Announcements | Billiard Coach

Happy New Year! Here’s a Tip.

Posted on 01. Jan, 2012 by Mike Fieldhammer.

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Happy New Year! Start your year with a tip. Or 31 of them. Once again, I’m attempting to blog every day in January to start the year off right. This year, resolve to play better pool and you’ll be rewarded by a sense of accomplishment and to quote a friend, “A chance to win tens and twenties of dollars!”

Happy New Year! Light Painting over my diamond. No photoshop trickery at all. Click for larger view.

Below is a video I shot on my Canon 5D Mark II in my kitchen. As you’ll see, I’ve already removed the old tip, cleaned and prepared the gluing surfaces, and glued on the new Black Heart tip. All that remains now is to trip and shape the tip.

This end of the pool cue is where the ‘rubber hits the road’ or in pool parlance, ‘The tip hits the cue ball’. Don’t forget to chalk. Don’t forget to keep your cue tip in ship shape. I’ll revisit the subject later this month.

I’m still looking for ideas for this month’s instructional tips. Please contact me or post something on the forums (anonymously even!) to help me complete this series of 31 articles.

Thanks,

Mike Fieldhammer

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My Favorite Pool Tournament – Rugby North Dakota’s Northern Lights Shootout

Posted on 18. Nov, 2011 by Mike Fieldhammer.

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This year is the 13th annual Northern Lights Shootout in Rugby, North Dakota. I’ve been to every one of them save the first. Robert Mattson brought me to my first one in 2000. This December 1-4 the Tournament Director will be yours truly. We’ll have a $50 entry 9-Ball warm up tournament that begins Thursday night at 7 pm and continue through the day Friday. There will be no cap on the number of entries in this event this year. We hope to pay out over $1,000 for first place! Not bad for a low entry preliminary event.

The 8-Ball main event will begin Friday night at 7 p.m. and entries must be paid by 6 p.m. that evening. Mail your entry to the Chamber of Commerce if you’d rather not stress about arriving by 6 o’clock. Weather and oil truck traffic are both unknowns in ND these days. If you absolutely can’t pay by mail and know you’ll be there in time to pay on site, please do me kindness and let me know to expect you.

This tournament, the town, and all the great people of Rugby and the players who attend are all very special to me. In particular, I’d like to thank my cue sponsor Samsara Cues. Perhaps one of the most underrated cue makers in the world, they’ve been in business 20 years! We’ll have some special shop tours and you’ll get to see the guts of cues ranging in price from $500 to $10,000.

Why should you come to the Northern Lights Shootout? I know pool tournaments have been dieing out and the number of players dwindling, but this event must be kept alive. Please pass the word and make an effort to attend. I’ve got a discussion thread in the Billiard Coach Forums that has a list of players that are coming. Add your name to the list and comment on some of your favorite things about this tournament. I’m writing a special piece in this year’s program to thank Mark Hamilton and all the local volunteers for getting this small town event a big time reputation in a dozen years. Here’s to another dozen successful tournaments!

Please contact me to register or to answer any questions about the event.

Thank you,

Mike Fieldhammer

Please pass the word on about this great tournament.

13th Annual Northern Lights Shootout

$5,000 Added

Rugby Armory — Rugby, North Dakota

9-Ball: December 1-2, 2011

Sign-up Deadline Thursday at 6pm

$50 Entry

Matches begin at 7 pm

8-Ball: December 2-4, 2011

Sign-up Deadline Friday at 6pm

Matches begin at 7 pm

Men’s Division $70 Entry

Race to 5 Alternate Break

Final 32: Calcutta, Redraw and Race to 6

Women’s Division $40 Entry

Race to 4 Double Elimination

Send Money Orders to:

Rugby Chamber of Commerce

Attn: Sharon Pfeifer

224 Highway 2 SW

Rugby, ND 58368

Hotel Rooms

Northern Lights Inn

701.776.5776

For more information please contact:

Mike Fieldhammer

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Happy Fourth of July!

Posted on 04. Jul, 2011 by Mike Fieldhammer.

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Happy Fourth of July!

I’ve been taking a little time to focus on music after my month long road trip of pool playing. Winning another team championship was both invigorating and draining. Now I’m catching up on some household projects and finally beginning to learn how to play bass guitar. Family and friends call me a procrastinator, but dang it, I eventually get things done. I’ll detail my quest to hold down the bottom end in another blog post. Let’s just say that I’ve got a lot of work to do before the “Pool Playin’ Fools” hit the stage in October. By the way, we’ve yet to discuss the band’s name—I’m mostly referring to myself.

Setting the bass aside for now, here are a couple of patriotic music tidbits that I recommend highly.

1776

I saw at the Guthrie in the Fall of 2008 and it was one of the best I’ve ever seen. The historical facts are unaltered, save timing for narrative purposes. It is my opinion that this story is so dramatic, improbable, and so utterly true it would be hard for an author to pen a work of fiction this compelling. The impact I felt prompted me to spend a few days in Philly after the Allen Hopkins SBE a few years ago. I toured Independence Hall and soaked up the American history. This is the OCR from 1969. The Ben Franklin is not my favorite like in the 1972 movie version.

The egg that England hatched.

Howard Da Silva's buttery baritone Ben Franklin.

One Fourth of July, I spent at the BHS International Championships. I wish I could be in Kansas City this week for this year’s competition. I’ve already marked my calendar for 2017 when the competition is hosted by Minneapolis.

One of the highlights is the Star Spangled Banner sung by thousands of singers in the audience. I’ll never forget the feeling of being in the middle of an ocean of singers.