9balls Virtual Pool 3DL and Round Robin Site ©

This years Mosconi Cup will take place in Malta from 11/12/08 to the 14/12/08.

The Mosconi Cup is the 9ball version of the Ryder Cup and is contested between USA and Europe and uusally sets up some exciting team rivalries especially when Earl Strickland involved.

For those of you who may not be aware,for a couple of years we had our own VP3 Virtual version of the Mosconi Cup,the last one staged in 2003 and you can see the final result and the players and match results here

Virtual Mosconi Cup 2003

Tournament system is now fully functional again

There is now a section on the VPHQ forum dedicated to Polomints Router fix programme,you can find it here Polomint's Router Programme

If you are experiencing problems with your router and getting your version of VP3DL working,then it might be worth trying it out.If you have anything you wish to commernt on or suggestions please feel free to post them here.

Freeballs planned VP3 Olympics have been postponed for the tine being,further info if any will follw

Heres what Steve Chaplin had to say about Polomints handywork

Steve Chaplin

"polomint,
Thanks for putting this together.

I'm not a big fan of uPnP, it has security issues and I doubt it will be as well supported in the future. But for how with XP, you have a solution that should get more people running.

I'm also not a big fan of using Windows Firewall unless your on a lan and need protection from users on the lan. A properly setup router/firewall should be sufficient.

polomint,
I would change the wording on your site for "firewall" to "windows firewall" as that was initially confusing to me as I think of most home routers as firewalls too. When you think the port opening software is sufficiently tested please send me a link and I will incorporate into the VP3 install."

Polomint who is one of VPHQ Tournament Directors has developed a small programme in his efforts to get those of us who have Routers and cannot get Virtual Pool 3DL to run on Gamespy.

The major problem for a lot of people who no doubt have purchased Vp3 in the past and come to the Gamespy Lobby,is that they cannot get Virtual Pool 3 to run due to the fact that they have to manually open ports in their router in order to let the game run.

This has to be the most annoying thing about making a purchase of the VP3DL version....you buy it,you install it...you play offline no problem at all and then when you try to join the online community you find your stumped by the fact that you need a degree in routers in order to try and get the game working.

Now I can speak personally of the problems with routers as I have a BT Hub which only through help from the lobby I got the game working through my router.

Many people like myself who are total Router novices need a way of sorting this out.

Virtual Pool 3DL needs specific ports opened in your router in order to work through Gamespy and  unless you understand the terminology involved and even though you can look at instructions online about your router,it is for most people a total confusing thing to try and mess with a router for fear of not being able to get online or causing major problems when your messing with something you know very little about.

I would not be suggesting this programme without having done a full test on it myself.

However.....there are some things you should be aware of prior or downloading this programme.

If like my router,you can create a backup of the configuration of your router....YOU SHOULD DO SO PRIOR TO TRYING THIS PROGRAMME.By doing so you will have saved the initial settings of your router as it was set when you first installed it...IE   YOU WILL BE ABLE TO USE YOUR BACKUP TO RESET YOUR ROUTER. 

So first thing I did was to reset my router to factory settings in order to try Polomints programme,so this I did but only after having already downloaded his programme to my desktop.

Then I followed the instructions on Polomints webpage and the programme opened up and did what it said it would do....it confirmed "PORTS OPENED"

So then after that,there was only one thing to try.....try and create a VP3DL game room......I did and it worked and you can see your room listed in the lobby.

So the last thing to do after that is......to try and join a room.....this I did and YES    it worked also.

In conclusion,If this programme can do what it says it does for many more people for Virtual Pool 3DL players,then I can only recommend it to as a major source of help to many potential players online. 

At the moment this remains a BETA version please use it at your own risk and neither Polomint,Celeris nor me are liable or responsible.....if it totally fecks your router up. 

It didnt do it to me.....so what do you think?

yOU CAN FIND THE LINK BELOW TO POLOMINTS ROUTER PROGRAMME.PLEASE READ DISCLAIMER, AND AGREE TO STATEMENT PRIOR TO USING PROGRAMME. 

POLOMINTS ROUTER PORTS PROGRAMME PAGE

Congratulations to Alinville on the defence of his  Virtual 9ball World Championship title.The final was bit disjointed as it took two sessions to complete and each session was a week apart,but although Albinario had Alinville in his sites and took a lead for most of the second session,he couldnt put his advantage to the fore and let Alinville back in late on to win the last few racks to tie the match up at 40-40.

The outcome after that was inevitable in the final rack decider.........Alinville got the golden break to seal victory.

A thank you to all who took part this year,we had the biggest entry so far in any Championship and your participation was appreaciated

                                                                               FINAL

            ALBINARIO(SWEDEN)40  V  41  ALINVILLE(ROMANIA)

                             FIRST TO 41 RACKS

3D FLAGS

You will now be able to watch Live streaming of Finals from the VP3 Lobby,you can do this by clicking this link to go to live streaming channelLIVEVP3TV      put the link in your favourites.

THE SEMI FINALS AND FINAL OF THIS YEARS V9BWC WILL BE STREAMED TO THOSE WHO CANT GET INTO THE ROOM TO WATCH 

Poolminator has set up a web page with info on his planned 8ball league,you can contact him in the lobby if you wish to take part in it.

All the info can be found here Poolminators 8ball league

I sent an email to Steve Chaplin to ask him a couple of things about somehow amalgamating a VPHQ Tourney system along with Celeris at some point in the future.I also explained the problem we have each year in actually gathering funds for the system and if he had any news or Info on VP GOLD.

Here is Steves response.

Its often been thought that only VIP'D VPHQ Tournament Directors have the sole rights to run  tournaments for Virtual Pool 3.

This in actual fact couldnt be further from the truth.Gamespy actively encourages you to get involved and organise your own thing,should you want to do an event or tournament or run your own ladder,you most certainly dont need to be a tournament director to do so.

All you have to make sure is that your event etc is run within the gamespy rules and guidleines that have been set out for you.

So there is no excuse,if you want to do something go ahead and do it, 

Heres Gamespy's guide to running your own tourneys,ladders or events Guidelines for Tournaments / Ladders / Leagues in GameSpy Arcade 

GAMESPY BUDDY LIST GONE?

If you have had this problem I have a solution to fix it. For quite some time and I don't know why I seem to have lost all my buddies on my normal profile and no matter what I did could not retrieve them. I decided to look at the actual gamespy profile folders on my c drive and made a decision to delete all the numbered folders which I found out in fact to be my profile folders. In doing so you need to use the log in wizard again to rejoin gamespy, so you need to remember your email and password for your particular profile you want to use to join gamespy again. Once I had done all that and rejoined gamespy voila all fixed and my buddy list was restored. Remember this

One Pocket teaching clinic update

Steve Chaplin has been to the VP3 lobby to do a test run on his One Pocket script he has devised for VP3.I was invited to take part by way of testing it out. Although there are one or two things to iron out, i found it a good teaching aid to all of us who might want to try out One pocket.

If your around when he tries it out again I can certainly say if you want to learn the correct way to play this game, then perhaps joining in the next one when he has it up and running might be not such a bad idea.....well worth a visit.

First time I've met Steve apart from on the forum, down to earth guy and more than willing to listen to some comments and what I had to say during his demo, more than greatful he's showing support to us by providing some great advice on a game not played too often especially in tournaments.

On behalf of the VP3ers thank you for your efforts Mr Chaplin

One Pocket Teaching Clinic

Here's a message from Steve Chaplin from Celeris

Steve who provided us with this great game has proposed a teaching session for some of us in the VP3 lobby, to help in a game that is not often played by us or in tourneys.

At the moment he is testing the waters to see if it will be worth while. He mailed me this message

"I want to do the One Pocket Clinic. I'm close to having the clinic
completed. Basically what it entails is having a room full of spectators
with me at the table running a pre-built script and loading pre-done
shot files. This allows the pace of the clinic to move along nicely (I
don't have to type) and all the shots and situations are pre-setup so
the examples shots will be relevant."

I think this is a very good idea and  certainly something educational and constructive about the game we all love to play, but perhaps valuable tips and advice about a game that we don't often play or in general has been neglected by us....maybe it will get more of us into it in future. If you would like to be present and be part of it, please post your interest here One Pocket Clinic with Steve Chaplin

If all goes according to plan, we may well have an update on when and where it will happen

Ok folks there can be a problem ocassionally when you install the VP3DL version on your pc.
One problem I had initially was that when you join gamespy it doesn not find the correct game path and this can result in the game not launching.

So heres the procedure to help with that one.

Click on gamespy on top left of screen,then click on Options,then click on the games tab in the list in the left window.

Then in the middle window you should see MY GAMES and you should see
Virtual Pool 3 listed.
Look to your right and you will see the programme location window. It does not matter what you see in the window,because your going to do a search for the game.

Click on the auto search option and a popup window appears asking if you want to do a search for Virtual Pool 3?,click on yes.
When you do that another window appears asking where you want Gamespy to scan for Virtual Pool 3,you need to click on your C drive,it will then do a search automatically to locate your VP3.

When it locates The Curly version and your game has been installed in your default directory it will look like this c:\program files\celeris\virtual pool 3\vp3.exe

It is IMPORTANT that when you are going to save this you click on OK then click apply.

This is one way of solving the launch problem of the VP3 DL version.

IF YOU NEED ANY FURTHER HELP WITH VP3 check out Zwylles VP3 HELP SITE http://www.vp3help.com/