Hi all. The last two times we played snooker I've been having the time of my life. This past year of competition has, without a doubt, been my personal worst one so far. Due to all kinds of personal troubles and some other influences I wasn't able to keep my head with the game at all and sometimes even delivered no less then something we like to call 'disaster snooker' because it hardly resembled any form of genuine match play. It's life Jim, but not as we know it ... When you're playing as badly as I have (and still remember the days you played much, much, better) you start to think up all kinds of reasons and excuses for not playing well, simply to forget or not think of the only true reason. Which of course you know darn well. Lately I've been thinking of buying a new cue for example. Already I was calculating how long I had to save money if I added a part or even my complete vacation money to it, that sort of stuff. The main thought behind getting a new cue is that my current one has been broken two times. Or damaged is better said maybe. Picture yourself a snooker cue. It's usually made of wood, with a small brass cylinder on the end, the part where the cue tip is glued on to. This peace of brass has broken off my cue twice, making the cue about three centimeters in total shorter. Add to that the fact that since I bought this cue, eleven or twelve years ago, I have grown a little. This results in my cue getting shorter twice and me getting taller ... once ;-) The ideal length for a snooker cue is to reach the arm pit when you're standing right up. Mine can be freely moved underneath it, without even touching my arm. So technically it's about five to seven centimeters too short. And this normally doesn't bother me. Mostly because I've learned to play with it, shorter as it is and not actually missing the 'lost' centimeters. you get used to it I guess. Another reason is that when things go well you don't need to question your material. It's just okay as long as it works fine. And I do love this cue so damn much. But with the disaster season in mind I was seriously thinking about getting a new one. The thought itself is not really comforting, as this is the cue I played with for more than ten years now, so changing it would mean getting used to another cue. No matter how close it resembles the old one, it's always different. Racers among you can think of 'normal' race cars vs T-cars ... That should give you an idea. This all changed last Saturday when I beat Bas six frames to two. Man I played some great snooker, and yes it showed in the end score. After usually getting my but kicked by Bas (with snooker of course, luckily I still have a couple of other games that do go well from time to time ...) for nearly a entire year now I can assure you this felt good, even it was just this once. It's always nice to be able to tell yourself that you're still able to play well every now and then. Just now we, and that's our snooker team 'Foul and a Miss' by the way, have been practicing again, as we often do on Tuesday. Since we always play our competition home games on Tuesdays we try to use this day as a standard practice evening when we haven't got any competition to play. And my game went like a dream again. Allthough I have no clue whatsoever where this sudden change in quality came from, I enjoyed my frames very much to say the least. So it turns out that snooker can be fun after all :-) So I guess this means that I don't have to buy myself a new cue after all ;-) This saves me at least a few hundred Euro's so that's a bonus. This way I can add that to my pc upgrade plan, which should take place very soon now. Cool! Snooker is fun, really,