Ine Helvik

Saturday 01.dec I recieved my new cue, sunday 02. dec I played my first tourmament with it. And I love it:) I had a good tournament, I finished second. The Stavanger Fury cup is a handicap tournament and that makes it quite hard to win, I have the lowest handicap. We played best of three sets, one set with 8-ball, one with 10-ball and one with 9-ball. The player with the lowest handicap choose the discipline, than the winner of the set chose the next discipline. Needless to say, 9-ball was the last discipline to be played in all matches:)

I lost the final against Rune Espeland 1-2 in sets, and won two first matches with 2-0 in sets against Kurt Moan and Fredrik Førde.

Just for the record: My Fury SDN is equipped with a OB-2 shaft, I love the combination!

Ine:)

My last day in Italy, after playing pool all weekend in Treviso and visiting the Mirafiori factory in Torino, we went back to Milano and stopped to visit Norditalia, the company that among other things makes the Longoni Cues. We were invited into the cue factory and I must say I was very impressed! All Longoni cues are made in Italy in this factory and I was under the impression that Longoni did the same as almost all other cue makers, mainly got them made in China to their specifications. But no, they are really Italian made!

I went to the factory thinking that my cooperation with them would be limited to cue accessories, the famous Blue Diamond chalk and maybe some pool tables and foosball tables. I now know it will also include cues. I will make the cues available in the shop as soon as I can manage and all cues will be ordered after the specifications of the customer. You can make a lot of small changes to the cue to make sure you get it just right:)

I am quite exited by the new growth of my shop. I have changed from only offering the fundamentals to be able to offer high end cues, low end cues, all kind of accessories from Kamui to Longoni to Fury to OBcues and so on. All changes and products are not in yet, but they are coming soon!

I like being able to do many things in pool. I love to play and to meet my fellow players in my pool hall. I also like the fact that I can provide affordable equipment to both new and old players and off course that I can provide more expensive high end equipment as well. Pool is about having fun and I feel happy thinking that I have helped someone to have fun:)

Take care

Ine:)

Picture by EPBF. Quarterfinalists from left: Jennifer Vietz (Ger), Ina Kaplan (Ger), Martine Christiansen (Nor), Me, Oliwia Czyprunska (Pol), Natalia Sherostan (Rus) and Ana Mazhirina (Rus). Far left outside the picture is Barbara Bolfelli (Ita) and in front her son Thomas:)

Sunday started with my QF against Jennifer Vietz (GER) and that was a long match. We both went to the hill and I thought I was done when she missed the 8. She left me a bank to the side and I pocketed that and the nine to win the match. That made me ran out of steam for the SF against Martine and I did too many mistakes. She went on to win the tournament though, it was a good day for Norway!!

The official Europe women’s final ranking for 2012 is concluded and I ended up on 6th place with Martine on 7th. This means we will get some spots for WC’s and international ranking tournaments next year. I only hope that our federation follow up with support so we can actually go to them all. This will mean a lot for Norway, we are now three players in the international arena, Line Kjørsvik, Martine Christiansen and myself. BRING ON 2013!

This is the last tournament outside Norway this year, bu t I still have a few domestic tournaments to play. I will keep you posted:)

Oh, I almost forgot: I am currently playing with a OB2 shaft on my Fury TP-9 and it works perfect! I was really happy with the EXII aswell, it plays almost exactly like a Z², but I actually switched to OB when I had my P2 many years ago and I prefer that soft hit.

I also visited the Longoni factory when I was in Italy, I will make a new post on that. It was impressive!

Thanks for all the support!!

Ine:)

Links to:
Results from Dynamic Italy Women Open
Ranking Dynamic Italy Women Open
Final EPBF European Women Ranking 2012 
Pressrelease from EPBF ( also on Pro9.co.uk, sixpocket.de etc etc)

http://www.furycues.com

http://www.fury.cc

http://www.obcues.com/

Sorry for the lack of posts, I will try to find the joy i writing again:)

Tomorrow I leave for Italy, I really look forward to a few days of. Friday will be just driving around, relaxing and saturday the tournament begins! So far we are 29 participants, which is way to low, but still, it is 29 and not 19:)

The tournament will be held at the same time and place as the European Open for the men so I am sure the venue will be good.

You can follow the tournament on http://www.eurotouronline.eu ( select the womens tournament) or the high quality livestream on http://www.kozoom.com.

I will try to post during the weekend:)

Thanks for reading and have a good poolweekend!

Tv table

As you can see the tv table venue is spectacular here in Manila. Here it is a sport for everybody, not just for the half crazy people staying inside playing pool all weekends:) The venue is Robinson galleris mall and tha tmeans we have a lot of audience all the time. Which is good for the sport. There is upsides and downsides playing in a mall. As said, we are exposed to the public and that is very good. Personally I have a problem with the ongoing neverstopping noice… You have people talking, babies crying, music from 5 different places as once etc etc. All this make it more difficuly to focus. Add jetlag and you have problem. Which is what happened in my second game yesterday.

I played really well in my first match against B. R Jung ( KOR) I hardly missed a ball and I felt really good. Second match (back to back) the jetlag kicked in in the middle of the match. My opponent Y. T Chan (TPE) played good but left me plenty of opportunities and I could not take them. I lost 6-3. Third match (also back to back) I felt better and also played better. So did K. Yukawa unfortunatly. She played really solid and did not leave me much on the occasional miss. I lost 6-2.

Today I prepared for C. Y.  Chou (TPE, world champion teams) but it was not good enough. I lost 6-1, but I was on the table doing good jump shots and getting out of safeties. I just did not get really into the game and I need to work on my safety play. Tonight I play my last match against Rubilen Amit (PHI) and I will do my best to give her a good match:)

Ine