JPL Men’s Singles last 16 and quarter finals day at Aphro of course, so what better way to get into shape than a few Challenges. Carl Cook certainly thinks so, though was to go down three times to Artha Doyle, Brian Capel and Chris Ten; we hope he did better in the JPL singles!
Chris Ten also played in-form Neil Stewart but came up empty in a 3-2 loss as you will read in Chris’s match report.
Neil played like a kid who lost his candy. Can’t seem to find momentum with the side pocket and also missing one too many blacks. Eventually managed to pull himself together.
Call Highlights picky if you like but we struggled with “find momentum with the side pocket” and were left wondering as to the correct number of blacks that have to be missed before it becomes too many? Thanks Chris, don’t call us, we will call you 
Everest’s Haydn Davies made the trip over to Roosters to see if he couldn’t get himself a few rungs in a Challenge of bar owner Ralph Walker but was to come up empty in a 3-1 defeat. To console himself he then saw off a Challenge from Rob Lock who had joined him by 3-2. Rather amusingly, and after three frames, they couldn’t work out who was 2-1 up – so agreed to go back to 1-1 . Too early for the Mexican Aiming Fluid to have taken over so Rob put it down to a joint “Senior Moment” :-) -they have fun down there!
Greg Garrett has now played exactly two challenges up in nearly four months, one an immediate rechallenge of Bill Fraser (that Bill insisted upon) in the days when they were allowed, and now one of the rapidly rising Jim Noller whcih actual started life as a Challenge of Greg by Jim but reversed after Jim’s recent results. Greg is always telling us that he is too busy to arrange Challenges up, but if someone asks him to play then he will; at his home table at Everest of course. Remarkably, despite his paucity of Challenges, Greg is developing a theory on optimal Challenging Strategy on the Tangga that uses PhD level astrophysics math to tell you who it is best to Challenge. A number of our guys have a simpler theory – as soon as you go up then Challenge everyone up to four rungs above your current position. Greg won 3-1 playing well.
Finally, sadly and after all other avenues were exhausted, Chris Hepworth was awarded a forfeit and a 3-0 against Andreas Hermann.
