70s/80s Era Questions

[Pawlowski424]

So, here's my list of questions lol:

What was the general pocket size for pro-speed tournaments?

What were table conditions like?

I've noticed players of this era (Varner, Hall, Sigel, etc) playing with steel joint. What was the belief behind forward balanced/steel joint cues?

Is the information that's available today (pocket lines, cue ball physics, navigating the table, etc. Advanced details, so to speak), the same information as back then? If not, what has changed?

 

[Taxi]

Imo;

HUGE difference: people carried cash.

One famous night at Guys and Dolls in Silver Hill, MD, a big time drug dealer named "Slippery" Jackson dropped $100,000 in a one pocket game. He paid of with wads of $100 bills that he had in a suitcase, and later returned and won nearly half of it back.

I'm sure The Rack in Detroit had many nights like this, but in the DC area this was about the biggest cash score I ever heard of.

Fast forward to the 90's, and I beat a local player out of $150, which he paid with a credit card! I had a book shop with a CC machine and it was no problem paying myself, but it was that incident that led me to believe I no longer lived in the pool world I'd known.

 

[garczar]

Brunswick Gold Crown tables were very close to 5" corners. I really doubt there were any 4.5" pockets back then.

Very few. Some places shimmed-up their action tables. Poolrooms were all 4.75+ corners.

 

[Black-Balled]

One famous night at Guys and Dolls in Silver Hill, MD, a big time drug dealer named "Slippery" Jackson dropped $100,000 in a one pocket game. He paid of with wads of $100 bills that he had in a suitcase, and later returned and won nearly half of it back.

I'm sure The Rack in Detroit had many nights like this, but in the DC area this was about the biggest cash score I ever heard of.

Fast forward to the 90's, and I beat a local player out of $150, which he paid with a credit card! I had a book shop with a CC machine and it was no problem paying myself, but it was that incident that led me to believe I no longer lived in the pool world I'd known.

As a funny money guy told me once, what else am I going to do with all that cash?

Eek

 

[Black-Balled]

Very few. Some places shimmed-up their action tables. Poolrooms were all 4.75+ corners.

We had a table in my home room that had 2 pockets that were tighter than the other 4and one was tightest.

It was highly entertaining.

 

[BasementDweller]

I really don't agree here. In the straight pool era, the nappy cloth meant that you had to hit it harder to get to the rail. The power stun shots back then (such as going to the rail and back out on a five-degree cut with pace) were, to a large extent, the sole domain of the super-elite, a point Mike Sigel has made. In 14.1, the slow cloth meant the balls didn't spread nearly as well on the opening break shot, a shot on which few balls went to a rail. Making a ball on the break in nine ball was also a little harder on the slower cloth.

Yes, the old tables played slow and both the break shot and position play were a little more difficult.

I think the big takeaway is there's a big difference between slow cloth and slow rails when it comes to overall table speed. This point seems to be overlooked very often on AZ. Gold Crowns have been around for around 60 years now! That's a long time. Yes they weren't covered with Simonis in the early days, but those rails were lively. I actually think for overall table speed -- the rails are MORE important than the cloth, within reason.

On my table -- my rails are soft so I put 760 on it to compensate. It's still probably on the slow side as I can not get 5 rails up and down. Give me a healthy Gold Crown with an older nappy cloth and it would probably play faster overall than mine.

Anyone that watches just a few minutes of this epic match can see what type of table was available in the 60's:

 

[BasementDweller]

Watch just this one shot:

 

[sjm]

I think the big takeaway is there's a big difference between slow cloth and slow rails when it comes to overall table speed. This point seems to be overlooked very often on AZ. Gold Crowns have been around for around 60 years now! That's a long time. Yes they weren't covered with Simonis in the early days, but those rails were lively. I actually think for overall table speed -- the rails are MORE important than the cloth, within reason.

On my table -- my rails are soft so I put 760 on it to compensate. It's still probably on the slow side as I can not get 5 rails up and down. Give me a healthy Gold Crown with an older nappy cloth and it would probably play faster overall than mine.

Anyone that watches just a few minutes of this epic match can see what type of table was available in the 60's:

Yes, much truth in what you've said. Thanks for the video.

 

[Pawlowski424]

You're one of the first ones from "back in the day" to admit that the tables weren't really slow. I know that's not what you said, but the implication is that the rails have as much to do with the overall speed of the table as the cloth does. I can't get 5 rails on my table with 760 today in 2024! Yet old matches even going back to the 60's show lively Gold Crown rails, and I suspect they could have gotten 5 rails on those. I know....I know...there were rooms with slow tables. I have seen them. I just don't think it was the norm or as prevalent as many suggest. At least not for tournament matches.

Pocket size started getting talked about quite often in the early 90s during Accu-stats matches. Grady would often refer to them as "cavernous" and his co-hosts would agree that they needed to be smaller. I think that's when the march towards ever decreasing pockets began.

Lol. Grady and his "Gaping Apertures" made me laugh.

 

[Pawlowski424]

I grew up playing pool as a teenager in the 70's.

I'd often play at The Palace and Cochrans in San Francisco and the pockets on those tables were "generous" and probably in the 5" range with shallow shelves. I recall the cloth being pretty thin and fast. At other rooms the pockets were equally generous. And in recent memory I recall saying out loud that some of the old-time road hustlers oft consider legendary, maybe weren't so great but for their experience and especially their knowledge of 1pocket. (That got me into a lot of trouble on 1pocket.org a few years back, lol). But, champions are champions and many of the greats of old would excel even today.

As to SS joints, well, I believe many cue makers started out with brass and there were the occasional ivory joints. But it wasn't until techniques and the machinery improved that ivory became more common. BTW, I lived in Montana for four years and would take my Gina with ivory ferules out of the trunk of my car after being in way below freezing temps and never cracked a one.

Lastly, there was hardly any instructional info out on the streets. There were Mosconi's two little books, Hoppe's green hardbound, Cottingham, and Sunset-like books from Lassiter and Mizerak. That was it.

Lou Figueroa

Ive been intrigued by Cochrans in SF ever since I read Grady Mathews interview on onepocket.org. That cast of players, in and out, in a city like that. Sounds like a book shouldve, or could, be written. Thanks

 

[L.S. Dennis]

Ive been intrigued by Cochrans in SF ever since I read Grady Mathews interview on onepocket.org. That cast of players, in and out, in a city like that. Sounds like a book shouldve, or could, be written. Thanks

 

[L.S. Dennis]

Ive been intrigued by Cochrans in SF ever since I read Grady Mathews interview on onepocket.org. That cast of players, in and out, in a city like that. Sounds like a book shouldve, or could, be written. Thanks

I used to go to Palace and Cochrans during the early and mid 60's and I can tell you a huge book could have been written about Cochrans and Palace actually. Cochrans in particular had all kinds of stories that could have been written about all the things that went on there. It had its dark side that's for sure, here's just one thing that happened there:

Although I didn't see this, but if my recollection is correct a murder is what finally caused the famed 'Cochran's' pool room in San Francisco to a close in the early to mid sixties. The place had become a pretty rough place towards the end. There was an incident where someone didn't pay off his debt on some game, (it may have been a game of pink ball that was popular back then) and he was promptly dragged into the mens' bathroom where he was pummeled to the floor. An old man who was taking a leak while this happened simply looked over his should and said "yep that otta get it!"

 

[lfigueroa]

Ive been intrigued by Cochrans in SF ever since I read Grady Mathews interview on onepocket.org. That cast of players, in and out, in a city like that. Sounds like a book shouldve, or could, be written. Thanks

Well, it's just one of those things: you don't realize you are in the middle of the Belle Époque while you're in the middle of the Belle Époque.

I was just a kid working the swing shift at Wells Fargo HQs on Market and Fourth and when I got off I would just drive up a few blocks, usually to The Palace, run up the stairs, get buzzed in, and look for a game. I was a regular customer of a guy named Mike. We'd play 75 points of 14.1 for $25. He'd regularly win. But one night I hit a gear, ran 40, and I thought he was going to faint. (Frankly, I doubt he had a nickel on him.) He started playing safe and pulled out the win.

Great times.

Lou Figueroa

 

[Cornerman]

So, here's my list of questions lol:

What was the general pocket size for pro-speed tournaments?

What were table conditions like?

I've noticed players of this era (Varner, Hall, Sigel, etc) playing with steel joint. What was the belief behind forward balanced/steel joint cues?

Is the information that's available today (pocket lines, cue ball physics, navigating the table, etc. Advanced details, so to speak), the same information as back then? If not, what has changed?

The easier answer to the steel joint question was that the wood-to-wood joint wasnt really around in the 70’s so much. Jim McDermott popularized the wood-to-wood joint in the mid-70’s, whereas the piloted metal joint had been around decades prior. So most of the player who were top pros in the 70’s and 80’s would have grown up with metal piloted joints.

That said, Meucci( flat-faced and non-steel) and McDermott for sure had their following in the 80’s as so many top pros were playing wirh them. However, by the late 80’s, both Varner and Sigel (who had played with Meucci) were playing with Joss, and Hall (who also played with Meucci) eventually started playing with Lucasi in the early 90’s.

So all these pros didnt exactly favor steel joints.

 

[Cornerman]

You're one of the first ones from "back in the day" to admit that the tables weren't really slow. I know that's not what you said, but the implication is that the rails have as much to do with the overall speed of the table as the cloth does. I can't get 5 rails on my table with 760 today in 2024! Yet old matches even going back to the 60's show lively Gold Crown rails, and I suspect they could have gotten 5 rails on those. I know....I know...there were rooms with slow tables. I have seen them. I just don't think it was the norm or as prevalent as many suggest. At least not for tournament matches.

Pocket size started getting talked about quite often in the early 90s during Accu-stats matches. Grady would often refer to them as "cavernous" and his co-hosts would agree that they needed to be smaller. I think that's when the march towards ever decreasing pockets began.

Bob didnt say that! The cloth back then was slower. Even if Simonis existed, most anywhere was slower cloth. Simonis didn’t start to become the standard until the 90’s. Take a look at the televised 1986 Last Call for 9-ball. Look how every shot, the players are smashing the cueball. No soft bunting around. Look at any Efren Reyes video from back then. He struggled with position play conpared to his dominant control of the cueball when the conditions became easier, faster and more predictable.

 

[Cornerman]

I've generally read steel joints were common then as synthetic materials weren't as durable. McDermott and South West were some of the makers behind making non-steel joints more common. Ivory joints were more common then too, for some obvious reasons.

In the 70’s and 80’s, the the knowledge of plastics was really low. And even with cuemakers today, that knowledge is still relatively low. But it’s better than it was.

 

[BasementDweller]

Bob didnt say that! The cloth back then was slower. Even if Simonis existed, most anywhere was slower cloth. Simonis didn’t start to become the standard until the 90’s. Take a look at the televised 1986 Last Call for 9-ball. Look how every shot, the players are smashing the cueball. No soft bunting around. Look at any Efren Reyes video from back then. He struggled with position play conpared to his dominant control of the cueball when the conditions became easier, faster and more predictable.

I've watched all those matches. Sorry -- that Gandy table was not that slow.

We're reaching urban legend territory.

Before you post more -- I know there are matches on slow tables out there. Just don't believe it was the norm.

 

[BasementDweller]

I did take a bit of liberty with what Bob J said, but he clearly stated he didn't have trouble back then, getting 5 rails on the up and down test. How was that possible?

 

[Taxi]

I used to go to Palace and Cochrans during the early and mid 60's and I can tell you a huge book could have been written about Cochrans and Palace actually.

I only stayed in San Francisco briefly in 1969, and most of my pool playing was at Kip's in Berkeley. But I did get to the Palace long enough to get smoked by a pot bellied hippie looking guy who I later learned was the great Denny Searcy, who was maybe the greatest payball artist ever, and not a bad nine ball player, either. Most of what I remember about the Palace was its leather slop pockets and nicely maintained new cloth. There was also a bar downstairs that featured gigantic steamship round roast beef sandwiches for all of a buck. It took half an hour to get your teeth through the tough cut of meat and the Kaiser roll, but for that price you couldn't complain.

 

[maha]

i played all over and the average pool room had much slower tables because of the cloth and lack of air conditioning than the tables now..

and many used rubber backed cloth on their gold crowns.

one of my first things i would do on a new table to me was shoot up and down and most tables just a little over four was the limit. never 5 times.

 

[maha]

and in many rooms with the racks used and non polished balls, most players were not a favorite or decent favorite to make a ball on the break in nine ball.