Player: Jayson Shaw
Event: International 9-Ball Open
Location: Norfolk, Va
Date: October 30, 2019



Without a doubt, pool requires a little luck. A good roll here or a bad one there and a match can be flipped on end. But far from your Average Joe opting for the "poke and pray" approach to position, a recent shot by Jayson Shaw shows just how much skill it can take to earn a nice roll.

At last fall's International 9-Ball Open in Norfolk, Va., the Scotsman was marching through the right side of the bracket when he met Vietnam's Duong Quoc Hoang in a race-to-11. Knotted at 8-8, Shaw came to the table after his opponent broke dry. With a shot on the 1 ball into the upper left corner, he had the immediate problem of a 2-6-8 cluster toward the bottom right of the table.

Playing the 1 into the top right corner didn't give Shaw much of an angle at the three-ball cluster. Accu-Stats commentator Jeremy Jones suggested playing two-rail position to the center of the table and then addressing the problematic 2. But Shaw manufactured a path to handling the problem right away. He drilled the 1 ball off the head rail and back down into the bottom left corner pocket, putting plenty of draw on the cue ball to pull it back off its tangent line and toward the 2.

Like he drew it up in his head, the cue ball rolled into the right side of the 2, which then pushed the 6 and 8 balls toward the rails while it came to rest a few inches from where it started. Shaw, hardly with a roadmap to the 9, eventually clears the table thanks to two more bank shots, winning this rack and the next two for an 11-8 victory.

Shaw continued his electric play, running to the final where he escaped with a tight 13-11 win over Max Lechner for the title.


(Video clip provided by Accu-Stats Video Productions.)

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