Pathetic Shark
Banned
I'm really not taking sides but that is damn funny.
Proposed TAR - TOI VS NO AIMING SYSTEM
- Thread starter HawaiianEye
- Start date
I'm really not taking sides but that is damn funny.
Pathetic Shark
Banned
Meh. Beating up old men?
One of your videos popped up when I was youtubing the other day, and I noticed it had 50,000 views. How the hell did that happen?
Meh. Beating up old men?
One of your videos popped up when I was youtubing the other day, and I noticed it had 50,000 views. How the hell did that happen?
People like train wrecks?
Justin was playing 1pocket a long, long time ago. Somewhat obviously, not everyone knew that
Lou Figueroa
I thought Fast Lenny put it pretty good:
"After all the talk John that has been said it would not be worth it for Lou to be in the same room playing for less than $20,000. There is no high rolling here, just a real game to settle the score. You offered 9/8 and made no mention of a price and now your saying $100 a game?, that is going to prove very little and not mean much either.
I think betting something high will see who holds up better, the feel player or the system player. I am guessing that your system will fall apart under the pressure against a player who is close to your ability but perhaps not since you have more gambling experience then Lou which is why you offered 9/8.
John, if your scared just say so, your starting to back peddle talking about betting $100 a game will not cut it and stating IF your at the Open in May. I know that both of you guys playing for the money is a big deal but proving something is even bigger, you both have an axe to grind so lets just settle it.
This forum is not like AZ Billiards, people here make games and when they say something they follow through with it, you offered 9/8 and go on how you will do this for $10,000 and then that. It is sickening to listen to over and over and I am very tolerable for the most part and you can see people on here not very happy with how your acting.
Like I said I have a system but I am not always in peoples face with it because it will accomplish nothing, if someone is curious its easier to just show them in person so they can understand it. I do not believe this forum really is the place for CTE, the majority do not care for it, you cant teach old dogs new tricks is the saying and its true for most here.
The best way to settle it is on the pool table, we can all post words all day long but we are not getting anywhere nor proving anything. If you do not want to play then stop offering things you cant follow through on because it makes your word lose credibility.
You offered 9/8, since its obvious you do not want to play for $20,000, will you give the game for $10,000 and post $2,000 no show money, game played at the Open? Play 2 sets, if you beat Lou we play another the same way (9/8), if Lou beats you then we play another but the set is even."
There's really no need for me to elaborate ;-)
Lou Figueroa
__________________
I think we've been in the same place like one time -- years ago at the SBE and, to be honest, playing a guy like you is not a priority, so I didn't bring it up.
*For years* I have usually been at a couple of big events -- DCC, SC, US 1Pocket Open -- and have never heard a peep from you. I went to the SBE one time and it was not my cup of tea. But even that one time you didn't challenge me.
You were like a quiet little mouse hiding in your booth.
Lou Figueroa
Since when did you have to be able to beat someone to have an informed opinion?
Lou Figueroa
It doesn't prove anything, but I've done a few TAR commentaries at the US 1Pocket Open and I usually do OK calling it from the booth
Lou Figueroa
Well then let's put it to the test. I will take say Shannon Daulton and you can have whoever you want with Lou coaching. How much are you willing to bet? To be clear Lou has to call the exact shot each time and the player has to shoot it. They are NOT allowed to discuss anything or otherwise have any signals. Still playing well and making world beater decisions are two different things. What you are saying is that Lou thinks like a world beater and I disagree.
It's not the wanting to agree with a champion. I know you don't really think much of champion's knowledge and have had words with CJ over it. For me it's purely 20 years of experience WITH champions from Bustamante to Reid. I know a lot of people on this forum have had interactions with champions but it was my job for twenty years to hang out with them and I used it to pick their brains on and off the table.
Believe me I don't KISS ANYONE'S ASS here. Not CJ's or anyone's. I just happen to have a little more respect for the level that the pros are at than a lot of people here do. And that comes from being around them so much, not from watching them on videos.
I think that an awful lot of people here don't REALLY understand how far away championship world class level pool is from their level. I think I myself didn't understand it for a long time, especially not until I started hanging out with pros, getting lessons, sparring (racking for) with them, talking pool and so on. You may THINK you know pool and THINK you know all the moves but I promise you there are levels and nuances that they know that even good amateurs do not know.
It might be comforting as an amateur to think you have all the same knowledge as them but you really don't. Not YOU specifically because of course I have NO idea what you do or don't know but if I had to bet I'd say that most high level pros still know a lot more than you even as good as you play. Wouldn't be the first bet I lost.
lmao. Another classic JB proposition that has no chance of coming off.
Lou Figueroa
No it's good. I beat the guy when I couldn't spell one pocket and ever since then he has never offered to play me at all during the couple times we have seen each other. Now, it was a little race to two but the way I see it is that even in a race to two the guy who is so great shouldn't ever let the novice get close to eight balls ever. The only thing I knew about one pocket at that time was Buddy's fram advice. If you don't know what to do then fram the rack and hope you get lucky. If you get lucky it was a good shot because that's what you were trying to do.
I still can't spell one pocket. Just barely got past the e in one.....
But I have heart. And I know Lou doesn't. Sometimes heart makes up for a lack of knowledge when the so-called better player starts to dog it a little and the underdog gets a surge of confidence.
Anyway this is all useless barking because Lou will NEVER play me. The mere thought of a tiny chance of losing to me and having to endure the fallout is enough to keep him off the table.
We'll never play because you are in China and you only come here once a year to an event I don't travel to.
Lou Figueroa
not hard to find
Lenny was wrong then to even get involved. The entire high roll nonsense was exactly that. But even so I said I'd play a 10 ahead 10k set and none of jumped on it.
You and your entourage thought you had the nuts but you didn't have the heart to take me up on it. Your loss.
So, in the words of the great Fast Eddie Felson, I will offer it to you again, 10 ahead for 10k.
'You don't know what to say do you? Maybe I am hustling you, maybe I am not....' Maybe me and Artie Bodendorfer have been secretly training for year waiting to snap you off.
Anyway, I will be at SBE 2014. If you want to make $10,000 then bring your stake and let's get it on. I hope that 7 months is enough time for you clear your schedule.
I have no superior knowledge. What I have is being a student of the game of 1pocket for almost 20 years. I've played the game, watched the Accu-Stats tapes, listen to the expert commentary, and traveled to tournaments and gotten to play players like Efren, Scott, Jose, Cliff, Alex, Larry, Chris, Warren, and on and on. I play and I watch and I learn, that's all.
Lou Figueroa
I didn't hide, you were right there and didn't say a word other than to question why I didn't criticize Whitten cases and Freddie corrected you. After that you shut up.
You can have opinions but what you can't have is the perspective of the pro because you have never and will never be in that position.
It doesn't prove anything, but I've done a few TAR commentaries at the US 1Pocket Open and I usually do OK calling it from the booth
Lou Figueroa
Anyone can play from the booth. You never miss from there. Get in the grease and see how it goes. Oh wait we have that data, you never won anything significant and probably never even cashed in any major tournament that they allowed you to play in.
Because no one would bet on you calling the shots for a top pro. It's really that simple.
You come and play and I will refund you the cost of the ticket if I win. I am even easier to find. For an easy 10k you should be willing to take a couple days.
And yet with ten years of experience you lost to a complete one pocket noob in me. How badly will you lose now that I have ten years of experience?
Come and find out.
Also, in the interest of not furthering this nonsense barking you can really have the last word, make it a really good insult. Hope you find some heart between now and SBE.
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You are certainly old enough to have been playing when I was in diapers, of course anyone over 60 can make that statement.
We are very confident that Two Shot Shoot Out is more complex and difficult than one pocket in several categories and am willing to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt at the appropriate time and place, and for the right "wager".
Here's one of my gambling stories that was written by a well known Sports writer from New York City to over 2.3 Million People in case anyone wonders if I was really a gambler on the road.
Life of Wiley
He hustled pool for a while and made a living, then turned pro and made a killing. Clearly, Dallas’ CJ Wiley is on the ball.
By Michael P. Geffner
IT HAPPENED IN PITTSBURGH in 1986, back when The Color of Money, a movie about a young pool shark, had hit theaters and Carson “CJ” Wiley was himself hustling pool on the road—back when, on a moment’s notice, he would drive hundreds of miles to some backwoods dive on a trip that someone with wads of cash gambled big-time there. On that particular night, Wiley wore fake glasses and assumed one of three aliases, Mike from Indiana. His mark was the owner of a restaurant, a bearded man with receding jet-black hair who led him up a dark staircase to a private pool table on the second floor.
“And the guy is smiling this real goofy smile,” Wiley recalls today, chuckling hard before dragging deeply on a Marlboro Light. “’It’s just like in the movie,’ he says. ‘You saw the movie right?’ And I nod my head but don’t really say anything. Then he says, ‘Oh, boy, I love action. I love playing pool for money. I even love betting on other players. You saw the movie right?’ And I nod again. And we begin playing some nine ball, and I find out right away that this guy can’t play at all. I mean, not a lick. So after I’m done beating him for a few hundred, he has me play nearly everybody in the building. I end up beating his bartender, his cook, his dishwasher, five locals, and finally, the best player in town—and he staked every one of them. By the time he quit, I had him stuck for about seven thousand dollars. And he says to me, not smiling anymore, ‘You know kid, you played a lot better at the end than you did at the beginning.’ And I look him square in the eyes and say, ‘Well, you saw the movie, right?’”
Now semi retired and detached from his hustling days, Wiley lives in the Lake Highlands neighborhood of Dallas. Almost from the moment he turned pro, he has been the highest-ranked pool player in Texas as well as one of the ten best players in the world. He’ll demonstrate that on January 31, when—in an extremely rare live telecast of pool—ESPN will air the finals of its Ultimate 9-Ball challenge, the sport’s biggest annual nine ball event; he hopes to win the three-way competition for the second straight year, outgunning fellow hotshots Roger Griffis and Johnny Archer. “The funny thing is, I've never really considered myself a pool player,” he quietly confides to me as he sits in a hotel lounge during a weekend trip to New York. “It has always been just a game I played. I played it mostly as a way to make money and to express myself. But lately I've come to the conclusion that I don’t exactly know yet, but I definitely feel like I’m being driven by a higher power.”
It is a Saturday afternoon, and Wiley, who usually dresses in Italian designer suits and custom-made shirts initialed at the cuffs, is wearing faded jeans, a pale green polo shirt, a gold chain, and a gold diamond studded watch with a luminous turquoise face. A lean six-footer, he has dirty-blond hair and pale blue-green eyes that, without warning, can suddenly go cold and stare right through you.”I eventually want to be considered the best player in my era,” he says, speaking in a low, sharp voice with a trace of a Texas twang. “Because if I’m the best player in my era, then I’m the best player ever. The players are just better now.”
Wiley has what other pool players refer to as in the Big Games. He has an opening break in nine ball powerful enough to sink six balls and a shot making ability{using TOI} so stunning that even the longest shots seem like tap-ins. He’s also part of an elite few who can string together bunches of racks without missing (in nine ball, where the lowest-numbered ball on the table must be struck first before pocketing a ball, he has put together nine racks in a row on a regulation table and a staggering twelve on a bar table). But if Willie Mosconi was the Fred Astaire of pocket billiards, then Wiley is the Gene Kelly—not so much about finesse and seamless grace as muscle and macho fearlessness. Holding his stick more firmly than the rest, making his veiny forearms bulge, he simply rams balls into pockets. “CJ rarely thinks about playing it safe or carefully maneuvering his way around the table,” observes Allen Hopkins, a 46-year-old New Jersey pro who has been one of the best all-around players of the past quarter century. “He just attacks the rack.”
ESPN’s corny sportscasters have tagged Wiley “the fast gun of Texas,” but not without reason. In the time it takes others to run a rack, he can run three. A nine ball rack, for instance, often takes him less than a minute. “Think long, think wrong” is his motto. “The conscious mind can really be destructive when you’re playing,” he says. “If I slow down, I tend to start double-thinking and make bad decisions.” He moves around the table so quickly it seems like he’s not thinking at all. For each shot he uses a Touch of Inside, and takes no more than three practice strokes. “It can be demoralizing to a weaker player,” says California pro George “the Flamethrower” Breedlove. “He starts running out from everywhere and nowhere, one tough shot after the other and before you ever get to blink, he’s already up five games on you.”
Certainly Wiley doesn't fit any of the standard pool stereotypes. He has a practitioner’s degree in the self-help technique of neuro-linguistic programming; is a second-degree black belt instructor in Ji Mu Do, a combination of eight martial arts; swallows a daily cocktail of herbs, such as Saint-John’s-wort and ginseng, and a special “cleansing “oolong tea that he buys from a Korean herbalist in Dallas; under-goes sessions of acupuncture; and studies Zen. He often talks of “becoming the game” and breathing deeply to “lower my brain waves” and letting my unconscious mind take over.” He says he has reached the point where he can put himself into a heightened trance like state almost at will, that he all but blacks out and is able to play for hours yet not remember a single shot afterwards—as in 1997’s Texas State Championship in Austin, where he began by winning 24 consecutive games on the way to defending his title.
Like all roads players, Wiley planned his days as if he were on a cross-country vacation—only instead of selling his sights on, say, the Grand Canyon, he sought hotbeds of pool activity, or spots. In fact, he always carried a little black spot book, in which he had scribbled information extracted from an underground network of other hustlers: It had the names of players he should play, where they played, how well they played (their “speed”), and their betting patterns. “I really enjoyed the freedom of it all, of waking up whenever I wanted, of going wherever I wanted, and controlling my own destiny,” he says.
Which isn't to say the road wasn't difficult. Wiley says he has been robbed twice at gunpoint—once around the corner from a pool room in Minneapolis, the other at a bootleg liquor joint with a black-room pool table Albemarle, North Carolina—after he won a ton of money. He was punched in Texarkana and served drinks spiked with drugs, he believes, in Queen City and Memphis. Still, he was predatory and merciless. He says he could sense another player’s weakness without even talking to him and got his kicks by crushing opponents to the point of causing their knees to buckle. “I especially loved seeing fear in my opponent’s eyes,” he says, adding that he has not a hint of a guilty conscience about any of his hundreds of conquest: “Listen, all the guys I beat wanted my money just as badly as I wanted theirs. It’s not my fault I was the better player. And besides, a lot of the guys I beat weren’t very nice. I just carried out their karma. God works in mysterious ways.”
It was a life, too, of pure and wildly creative subterfuge. He had his aliases: Besides Mike from Indiana, there was Chris from Missouri and Butch from Tennessee. He had his fake I.D.’s and phony glasses (“Anybody will play someone with glasses,” he says) and at various times posed as a college student, a computer salesman, and a drug dealer. And he had a way to make money, which was to move around a lot, working states from the outside in (that is, playing in the smaller towns first, then the bigger cities), and staying unknown as much as possible. That meant he couldn't enter any high-profile tournaments or—God forbid—betray his brethren by turning pro. Only once during those years did Wiley take a shot as a major organized event: the 1986 World Series of Tavern Pool in Las Vegas. He was 21 at the time, and when it was over, he had beaten out a whopping 756 players to win to win first prize: a piddling $7,500, which he had to split with his backers. On a good night of gambling, he knew, he could make nearly three times as much. I convinced him that hustling was still the way to go.
He continued to believe that for five more years, but he ultimately decided there were no challenges left on the road. With some trepidation he finally went straight and joined the now defunct Men’s Professional Billiard Association. “I really didn't know if I could compete with the best players in the world,” he couldn't crush mentally.” Of course, in his first pro tournament, the Dufferin Nine-Ball Classic in Toronto, he beat four world-class players in a single day: Earl “the pearl” Strickland, Efren “the Magician” Reyes, Jim “King James” Rempe, and “Spanish Mike” Lebron. Overall, he finished in fourth place, earned $3,500, and afterward veteran Cecil “Buddy” Hall gushingly labeled him “the best unknown player in the world.” Says Wiley with a grin: “I played my game and it held up. I went in half-cocked and I came out full cocked.”
That first year, he managed to crack the top ten in the national rankings. He moved to seventh in 1992, fifth in 1994, and fourth in 1995. Then in December 1995, unhappy with the politics of the men’s pro pool tour, he abruptly quit and a month later started a new one, the professional CueSports Association (PCA). That year he captured first place—and a purse of $88,500, a U.S. record—in the ESPN World Open Billiards Championship; he also won the first-ever PCA tour stop, the Dallas Million-Dollar Challenge, and was eventually named player of the year by Pool and Billiard magazine.
Clearly he’s got something—but what? I wanted to see it for myself. So at eleven o’clock on a Monday night, the two of us walked over to a pool room on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a place a little smaller than CJ’s Billiard Palace, a room Wiley owns back home near White Rock Lake. Decked out in a dark pin-striped suit, he began by casually shooting on a table that was dimly lit, though he didn't come close to missing a ball. When it was time to share his secret, he set up a long, sharp cut shot on the six ball. “Now watch. I’m going to shoot this shot with a touch of inside,” he said, bending down in a square, powerful-looking crouch. I watched. He popped his heavy thud of a stroke, and the ball split the right corner pocket.
I didn't really get it; Wiley knew instantly. “Don’t you see?” he asked with some frustration. “With two round objects, it sets up an optical illusion. You can’t aim for a spot on a round object and hit it with another round object. It’s an impossibility. So what I do is look at the two balls as straight lines that bisect.” The explanation only made my head spin faster.
Wiley set up another shot, putting the eight ball on the head spot and the cue ball near the back rail. The balls were about six feet apart—to my mind, a much more difficult shot thank the first one. Yet, surprisingly, he said, “Same shot, with a touch of inside.” And again he knocked it down as if the ball had been magnetically pulled to the center of the pocket.
He sighed dismissively and waved a limp arm in my direction. “Man, this game’s so easy it’s not even funny—once you figure it out,” he said with a sniff. Then, looking straight into my unfocused eyes, he delivered his knew-buckling punch line. “At least it is for me.”
Good story, thanks
So far CJ, the only one who agrees with you that push-out 9-Ball is a harder game than One Pocket is Mary, your girl friend. I will bet that if we took a poll of top pool players from the last generation who played both games, One Pocket would win by a landslide. I will give you this, you're a good debater. You should have been on the debate team in high school. Maybe you were, you've done everything else! :thumbup:
1. In one Pocket you must shoot more difficult cut shots, bank shots and COMBINATIONS, in EVERY GAME! Not so in 9-Ball.
2. There is a premium on good cue ball position in One Pocket, more so than in 9-Ball where you often have a large area to play position in. In One Pocket you often are trying to put the cue ball in a very precise location, and a fraction of an inch off can be a bad shot!
3. 9-Ball is full of routine shots, ones that you play game after game. In One Pocket, challenging shots come up regularly, where speed, spin and angle must be perfect to execute it properly.
4. Once again, far more often in One Pocket you must "unload" on a shot, moving the cue ball around the table to an exact spot to play safe while shooting at your hole.
5. Far more difficult shots must often be made during the course of a One Pocket game (see #1).
6. All safeties in One Pocket must be perfectly played or you risk selling out the game.
7. You shoot far more banks in One Pocket, many of them off angle banks requiring extreme english and perfect speed on the cue ball.
8. You may win here, since you shoot many soft shots in One Pocket, that must be played perfectly (like getting the cue ball to drift back into the pack).
9. You will be using all types of english just in your safety game alone (see #8), and you're constantly moving the cue ball to get set up for the next shot. Once again position play in 9-Ball is usually far easier once you get in line. I can't say that for One Pocket.
10. If you get in line at 9-Ball, there won't be much of this. Having more long shots is not necessarily a yard stick of the more difficult game anyway. If you play good you don't need to shoot many of these shots. Of course, they come up in both games.
11. See above (#10).
12. Also see #10 above.
Thank you CJ for offering me the opportunity to poke holes in your argument. I think the questions you asked could well be the same ones used to determine that One Pocket is the more difficult game to play.
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Anyone feel free to sum up the thread for me. I didn't keep up this weekend. I dropped off at like page 7. from what I read in the last two is two things.
CJ will NOT play Bartrum.
And Lou and John are back at each other, and will never play for several reasons...
Good to know. Thanks!
CJ will NOT play Bartrum.
And Lou and John are back at each other, and will never play for several reasons...
Good to know. Thanks!