Player: Albin Ouschan
Event: World Pool Championship
Location: Milton Keynes, U.K.
Date: June 9, 2021



Last month, we saw Jasmin Ouschan play a lethal two-rail kick shot to lock up her opponent. So let's have an offensive-oriented shot from her brother this time around. At the 2021 World Pool Championships, which he eventually won in dominant fashion, Albin Ouschan was facing a sturdy challenge from Skyler Woodward in the quarterfinals of the single-elimination portion of the event.

The Austrian erased an early deficit to take an 8-5 lead when he was faced with the situation seen in the diagram. Needing to first contact the one ball, Ouschan had a limited view of the object ball with a host of other balls acting as near sign posts. The 7, 2, 5 and 6 balls all were an inch or two off the cue ball's path to the 1. On top of that, the 3 ball was nearly frozen to the 1, complicating any potential aggressive shot.

A few inches from that cluster, the 4 and 9 balls were resting just off the footrail in a tricky position that didn't seem to offer much more hope of escape. But Ouschan saw enough of an angle on the 1-9 carom that he gave it a go. With medium speed, he sent the cue ball off the 1 and nearly fully into the 9. Amazingly, considering the 4-9 combo was positioned in a way that would make it appear impossible to sink the 9 without disrupting the 4, the 9 ball ditched the 4 on its way to the short rail, where it clipped about as much as it could of that cushion before rattling in the jaws of the corner pocket and falling to take the rack.

Ouschan took the next two racks to easily close out the American, 11-5, for a spot in the final four, where he topped Spain's David Alcaide, 11-4, and Kuwait's Omar Al-Shaheen, 13-9, for his second World Pool Championship.


(Video clip provided by Accu-Stats Video Productions.)

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