maha said:

i would hate to see your shafts paul.

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Metal file comes in handy with special kinds of tips:

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One big change I have seen is the lack of pool halls in my area. I grew up in Northern Missouri and Southern Iowa. When I was a kid almost every little town had a pool hall. Snooker was very popular back then. All those pool halls are gone now. Sure we still have bars that will have a bar box or two but it just isn't the same.

GoldCrown said:

Was pool better 50 years ago. No. Has been fun since the late 50’s. Every phase from day 1 until today has been a lot of fun.

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In a way I compare pool to my other favorite sport: Baseball.

I started following baseball way back in 1952, when I was all of 8 years old. Back then, with only 8 teams in each league and no interleague play, it was easy to keep up with nearly all the players. And except for the World Series or the occasional Big Game that might decide a pennant, good seats were cheap and easily attainable by just showing up at the ticket window when the gates opened. After a few innings, you could sneak into the box seats and for the most part the ushers wouldn't care.

That said, today's players are infinitely more talented than they were back then, with a few notable exceptions. How could it be otherwise, given the expansion of the talent pool from 95% White Americans to players from all over the globe.

So there are tradeoffs. Cheap tickets for good seats are a thing of the past, but for $130 a year I can watch every game every day on a cheap flat screen TV. And while today's players are far more talented, we also have to suffer through the explosion of strikeouts and the disappearance of starting pitchers capable of throwing complete games, not to mention the robotic personalities of most of today's Superstars.

And similarly with pool, which I started playing when I was 20. What we've lost in "color" and atmosphere, we've gained in talent and accessibility to scores of tournaments a year via youtube and streaming channels. You win some and you lose some. Tradeoffs.

rusty, better snow than gumbo on your road.

i got stuck a few miles in once on it and drove out and pity the poor guys that had to grade it back after it dried out.

Mensabum said:

Its in the teens days and single digits at night here Rusty.
A bunch of white stuff would cripple the entire city.

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Since that winter back in 2017 we've been snowed in bad enough that we had to wait until we were dug out as the snow was deep enough we couldn't open any of the doors going outside !
The highways were shutdown as the highway dept had crew's running around like chickens with their heads cut off ha ha !

I got my old Toyota 4 Runner started , the hubs turned it and got out of the yard and to the gas to get more gas for the snow blower .
The snow drift was close go 10' deep over my snowmobile so digging it out wasn't a option ha ha and I was one of the few who could get out and get around , some of the drifts were deep enough that I had to drive around them and I was,missing my old 3/4 ton 4 wd high boy pickup with the skinny tires that cut through deep snow and keep going !

When I was getting close to town the radio station asked to not drive around in town unless it was a emergency travel only ! Using the snow blower was what keeps some people from having a heart attack and kicking the bucket !

Back during the winter of 2017 / 2018 , I sweet talked a guy who was in a big front end loader to push some of the snow from our driveway out into the yard and thankfully he did as I was as weak as rain water from surviving cancer treatments and it was tough to pull the rope start on the snowmobile which drove me crazy so I'd use resistance bands and build up my strength again .

I thought this was gonna be about taking down a spelling bee

try it at home or your poolroom and see if you can get close to a 9 or 10 average to at least a chance to get into the money. which you wont anyway.

i would hate to see your shafts paul.

It’s Sunday Fun Day, make me an offer I can’t refuse!
Best to you all

Discount priced!

Was pool better 50 years ago. No. Has been fun since the late 50’s. Every phase from day 1 until today has been a lot of fun.

for the vast majority it isnt too smart to get a table needing reconditioning as there arent many that can do the total job. and it will bring your cost much closer to just buying new.

sjm said:

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.

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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!

Unplayed new

Discount price unplayed.