 Great Places to Watch Live Pool (When we’re not streaming)

There are a number of great people out on the web providing some really good quality live streaming, you may have seen some of them but I hope that some are new to you. However, you are only allowed to watch them when Cuesport TV are not live streaming!

I have not ranked them in order of preference, the list is simply there to make it easier to read:

  1. InsidePool.TV – probably the best pool/billiards magazine on the market, they have been involved with live streaming for a number of years now, they make use of both the Youtube and UStream platforms which makes access very easy.
  2. TheActionReport – They have been doing this since 2007 (about the same amount of time as us!) and the quality has just got better and better over the years, expect multiple camera angles, live commentary, interviews and also a live podcast now as well. Probably the one website that most ‘streamers’ aspire to.
  3. Pool Action TV – Operated by Ray ‘BigTruck’ Hansen PoolActionTV have done a number of differing productions over the last 2 years. Along with regular coverage of Pro/Am events they have also covered the Ultimate 10-Ball Championships and a number of money matches.
  4. OTBNTV -On The Break News operate a number of smaller pool magazines and also got invloved with the live streaming of tournaments from their area a while back. Again utilising the Ustream platform to provide live and VOD coverage.
  5. MaxLeePool – It is great to see someone else trying to push the UK game forward and this site provides live streaming as well as a tour that they operate up in Scotland, great if you are a fan of Blackball or the UK 8-Ball game.
  6. OnTheRail TV – Established in 2008 (07/08 almost seems to be the birth of live streamed pool!) they create high quality match-ups and stream pro-am tournaments from the Arizona region of the US. Many top names have featured including Efren Reyes, Earl Strickland and Darren Appleton with One Pocket seeming to be a speciality.

This is just a small list of live streaming resources, please send me links to other live streaming websites/companies/profiles on the web and I will try and update this list over time. If I have made any glaring errors then please let me know.

Almost Perfect Pool

This video is definitely worth a watch. In an amazing match that lasted just 23 minutes one of the two players played almost perfect pool, in fact their only mistake was a scratch in frame number 5. The match was the final of the 2011 Welsh Open recorded in Sunday 27th November.

Watch it below and then please let us have your thoughts:

A Short Lived Return

It has been a very long time since I personally picked up a cue in anger. I don’t mean to use as a cosh in some bar brawl, but as the weapon of choice on a pool table.

Laughing aloud the organisers of the Welsh Open, a blackball event I am covering for Cuesport TV, told me they had put me in the main draw.

It would have been fine but for two things, I haven’t played any form of small ball game for about two years and I didn’t have a cue.

The cue problem was solved by borrowing a very nice Trevor White one piece owned by Paul Bushnell. I can’t reply you in words how nice that cue is!

Ok so we come to the second problem, not having played for a very long time.

I have to say I was strangely nervous, with no expectations I expected to be feeling quite relaxed. Not the case!

I won the lag and hit an awesome break. All the balls in situe for a nice dish, I didn’t take it out though failing on my final colour. Luckily though I got a second chance and went 1-0 up!

Second frame I made a nice clearance after my opponent failed to make his break work, and after a bit of a battle. This meant I was leading 2-0 in the best of nine match.

It went downhill from there though! He battled back to lead 3-2 even though I had a chance in every frame.

I did manage to level it in the next only to see him take the seventh frame.

The 8th frame saw a dry break from my opponent with a scratched white. I used my first shot to good effect and looked set to take out the frame only to go in off whilst getting position on the black – gutted!

I lost the game 5-3 and was reasonably pleased with my performance, may even have to start playing again now!