The only ring game I’ve played uses 10 balls where the 5 ball and 10 ball are the money balls.
The 10 is more than tge cash amount of the 5 ball. Typical games are $1/$2, $2/$3/ $3/5, $5/$10,
etc. The more serious minded players wage more than I’d like to pass time playing pool. I am not
looking for the cash or need it and I hate losing it, whether it’s in poker or a Sunday NFL game, etc.
I’d do a race for x dollars and the most I ever paid to enter a 16 last man standing winner takes all
tournament was $100. I play pool for satisfaction more than cash since my skills are diminishing.
Any any jockey……you usually don’t win the most money betting on the oldest horse in the field.
Knowledge and strategy count the most when you can consistently execute instead of usually.
Some might attribute that to nerves but gotta say missing a easy shot with ball in hand isn’t a
case of nerves when you been already been pocketing pretty consistently more difficult shots.
Until you wear the footwear of your opponent & walk awhile, you won’t ever know how it feels.
Sometimes your body doesn’t do what It’s been doing quite well. Dunno why but stroke mistakes
are the most infuriating single annoying thing that is totally needless and unnecessary….Ugh.
The old adage that money won is sweeter than money earned is so especially true…..for the winner.
So is the expression it is better to be lucky than good…..for the winner. I don’t know about you but
when I play 9 ball, which is infrequent for this very reason, I hate losing to my opponent slopping the
9 ball in a pocket accidentally, or the wrong pocket, and winning the game. Or if he had no open pocket
for his shot so he pounds the OB into the 9 ball that bounces around & falls in a pocket he never aimed
at…..for a win. I prefer to think as pool as a game of skill instead of unintended, accidental good fortune.
The ring games I’ve played in have always been 5 &10 balls bounties. Pocket them early and get paid
even though the balls are spotted. I think a great way to pass time is 3 ball and with 4-6 players, it can
build some enormous pots. Even at $.50 or a $1.00 per player, it adds up fast because of all the pushes
because one ties then we all tie. I played in one game where it pushed 12 times and no one ever made
more than 1 ball on the break during the run of ties. There were 5 players and it was on a 9 pool table at
Blue Fin Billiards that started with 6 players but after 7 games, a player left and no one else wanted to
buy in. Heck, at that point it was more fun watching than waiting for your turn to try. 3 ball can be played
for $.25 or $.50 or $1 or $2, whatever is easy, fun & inexpensive since it hardly rates as a 3 ball tournament.
It’s sore of being akin to pitching coins as a kid growing up. Sometimes it was pennies, nickels or dimes but
when it became pitching quarters, that’s when a deck of cards usually came out for 5, 10 & 25 cents poker.
In the late 50’s and early 60’s, winning $ 20-30 bucks playing poker at 14 yrs old with a bunch of your friends
on a summer night listening to rock n’ roll songs on a portable radio under a street light or the fluorescent glow
of a brownstone apartment vestibule was nothing to be taken lightly. It bought pizza, ice cream, smokes, the
movies or a Dodgers, Giants or Yankees baseball game, a day at Steeplechase, a Nathan’s grill bonanza that
was only a short subway ride away…and when I was old enough to go to the pool hall alone without a parent
or guardian, I put away my youthful things & pastimes, except for playing baseball and the HS rifle & archery
teams. Pool became my preoccupation. It’s been that way for the last 64 years even before The Hustler movie.
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