US One Pocket Players Only- 70's to Present

[stedyfred]

Please list your top 5 or 10. While we can all agree that Alex, Dennis, Busty, and Filler are all great players, I ask you to please limit this thread to US players only. Does your list lean toward today's aggressive one pocket style? Are there any elite ball strikers listed or any grinders? One pocket info has been readily available thru Accustats, One Pocket.org, books, you tube videos, as well as wwyd threads. Have a gr8 Memorial Day.

 

[beatle]

there are hundreds that are only a ball or so apart.
so ill pick a few that are/were the most fun to watch, not who might be the best.

ronnie allen of course
minnesota fats
jersey red jack breitkoff
cole dickson
weenie beenie billy staton
norm webber
detroit whitey ed beauchene
bustamonte
efren
tony
bucktooth

thats 11. i dont take orders well.

 

[stedyfred]

No orders given Beatle; sorry if you thought that there were. I would like this thread to be only US players if possible. Thx.

 

[beatle]

the no orders thing was light humor because i made it 11. i dont use smiley faces, you have to read between the lines.

those are all players that play or played regularly in the u.s. do you want only u.s. born players or players that are now citizens do they count? get my point. besides its an open thread. no hard feelings.

and except for 8,9,10. i knew all of them well or gambled for high stakes( meaning at least thousands of dollars ) with them and won.

 

[Ratamon]

Tough to limit to just 10 but here you go (in no particular order):
1) Ronnie Allen
2) Ed Kelly
3) Bill Staton
4) Steve Cook
5) Cliff Joyner
6) Jack Breit / Jersey Red
7) Shannon Daulton
8) Marshall Carpenter / Squirrel
9) Larry Johnson / Boston Shorty
10) Leonard Rucker / Bugs

Jimmy Fusco and Scott Frost also deserve honourable mention.

 

[lll]

my list from reading about them
your criteria from the 70"s would put some guys past their prime
the older guys has to be
ronnie allen
ed kelley
jersey red
bugs
artie
cliff joyner
jack cooney
don willis
scott frost
Shannon daulton
honorable mention
corey duell

 

[vapros]

There are already some good lists here, but I would have to find spots for Shannon Daulton, Nick Varner, Buddy Hall, Alan Hopkins, etc. There are many of them and they all have big fan clubs. I might dump Weenie Beenie, Jack Cooney and Corey Deuell. Good thread.

 

[Maxwell]

I like III's list except I'd substitute Hopkins for Cooney. Great player for great hustler.

 

[Ratamon]

Guys, does anyone know where San Jose Dick stands among these great players? I seem to recall Buddy saying in his book that Dick gave him a ball and Buddy did not have a chance! That is strong!

 

[beatle]

he played really well. but was a go off to the top players. but i think he beat most everyone that came to s.f. and played him golf on the table. john would know best about that as he was extremely good at that game.

 

[cincy_kid]

in alphabetical order:

Ronnie Allen
Steve Cook
Shannon Daulton
Scott Frost
Buddy Hall
Allen Hopkins
Cliff Joyner
Ed Kelly
Clem Metz
Nick Varner

That's pretty close for me anyways....

(edited, swapped in clem instead of eddie taylor)

 

[cincy_kid]

hmm, no one else mentioned eddie taylor? Obviously before my time, but I thought he was the nuts? I forgot about jersey red, so I would put him in there in place of eddie taylor or scott frost.

 

[Jeff sparks]

Here’s a few of the great ones outta the past...
Ronnie Allen
Jersey Red
Clem
Boston Shorty
Rags Fitzpatrick
Marcel Camp
Artie
& nobody knows how good Harold Worst played, he just won every time he played and then died at age 37...

Then the modern era started in the late 80’s, early 90’s with a whole new crop of good players, most of them already mentioned... Simonis cloth and centennial balls leaned the game towards ”power” one pocket, and moving wasn’t as dominating a feature as it once was with the old clays and the shag carpet cloth...

Modern USA one pocket players, there’s a lot, but I’m not quite sure how to list em....
In no particular order...
Shannon Daulton was a very good player...
Cliff Joyner played about as good as anyone I’ve ever seen for about 10 years...
Scott Frost was an amazingly talented player...
Nick Varner played top level for several years...
Chohan plays the game very well when he wants to...

Then there’s the younger ones, like
Billy Thorpe
Justin Hall
Bergman
Roberts
Danny Smith and others...

However, IMO, none of them could handle Efren in his prime, he is simply the best one pocket player of all time...

 

[Dennis "Whitey" Young]

Johnny Ervolino, is a 70's players, and the one and only one who won the Stardust Open Op division twice in '71 & '73. He seems to be forgotten on anyone list. Whitey

 

[beatle]

he is on one of my lists.
and deserves to be forgotten for good. no flowers for his grave.

 

[androd]

he is on one of my lists.
and deserves to be forgotten for good. no flowers for his grave.

Don't be mad about the bite or arm. He was certainly one of the very best.

 

[One Pocket Ghost]

Here's 3 from the period in between the old 70's guys and the new young 2020 guys that at least get honorable mention if not more:

Larry Nevel
Gabe Owen
Billy Palmer

 

[jrhendy]

he is on one of my lists.
and deserves to be forgotten for good. no flowers for his grave.

Great player and loved by many, but not me, who had some experience with him.

 

[vapros]

For me, a dream match-up would be Efren Reyes and Shannon Daulton playing a race to 85. What a treat that would have been. I would have packed a bunch of sandwiches and a clean shirt and stayed to see it all. I really believe Daulton could have been the next Reyes if he had chosen to continue serious competing. He was creative.

 

[Ratamon]

Here’s a few of the great ones outta the past...
Ronnie Allen
Jersey Red
Clem
Boston Shorty
Rags Fitzpatrick
Marcel Camp
Artie
& nobody knows how good Harold Worst played, he just won every time he played and then died at age 37...

Then the modern era started in the late 80’s, early 90’s with a whole new crop of good players, most of them already mentioned... Simonis cloth and centennial balls leaned the game towards ”power” one pocket, and moving wasn’t as dominating a feature as it once was with the old clays and the shag carpet cloth...

Harold died in 1965 so does not quite fit the op's question but from what I heard I totally agree - he was one of the all-time greats. Here's a memory of Harold shared by Jay Helfert on the AZB forum, in case some of you do not frequent there:

Top pool moments in my lifetime

I would like to share some of what I consider to be my Mt. Rushmore of the most incredible moments in the modern era of pool. Counting down from #4: #4 1996 Earl's 10 rack run for $1,000,000 Is it the idea of a 10 rack run? The idea of...

forums.azbilliards.com

There's so many that stand out for me. The last one for now was about a gambling scam that a hustler named Briar brought to Johnston City every year. He would rack 21 balls on the table (a regular rack of fifteen and add a back row of six more balls). The object was to break and then make all the balls in one corner pocket, like playing the One Pocket ghost. Briar would assign each player a number to shoot at, with a real good player shooting at 150 or maybe 160. You would then shake a pill bottle with peas numbered one to twenty one and shake out three peas. Whatever the three peas added up to was deducted from your number. So if you rolled a eight, ten and fifteen, that would add up to 33 and you would deduct that from 150, if that was your number.

Now you had to run 117 points of balls in your pocket to win the game. Naturally Briar put all the low number balls on the corner of the rack you were breaking for. So you might need to run fifteen or sixteen balls to win. The gimmick was that if you did it he would pay you 10-1 on your bet. So if you bet $100, you would win $1,000. Year after year Briar brought that prop game to Johnston City and no one ever won, even once! That is, until Harold Worst took on the Briar and had Weenie Beenie coaching him. You have to understand how hard it was to run balls like this because the table was so crowded. Balls got all tied up and impossible to make. Harold was burdened with the number 180, higher than anyone else, higher even then Ronnie Allen, Eddie Taylor or Ed Kelly.

He bet 100 and lost. He bet another 100 and lost again. Harold looked determined to beat this total hustle game. On the third try he pulled some big numbers out of the pill bottle but still needed over 100 points to win. This time he did it! Briar paid him off $1,000. On the next game he needed even more points (over 120) and he did it again, with some excellent coaching by Beenie. Briar paid him but told him now he had to go to 200! Beenie said quit but Harold wanted more. He lost the next game, but ponied up his 100 to play another. He needed some ungodly number of balls to win the next game, but somehow he picked them off with the most amazing display of shotmaking and cue ball control I had ever seen, before or since! On shot after shot he had to break balls out and then have a shot afterwards. He combo'd, he kicked and he cut balls in! He needed to make just about every ball to win, maybe nineteen of them.

Somehow, some way, Harold and Beenie prevailed again. The packed crowd in the back room went crazy. A disgusted Briar paid them off and packed up his game and never came back to Johnston City after that. Beenie and Harold had busted the proposition game once and for all!