It is a typical Monday morning in Neihu, and things are getting off to a slow start. No. 3 ranked Jojo Tsai has called in with stomach problems, so a substitute match has been arranged. That was supposed to start at 10:30, but it's well past 1:00 pm and the camera crew is still shooting their own slapstick version of nine ball on the studio table.
"This show starts late every day," says one.
Nothing much happens until Tang Tse-ping shows up, three hours late. Her amber-dyed hair is combed flat across her forehead and she's wearing the kind of thick black frame glasses you see in Japanese fashion magazines.
"Hey, lookin' good today," calls out Stone Chang, the ETTV sportscaster as Tang walks into make-up. "Hurry up. You're on in five minutes."
That's a joke, in his swaggering masculine style. Chang is sort of like the Brent Musburger of Taiwan. When it comes to sports here, he's done them all. As the girls get ready, he rambles on drolly in the wings, discussing the financial woes of the basketball league and the failure of baseball. In apparent conclusion he shrugs, "I tell you, women's nine ball is the hottest thing right now."
ETTV might call that an understatement. The once middling cable network began airing the women's pool show, Angel War, last November. Since then, the women's nine-ball show has become Taiwan's highest rated local sports programming, drawing around 100,000 viewers per broadcast. "On a given night, this can get more viewers than the NBA," says play-by-play man Tony Su.
He's not just tooting his network's horn either, because AC Nielsen backs him up. As the Angel War's popularity grew in its first months, so did the show's on-air schedule. Between the initial tape delay broadcasts and reruns, ETTV now broadcasts Angel War nine hours a day Monday through Wednesday and adds heavy doses of reruns and other tournament coverage during the rest of the week.
Taiwan's other two cable sports channels, ESPN and VL Sports, are also in on the pool thing. Together, they show more than 100 hours of billiards every month.
But those networks haven't quite hit on ETTV's winning formula: nine ball plus "hot babes" (plbb) - which is the official term the sportscasters use at least once per show.
On one side of the nutshell, Angel War is a parade of nine ball knockouts in all makes and models. The women chosen are near-archetypal embodiments of the young, the sassy, the studious, the tough, the wholesome, the night market beauties, the tom-boys, the college girls, the teahouse waitresses, and of course, the indomitable female pool shark.
"We got eight of the players from the Billiards Association. We chose the other five because we thought they had appeal," says Chao Min-wu, the show's director, who doesn't deny the Angel War's show-biz side.
"At the beginning, we got more than a hundred different outfits for them to wear," he continues, "but after a while, some of the girls started complaining that the clothes weren't comfortable for playing. So now they can wear what they want."
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AT the table, shining like astroturf under the lights, Liu Hsin-mei is warming up. One of the tech guys asks her to hit the ball harder so he can take a sound check. She ambles from pocket to pocket, knocking in a few balls while stopping to pose for the two photographers present. "I don't have a good feel for it today," she says with a nose-to-the-grindstone sigh.
Tang, who was late, doesn't get a chance to practice. By the time she's out of the dressing room, wearing something fairly tight, the referee has set out the cue ball and the one ball so the two ladies can lag for the break. Tang draws the one closer to the back cushion by about half an inch and goes back to grab her breaking cue, which is a little heavier than the one she normally shoots with. Liu takes a seat.
The name of the game is nine ball. Players must hit the lowest numbered ball first. Anything else is a scratch. The woman who hits the nine ball in wins - that simple. The match is the best of 13 games. So sink the nine seven times and you're the winner - of NT$5000, as it so happens. The loser takes half that. This is a televised event.
Tang breaks, sinking two balls. In an odd sort of way, that first collision shrinks the cavernous auditorium to a tight field around the table. All cameras, lenses and eyes focus on the players. Even the two idlers that were snoozing in the balcony before - now they're watching with their elbows on the rail. Everyone's gradually taken in. Tang misses a difficult shot on the one.
Liu makes her pay for the miss. She caroms the cue ball off the one to sink the nine. Game over. It lasted three shots. This is amazing pool.
Breaking in game two, Liu fails to sink any balls - a rarity. But Tang has no shot on the one, so she goes for a push, a special shot that can only be taken in that unique circumstance: it's the first shot after the break and there are no balls down. In a push, the player pushes the cue ball into a new position without sinking any other balls. It is a bit of a gambit, because the opponent can pass back the following shot. Liu takes this option, deferring with a wave of her hand.
Her mistake. Tang makes a shot no one thought possible. Covering most of the table's length, she jumps the five to strike the one, which combos into the nine, sinking it. Game two to Tang.
At this point, the expression of the referee reads, "Holy crap! This is incredible!" He mouths as much to the folks on the side. And if this is extraordinary pool, he should know; he's seen a lot of nine ball in his day. "It took me six or seven years to get to this point," he says, proudly displaying his license from the Billiards Association of the Republic of China. His fervor, however, also goes beyond the license and into his white gloves, his double-breasted suit, and the way he vacuums the table before matches. Still marveling, he racks for game three.
Early on in the game, Tang misses her shot on the two ball. It is the first of only three mishits in this match, but it is a crucial error. Errors, more often than not, are what decide games - entire matches, even - of nine ball. Tang doesn't see another shot until game six. Liu puts down everything in between in order, except for game four, but she still wins by the game's third shot.
At that, the referee makes his "Unbelievable!" face again, and whispers, "She's number one, in the world." In the world? Before that can be answered, A-mei (Liu's nickname) makes a good case for the proposition, steamrolling past Tang to take the match 7-1. It's a slaughter.
But is A-mei really number one, in the world? Technically speaking, Liu is the women's "World Champion," a title she earned by beating Allison Fisher 11-10 at the World Pool Championships in Alicante, Spain, last December. But she isn't ranked first in the world.
Fisher explains: "Liu Shin Mei is the current World Champion but not the number 1 ranked player in the World. This is determined by playing with the best players in the World on a regular basis. In other words, America has the strongest tour worldwide..." She is referring to the WPBA (Women's Professional Billiards Association), in which, "I have earned the ranking of number 1." Fisher will have a chance to revenge herself against Liu in the Amway Cup here in Taipei on April 2-4. The tournament is Taiwan's premier women's invitational, drawing six of the top players from the WPBA, two from Japan, one from Korea, and three from Taiwan.
After Liu, Taiwan's second entry in the event will be Jennifer Chen (CCJ), who plays in the US and is currently ranked among the top ten in the WPBA rankings. Though Chen is not a part of the Angel War, she has found other ways to cash in upon her sex appeal. Last year, the 24-year-old billiards beauty released a photo biography (XZJ) here in Taiwan. It's the kind of coffee table softcore pictorial usually reserved for pop singers and Playboy models.
At the Amway Cup, Chen, Liu and the rest will be competing for a top prize of US$10,000, which makes the tourney the second richest in Taiwan. Second, that is, to the Angel War. Through its four televised months, the ladies pool spectacular offers first prize money of more than half a million NT.
>Money, pool and the Angels. Cue up.
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