I'd call Alex Pagulayan, whose career is still in progress. the most entertaining player that I have ever watched. Good luck finding a comparable entertainer from the golden age of pool.
Stu, I think you have to distinguish between the sort of players you'd find in tournaments and the sort of players you'd find in action rooms. Alex is certainly as entertaining as any golden age player you would've found in
tournaments BITD, but once you got into gambling matches that's when you'd see characters coming out of the woodwork, woofing and showboating as a way of psyching out their opponents. When these players competed in tournaments they'd tone down their act, but removed from that restricted environment, that's when the legends were developed.
As one of the more learned pool mavens we have around here, Stu, I'm sure you've read Freddy The Beard's classic book,
The 'Encyclopedia' of Pool Hustlers. The players are written up in alphabetical order, and you don't even have to get out of the "A's" to read about many players who for sheer personal color would easily be a match for Alex. Even in my relatively limited experience around Washington and North Carolina I ran into many like them. Of course you'll never find any of these players or their matches on Accu-Stats!
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