I hear players say never cover a kitchen baloney!  If you are way behind and you need a kitchen so bad to keep the game alive that you’re out there on the board at every opportunity and you get the opponent in the kitchen you’d better cover it or you will lose and I think you will deserve to lose!

Wilbur’s right “directs the play-do not follow”.  I lost out in a tournament this week because from the head on my hammer I allowed the opponent to decide where I was going to shoot my hammer.  It was a 12-frame game and we lead by four points and my opponent put in a high 7; I couldn’t score and didn’t get him in the kitchen.  I was the dominant player and I should have taken my 3^rd shot out on the board where I had control!  Why you say; in as much as my partner had the hammer and the lead in the last frame.  Remember I told you that you have to keep in mind who your partner is playing; well my partner, an amateur in a Pro/Am tournament, was playing one of those players that takes advantage of everyone else, some of you call them sandbaggers, that by the way is one of the nicer terms they are called and sure enough that person outscored my partner to win.  You hear players say “play your own end”, those players spend a lot of their time going home after the 2^nd match, you do what you have to do to win. Earl Ball 2006 08 13.