Lessons learned from playing pool

justnum said:

Playing pool has shown me a lot about myself and others.

What have you learned from pool that applies to other areas of life?

For me it is being patient, seeing someone else have success at the table was tough. Watching them run out and then leave a blindshot, always made me doubt my skills.

Ive seen others financially successful, relationship success and even career success.

Just going to keep waiting and not stress when my time will be.

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Tournament matches in particular can reveal much about someone's character - particularly how you handle winning and even moreso - how you handle losing tough matches. How you deal with frustration when your opponent continues to get lucky leaves on you, or when you screw up an easy out in a hill-hill game. Also very telling - a player's etiquette (or lack of) and the respect (or lack of) a player shows his opponent, even when the opponent may not be reciprocating. Whether or not a player gives up in a match it appears they have no chance to win. Whether a player has the integrity to call a foul on himself his opponent didn't even see such as a double hit. I could go on and on.

justnum said:

What have you learned from pool that applies to other areas of life?
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Simple... I should have stayed in school. :grin:

There is no substitute for hard work and no such thing as too much hard work.

The perspective of becoming good at something for the sake of personal fulfillment as opposed to glory.

Good Topic.

Patience is something I'm getting from playing. Also the self discipline to play to my ability, especially when playing a lower ranked player. It's easy to be nonchalant when you're over confident and then end up losing a match you shouldn't lose.

Also, watching some other people play highlights some personality aspects that I find a bit undesirable. The guys that will walk around and stand behind every pocket that their opponent is shooting at, or the ones that applaud every bad roll their opponent gets. I know what I think of those people and make efforts not to be like that.

Those are things that apply to many other things in life as well.

I learned that almost nothing is ever what it seems, not only in the pool room but everywhere in life.
Especially people.

Practice can never make you perfect, but perfect practice can make you competent,
and Money, particularly among pool players, is truly the root of all evil