Is it "I paid my way through college hustling pool" or "I have not played in a while"? One is a player who clearly can't hold a cue properly, the other is running out 3 racks from the get-go LOL
Biggest lies in pool stories
- Thread starter hang-the-9
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Moe Szyslak
Active member
Isn't there a story in one of Byrne's books where Fats claimed he beat Wimpy Lassiter so bad that Lassiter shit his pants and it ran down into his shoes?
lol. I think my favorite is paying their way through college. I heard that one quite a few times!
If I have to hear the story one more time about someone beating someone with a broom stick I swear to god
To be fair, a semester of college was like $77 back then.
There are a lot of exaggeration and misconceptions about pool ability from many non-players. When I talk to people about playing, I hear things like "My son is so good he went to Vegas for pool", said son is like an APA 3 or 4. Or people saying "I play but I don't play in league or anything" as if being in a league is something only for good players.
It's like $77 per minute now. You'd need to be Fargo 1000+ and knock off a few snooker majors.To be fair, a semester of college was like $77 back then.
Definitely!
Yeah, i just had an image of some college administrators sitting around laughing at the money in Buffalo’s calcutta. “ The winner nets almost enough to pay for one year for his kid if the player didn’t buy half…”
Ah, but there can be truth at the base of the stories. I have won playing with broom and mop handles, even full mops and brooms granted the other person playing with the same. The worst was a big industrial mop with the roll around bucket and wringer. The wringer broke and the mop was left in the stagnant water from mopping a biker bar. The manager just bought a lightweight mop and it was maybe three months or so when the guy playing me stumbled on it. Always willing to try something new and there was betting involved. The mop was too nasty to wring out by hand so it was dripping water everywhere. Water so foul even the bikers and their gals were objecting to the smell, between gags! Mop, water and all, must have weighed about ten pounds. I learned the trick was to get the head of the mop to swinging and to time my stroke with the swing of the mop head! We got shut down when people started leaving the bar.
Played the same guy with broom and mop handles, entire brooms and mops too. We tried bar stools once. The ones that swivel will clip a finger off if you aren't careful. We were banging into people too, not good in a biker bar! Another time we were shut down.
I did play my way through college. It was a damned brutal three weeks!
No idea how long I have went without missing, I played 12-14 hours without scratching or losing a game on a very ratty sloppy old bar box nine footer. The game was eight ball, bar rules. Most of the people were bangers, maybe a half-dozen all night that were a threat to run the table. A strange night. I won over $800 at five a game which should rate as a tall tale in itself! I had headed out on a road trip with my sometimes road partner. I was broke, sixty dollars in my pocket, maybe a hundred in the bank. First stop was to try to pump up a little. My partner was known, I wasn't. Nobody wanted to fight or get in a cutting with my partner so instead they started piling challenges on the table. Only a few thought they might beat me, the rest wanted to be the one on the table when I beat myself! A nine foot table, the challenges stacked up one quarter wide. Not counting pocket irons for awhile the challenges went end to end of the nine foot table on one side, three-quarter of the way on the other side. I measured a quarter and did the math later, there had to be about 120 challenges on that table sometimes with no more than twenty people playing at any one time, maybe thirty total. At less than eighteen hours front door to front door that ranked as the shortest road trip I ever took!
I go months without hitting a ball so that tale is often true too.
I'm sure there are more myths I could bust. One I am proud of wasn't in pool, it was shooting pistols. A perfect score the only match I shot one year, 599 out of 600 the year before. Both wins in the open division. The man that designed the matches was angry. "That makes me mad! These matches are supposed to be hard!" I pointed out I shot the only perfect score.
Best I can calculate I have hit over two million balls lifetime. That much play, and that much time in pool halls, you are part of or see some strange things! I saw a very nice break, except for one little detail. Two nine footers end to end, a banger reared back and made a mighty break! The balls spread nicely with two or three finding a hole. Only minor detail, the cue ball had went airborne, never touched his racked balls. Hit the nose ball on the rack on the other table where a player was fixing to break!
Gambling on a bar box the money ball broke almost perfectly half in two! The other player wasn't happy but I argued the slightly bigger piece of the ball had went in the called pocket. I won and collected the bet.
Most of the myths have some truth behind them at least sometimes. I went by my partner's house. He didn't have a phone and lived about thirty miles away. His wife said she hadn't seen him in three days, he was shooting pool at Satsuma. No food in the house, no money to buy any for her or two small children. I went to the noname bar in Satsuma. Plank floor with cracks big enough to sweep cigarettes through. No ceiling, holes in the tin roof to look at stars or have the rain fall through. Hundreds of bugs on the one nine foot table. Up to mosquito sized we mostly ignored, june bugs, betsy bugs, and that size you had to move before shooting or risk a wicked hop in most any direction. The table was open to challenge and the standard bet was three dollars. The game might go on for a week without a break.
Bobby was walking around out on his feet. He had gotten up around five hundred, at three dollars a game! Then when he crashed Old Joe was rapidly stripping the money from him. Bobby was down to about $150 when I physically drug him out of the place midgame and took him to a grocery store then home. Piss poor pool etiquette but not the first or last time I violated pool etiquette with a friend involved.
Some second hand stories are too nasty to post. The most amazing thing is the wilder ones are usually true!
Hu
Played the same guy with broom and mop handles, entire brooms and mops too. We tried bar stools once. The ones that swivel will clip a finger off if you aren't careful. We were banging into people too, not good in a biker bar! Another time we were shut down.
I did play my way through college. It was a damned brutal three weeks!
No idea how long I have went without missing, I played 12-14 hours without scratching or losing a game on a very ratty sloppy old bar box nine footer. The game was eight ball, bar rules. Most of the people were bangers, maybe a half-dozen all night that were a threat to run the table. A strange night. I won over $800 at five a game which should rate as a tall tale in itself! I had headed out on a road trip with my sometimes road partner. I was broke, sixty dollars in my pocket, maybe a hundred in the bank. First stop was to try to pump up a little. My partner was known, I wasn't. Nobody wanted to fight or get in a cutting with my partner so instead they started piling challenges on the table. Only a few thought they might beat me, the rest wanted to be the one on the table when I beat myself! A nine foot table, the challenges stacked up one quarter wide. Not counting pocket irons for awhile the challenges went end to end of the nine foot table on one side, three-quarter of the way on the other side. I measured a quarter and did the math later, there had to be about 120 challenges on that table sometimes with no more than twenty people playing at any one time, maybe thirty total. At less than eighteen hours front door to front door that ranked as the shortest road trip I ever took!
I go months without hitting a ball so that tale is often true too.
I'm sure there are more myths I could bust. One I am proud of wasn't in pool, it was shooting pistols. A perfect score the only match I shot one year, 599 out of 600 the year before. Both wins in the open division. The man that designed the matches was angry. "That makes me mad! These matches are supposed to be hard!" I pointed out I shot the only perfect score.
Best I can calculate I have hit over two million balls lifetime. That much play, and that much time in pool halls, you are part of or see some strange things! I saw a very nice break, except for one little detail. Two nine footers end to end, a banger reared back and made a mighty break! The balls spread nicely with two or three finding a hole. Only minor detail, the cue ball had went airborne, never touched his racked balls. Hit the nose ball on the rack on the other table where a player was fixing to break!
Gambling on a bar box the money ball broke almost perfectly half in two! The other player wasn't happy but I argued the slightly bigger piece of the ball had went in the called pocket. I won and collected the bet.
Most of the myths have some truth behind them at least sometimes. I went by my partner's house. He didn't have a phone and lived about thirty miles away. His wife said she hadn't seen him in three days, he was shooting pool at Satsuma. No food in the house, no money to buy any for her or two small children. I went to the noname bar in Satsuma. Plank floor with cracks big enough to sweep cigarettes through. No ceiling, holes in the tin roof to look at stars or have the rain fall through. Hundreds of bugs on the one nine foot table. Up to mosquito sized we mostly ignored, june bugs, betsy bugs, and that size you had to move before shooting or risk a wicked hop in most any direction. The table was open to challenge and the standard bet was three dollars. The game might go on for a week without a break.
Bobby was walking around out on his feet. He had gotten up around five hundred, at three dollars a game! Then when he crashed Old Joe was rapidly stripping the money from him. Bobby was down to about $150 when I physically drug him out of the place midgame and took him to a grocery store then home. Piss poor pool etiquette but not the first or last time I violated pool etiquette with a friend involved.
Some second hand stories are too nasty to post. The most amazing thing is the wilder ones are usually true!
Hu
Reminds me how a friend of mine told me he had beaten Arthur Ashe at tennis. Surely, this could not be true, but upon further inquiries, it turned out that my friend had beaten Arthur Ashe as a junior, when my friend was 17 and Ashe was 14. When the details are omitted, the wrong impression can be created.
One year around Halloween a local bar ran a broomstick tournament. Surprisingly there were some tables run. Even a few jump shots were made with a broomstick. In all fairness we only used the handle, not the whole broom.If I have to hear the story one more time about someone beating someone with a broom stick I swear to god
We found you could chalk the round end of a broom or mop handle. I pulled out my trusty Buck and cut a crosshatch into the handle to hold chalk even better. I don't remember if we ran any racks but we definitely ran some balls. Jumping wasn't in vogue at the time so I don't think we tried jumping with the light mops and brooms.
Hu
