How Do Pool Players Survive

Billy Jackets

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Sep 3, 2011
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Anybody that has spent much time around this game has probably been in the wrong place, at the wrong time, at least once and if you are hard headed , many more.
One of my better ones was about winter 1972, I had gone in this bar I had never been in about 2 pm in the afternoon and there were a bunch of trades workers in there laid off for the winter
there was a 5 dollar ring game going on and I got in .
I was not a good player by any means , but I got really lucky, by being behind someone that dogged the 9 ball every time he had a shot at it.
I'm stuffing 5 dollar bills in my front pockets all afternoon and clear up until about 9 o clock , everyone including me was pretty drunk and they all leave within a half hour or so of each other.
I'm feeling pretty cocky and stick around a while to bask in my glory and didn't notice 3 guys had come in and they are eyeballing my pockets.
I always had the gift of freaky hearing and I pick up enough of their conversation to know that these 3 guys just got out of jail and are about broke and now they are trying to figure out how to get me in the lot by myself.
by now it's me these 3 guys and an old man bartending that looks like he's really out of it.
I made a real nonchalant move toward the door and then turned it into just moving my coat to my chair back.
It told me what I already knew though , cause the biggest guy had already started to come after me.
I didn't want him to think I knew what they were up to so I played it off like he was coming over to play a game.
I racked the balls and asked him if he wanted to play some .
He says no, I was just checking out the table and I said yeah it's pretty nice.
Then I remembered what an old scuff I had met several years before had told me he used to get out of a joint once.
I put 2 5's on the table and said , I have to go to the bathroom, will you get me a Miller High Life and you guys get a beer each, I had a lucky day today.
When I get back I'll show you some trick shots I can do.
I peeked with my peripheral vision as I started into the back of the place and these guys were all over the 5s so I got out the back door , because I had heard an old story.
Thanks Marvin
 

NH Steve

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Apr 25, 2004
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12,282
From
New Hampshire
That's a good one Billy! Yes, one of the underlying themes in all of the pool hustler bio's seems to be that kind of story. Well at least you -- and they -- lived to tell the tale :D

I don't know if you have read some of the most recent self-published player bio's but they include

Robert Cotton
Steve 'The Lizard' Smith
Alfie Taylor

and others
 

jrhendy

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May 24, 2004
Messages
5,717
From
Placerville, CA
Most of us who scuffled in the bars probably have tales to tell. Here is one that stands out in my mind because I was lucky and probably deserved worse than I got.

Early sixties and I was hanging around Five Points Bowl in El Monte, CA. Nothing going on so I stopped by the Balboa Club not far away on the way home. There was a small game going on the bar table and I put my quarter up. We were playing cheap, having fun and I got to drinking.

I am a fairly big guy and not too tough, but when I was drinking would get out of line sometimes. The guy I was playing was with a lady and so was his friend and they were sitting in the booth near the table. I had won four or five games in a row and the last game I showed off and ran the last few balls one handed.

He quit and I picked up the $$ and went to the bathroom. I was at the urinal when he walked up and smacked me and I was laying on the ground with Johnny Jr. in my hand. His friend came storming through the door ready to finish the job but he stopped him, helped me up and said 'You deserved that, now get of here'.

He didn't take the $$ back, just taught me a little lesson I still remember.
 

LSJohn

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Aug 15, 2013
Messages
8,530
From
monett missouri
I was playing Ad Lib (a word game similar to Scrabble) for $5/point with a drug dealer and his buddy at the dealer's house. (I had the NUTZ!)

They decided we should go to a semi-rough bar in the neighborhood for a beer. When we got there a $2 challenge game was in progress on the only bar table and I got in and won 3 or 4 in a row. Next thing I know I'm back at the dealer's house. One of the players had cracked me in the back of the head with the butt of a cue. I had just been playing for hundred$ and got knocked out for 6 friggin' bucks!
 

Billy Jackets

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Joined
Sep 3, 2011
Messages
2,735
That's a good one Billy! Yes, one of the underlying themes in all of the pool hustler bio's seems to be that kind of story. Well at least you -- and they -- lived to tell the tale :D

I don't know if you have read some of the most recent self-published player bio's but they include

Robert Cotton
Steve 'The Lizard' Smith
Alfie Taylor

and others

I got to meet Alfie through a great guy named Billy Mac in Phoenix and he gave me an autographed book.
It was a great read and solved a mystery I had going on for 44 years or so.
I was in the Army at Ft. bragg in the early 70s waiting to get out, and I went to a little pool room right off the base.
There was a massage parlor then a porno store and then the pool room in this little strip.
One day a kid rides up on a bike with cut off shorts, floppy tennis shoes and has a big wad of money in his front pocket.
He asks me if I want to bet on this shot like 2 rails out of the corner in the side pocket, and I said no thanks, but a couple of other guys heard him and came strolling over.
He got a nice pile off those guys, luckily I had already been schooled cheaply on never bet a man on his own trick, so I escaped.
About 10 years later I saw Nick Varner playing and thought ,hey thats that kid that hustled those guys and I told that story for the next 20 or so years.
I always had a problem with Nicks age though because I didn't think he would have been that old in 1970.{actually he would have but he always looked so young }
As soon as I met Alfie I knew it had been him and not Nick lol.
He looked like he was about 14 when I saw him.
I never beat anyone in North Carolina playing pool, except in ring games but I had tremendous success at poker, gin and pinball.
I guess they figured I played so bad at pool, I must be easy at everything.
 

beatle

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Jun 21, 2009
Messages
3,572
old trick i used in a bar or pool room when i got the message i wasnt getting out without some trouble. i would go to the pay phone and call the cops and say there was a big problem down here, and when they walked in i walked out.
 
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