wasn't trapping but some folks sure thought so!
Some were accidentally trapped watching me banging balls playing my friends that played pool but weren't pool players. When the stranger stalled while raising the bet from a beer or three dollars a game to twenty or fifty before letting their own game out I didn't feel very bad about it. Didn't feel bad at all to be honest!
A stranger came into a bar I was in one day. My local watering hole, for better or worse strangers were my meat and none of the local players or beer drinkers were going to play a stranger until they saw how things went with me. The stranger wanted to hit some balls so we walked over to one of the two old valleys in the place.
He introduced himself with a front and back name and stuck out a hand. Kinda odd to use both names but I shook and said "Hu". Enough of a handle and all I used for many years. Even my rare tournaments I sign in as Hu. We started play, barbox eight ball. The first three games he cleared the traffic for me and then stalled mightily. I was getting pissed that he thought he had to suck me in and the fourth game I turned the tables. With two or three of his balls pretty much sitting in a hole and the eight ball the same I dogged my last ball while putting it carefully out the way after rattling the pocket. You could talk Ray Charles through this runout and he is dead and blind.
He bent over the first shot and I cut him a look that said, "OK jackass, let's see you get out of running this!" As I looked his way he looked up and intercepted the look. He ran the easy out, I racked and he bent over to break. Then he straightened up. He called me over. "I am a road player out of Vegas, my name is Danny Medina. Let's cut the crap and play pool!" We did, and the coins were going through the coin-op mechanism so fast it was starting to get hot! Danny was a warrior in those days and didn't have the stomach for a trap after he set it, maybe too he realized I didn't care.
Another guy came in pretending to be a salesman, complete with paperwork to sit at the bar and work on the first night. I noticed him watching my play a little too closely, he noticed I was aware and moved behind a screen. He could still see me and this went on for three nights before he decided he would pass and just talk a bit. Small bar, we had nodded and said hello a few times already. Always wondered if this was Tom Ferry but he hid his illness until the last minute when he had one foot in the grave and while we were on friendly internet terms it seemed classless and unimportant anyway to ask at that time. He introduced himself as Tom Ferriday, said he didn't play but watched pool all over the country. I didn't pay much attention to the name at the time since I didn't buy the second claim for a minute. Only later did I wonder who scouted me that carefully.
Hu
