Ine Helvik

This has been another long day. We staretd with the opening ceremomy at 10 and I was taking pictures for Line Kjørsvik with her camera. Not the best pictures, but they will do:) The ceremony started with a minutes silence for the tragedy in Japan before all the officials had their say.

Line and Kristoffer Mindrebøe had the honour of representing Norway in the ceremony, and up in the corner all the trophies were presented. 11 tournaments all in all in 11 days is quite a lot and when you see the trophies it all gets visual..

The the play began at 11 and I started at 13. Today 14-1 (straight pool) is what counts and I have played three macthes throughout the day. I won my firts against Anil Emete (North Cyprus) with 65-49, the lost big time against a russian girl. Total collaps I think is the right description, but the pulled myself togetehr and won 75-10 against a gril from Portugal. I am playing again tomorrow morning at 9, so I did not wait for Line. She is still playing the winners qualification.

Martine Christiansen, Steffen Wolff and Kristoffer Mindrebøe have the day off tomorrow and will be having fun with Jörgens protocols:) Mats Schjetne and Malvin Bjelland will also play at 9.

Time for bed, up with the birds tomorrow. Thanks for dropping by:)

Ine

Wednesday morning the journey begins. The whole team, except Martine who will be flying directly from Sweden, meet up in Oslo and fly to Berlin  together. We will be in Brandenburg quite early and will have plenty of time to settle in. Thursday the play begins, and the first discipline will be 14-1, followed by 10-ball, 8-ball and finally 9-ball. Us three girls play all disciplines, the guys play at least three and wheelchair also play three.

Our team this year consists of the following players:

Women: Ine Helvik, Line Kjørsvik and Martine Christiansen

Men: Steffen Wolff, Kristoffer Mindrebøe, Mats Schjetne, Malvin Bjelland and Mikael Øgaard

Wheelchair: Kenneth Bendiksen.

Jörgen Sandman is our team coach and boss for the 11 days:)

New of the year is that Eurosport 2 will broadcast live from the semifinals and finals. This is a big step in the right direction, just to bad that they will only show the mens event.

Offcourse you have the livestream and livescore at all times and the EPBF have guaranteed livestream on 20 tables for €5 a day or €20 for the championship. You will be watching a lot of good matches and good players:)You can find all information, draws and results at http://www.epconline.eu.

Today I will pack most of my bags and tonight I will have a PAT training session with Olav Skrudland, one of the junior players in my club. My new cue is working great, I have changed the weight bolt to make the differences from my old one as small as possible. I also put a Sniper tip on it, and now it feels like I have played with it forever. I can not wait to play on Thursday!!!

Go Norway!!

Thanks for visiting

Ine:)

My husbond came home from China yesterday and he brought me a new Fury cue. It has got a radial pin and offcourse the extreme II shaft in 11,75mm and I am so happy with it!  It has the same grip and weight as my old one so the difference is in the feel of it. I will try it for a couple of days and then decide whether or not to bring to the European Championships that starts next week. I also asked for a Kwickfire by Fury Break and jump and I got that aswell, lucky me:)

I am ready!!

Ine:)

Yesterday we played the weekly tournament at in my local club and even though I did not do to well I would like to explain how this works and why it is good practice.

We play 9-ball race to five and the handicap is A+, A, B, C, D, E. I am A+ and if I meet a B player we will start on 2-0 to the B player. A+ is our top players and E will be beginners. This is an easy system to even out the odds for winning and sometimes it is just impossible:) We seed the top four players so they do not have to meet in the forst round and the ranking is updated every week here. I am currently on third place, but I willl work on that (have to do better than my fifth place yesterday lol). Sadly I miss some tournaments because of travelling, but that is just the way it is.

We will have a stream from the tournament and for those of you that is interested, you will find it here

Anyway, it is good practice because of the handicap and short races. For me it is important to play with short races in some tournaments because the European Championships have short races. There we play to 6 in 10-ball and 8-ball, 7 in 9-ball and 75 in straightpool. It is important to be totally focused from the beginning and long races often make me take my guard down. Especially if I am in front. That is something else I need to work on:)

If any of you reading this is in Stavanger your are more than welcome to join us on thursdays at 18:00

Ine:)