What I learned in pool...That helped in life.

sixpack

sixpack

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
With the Tony C. situation serving as another reminder of how our beloved pastime can lead or help folks down the wrong path, I wanted to take a slightly different approach. Namely, I want people to share skills they learned in pool that have helped them be successful in other (legal) walks of life. I'll start with a few and then maybe others can join in with their perspective.

1) I learned the value of hard work and thoughtful practice. With those two, almost anything can be accomplished.

2) Negotiating games and finding people who will play for money develops people reading and persuasion skills that come in very useful for any type of sales. I was recently trying to explain how I closed a deal to someone recently and realized that they had no concept at all what i was trying to explain, but it was all based on skills that I picked up from finding games in pool halls, especially when I was out of town.

3) The huge diversity of pool players is a wonderful opportunity to learn how to interact, respect and enjoy other cultures and people from different backgrounds and success levels. It's the only place I know that criminals and judges shake hands and wish each other luck. :) Learn this while you're playing pool and it's a skill that will serve you well your whole life no matter what career you choose. This serves me extremely well as a wedding photographer.

4) The mental discipline of trying to form a runout plan and then execute it forces you to introduce probability and risks management into your thought process. Which in turn forces you to think about game theory and mathematical decision methods. Even if you don't know what these are, if you have learned to play pool well, you are doing it in some form or another. This has great applications for business strategy as well as more technical careers such as computer programming or engineering.

What are some of the key things you've learned or developed playing pool that have helped you along the way?

~rc
 
I've learned that money changes people, especially if they know that you're the one to give it to them.

Not so much referenced to myself, but watching the social climate of the room change for sake of action, a dump, chop, or hustle, it's just so strange to see what people can become or invent in of themselves to get what they want.
 
sixpack said:
With the Tony C. situation serving as another reminder of how our beloved pastime can lead or help folks down the wrong path, I wanted to take a slightly different approach. Namely, I want people to share skills they learned in pool that have helped them be successful in other (legal) walks of life. I'll start with a few and then maybe others can join in with their perspective.

1) I learned the value of hard work and thoughtful practice. With those two, almost anything can be accomplished.

2) Negotiating games and finding people who will play for money develops people reading and persuasion skills that come in very useful for any type of sales. I was recently trying to explain how I closed a deal to someone recently and realized that they had no concept at all what i was trying to explain, but it was all based on skills that I picked up from finding games in pool halls, especially when I was out of town.

3) The huge diversity of pool players is a wonderful opportunity to learn how to interact, respect and enjoy other cultures and people from different backgrounds and success levels. It's the only place I know that criminals and judges shake hands and wish each other luck. :) Learn this while you're playing pool and it's a skill that will serve you well your whole life no matter what career you choose. This serves me extremely well as a wedding photographer.


What are some of the key things you've learned or developed playing pool that have helped you along the way?

~rc
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You're absolutely right. I remember going with my dad to pool tournaments at Hard Times Bellflower when I was 14. My dad had a Graduate degree from a private university and was working in management for Santa Fe Railroad. I remember going to these tournaments and being around people I had never been exposed to before, guys who were drug dealers, degenerate gamblers, addicts, alcoholics, and then there were others who were similar to my dad, some even with more education, I remember a couple of pool players back then who had PHD's. One thing I noticed was that in the pool hall nobody looked down on anyone else, for the most part it was all about the game. This was the only place where this kind of diversity could co-exist in such a way that I have ever seen.
 
great thread starter!

sixpack said:
With the Tony C. situation serving as another reminder of how our beloved pastime can lead or help folks down the wrong path, I wanted to take a slightly different approach. Namely, I want people to share skills they learned in pool that have helped them be successful in other (legal) walks of life. I'll start with a few and then maybe others can join in with their perspective.
(clipped for length)
~rc
Click to expand...

I have to say everything that you and other posters before me have said is true of myself also. One of the more noteworthy things is that pool rooms were and are a true melting pot. Even in the sixties and early seventies when black bangers weren't allowed in some of my local pool rooms that didn't apply to a black person that played a good game of pool. Even if a player was a racist on the street, in the pool room he accepted the equality of all as pool players. Rich or poor, white collar or blue, race, none of these things were as important as your abilities on a field of green.

Learning to deal with people and handle pressure are two of the huge things I learned in a pool room. Pool and pool rooms rounded out my life in many ways. I took things I learned in the pool room into the rest of my life but I also took things I learned elsewhere and brought them into the pool room. Maybe I added a little more to these things in the pool rooms and brought that new understanding into the rest of my life. I learned a lot from watching some of the classier guys in the pool room and since I wanted to be respected also, I deliberately styled my actions and behavior after theirs.

I learned that you can discover more about a person by how they act on a pool table, drinking or not, than you may discover in several years of casual contact too. People that are gentlemen on a pool table are rarely a disappointment in other areas of their lives. People who cheat in ways large or small or have a disagreeable personality change on a pool table often have similar flaws in other areas.

Perhaps I could have learned the same lessons elsewhere but spending a major portion of my waking hours in pool rooms or on pool tables in bars from the age of fifteen to twenty-five I learned a lot about people and a lot about life over a pool table.

Hu
 
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I learned that there ARE women out there that share your dream of having a pool table in your den. They are few and far between, but they are out there.
 
Impact Blue said:
I've learned that money changes people, especially if they know that you're the one to give it to them.

Not so much referenced to myself, but watching the social climate of the room change for sake of action, a dump, chop, or hustle, it's just so strange to see what people can become or invent in of themselves to get what they want.
Click to expand...

amen!!! this is sad but true.
 
sixpack said:
Negotiating games and finding people who will play for money develops people reading and persuasion skills that come in very useful for any type of sales.~rc
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To expand on this topic, I think the people reading skills are the most important thing I learned in the pool hall. Black, white, man, woman, dressed up in a suit, or wearing shorts and flip flops, some people will try to cheat you and trap you more often than others.
 
and i've learned the angle a car needs to hit a telephone pole at in order to carom into the neighbors mailbox.
 
I learned that if you love doing something, then any 'work' you do that's related to it will not really seem like work. So pool drills which would be torture for some people are kinda fun for me, so I get better at the game I love... and being better at it makes me enjoy it even more.

Carrying that into 'real life' I'd say that if you find something you enjoy even a little bit, getting a job in that field will be a good thing no matter what kind of pay you're looking at... and you'll see good results in what you do and you'll feel happier and more accomplished than you would getting paid better to do stuff you dislike.
 
1. Years ago I learned there was no money playing pool, and most road player who came to L.A. never could hold on to their winnings. it went to the ponies, women, booze, and other vices.

2. Never play in a bar with only one open door to the outside, as S**T happen and you may need to leave the bar on short notice.

3. If you never gamble with anyone, as you will have no losers mad at you.

4. If asked to gamble it is O.K. to say no.

5. If you do gamble no matter how cheap, pay up, or collect after each set, or game per agreement.
 
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