The Dutch Voice: February 2018

King of Banks

King of Banks is a bank pool tournament in Hague 5 on March 4^th and is not only a step forward for our pool hall, but also for Dutch pool. I’m working on making one pocket more popular in the Netherlands for the past two years and now someone else stepped up for bank pool, an undervalued game here and a discipline in which there’s just one tournament a year. The two disciplines go together like bread and butter. Banks are a deadly weapon in one pocket and is a game that deserves to be promoted more as well.    

Jelle Kijlstra is our local bank pool aficionado, a good friend, and one of the best we’ve got in the country. He has the longest stroke of all and is not afraid to use it. Where Fedor Gorst made every bank with pocket speed a few weeks ago, Jelle prefers to make those balls break the back of the pocket. Sometimes I ask myself how long the rails will keep up with him. The scary thing is that he does make them with this horrifying speed more often than not while unwittingly shaking his head when he’s laying down, just like Mark Selby does. After many people saying there should be a bank pool tournament he took matters into his own hands and made it happen. The tournament was full within two weeks, 32 players, and 5 weeks prior to the tournament. I don’t want to put any pressure on him and tell he should continue organizing bank tournaments, but he should. I’ll make sure he reads this.

Link to event: https://www.facebook.com/events/539374239777631/permalink/542193696162352/

 Pepijn de Wit pool-head.com