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Really, a cast of characters CHAPTER FOURTEEN: A GALLERY OF ROGUES I've been a successful pool hustler for most of my life. I've won tons of money. I won't go into exactly how much because I never kept track. But what I remember even more than the money is the people I won it from. Their...

Growing up CHAPTER THIRTEEN: A LIFE ON THE EDGE My chosen profession was Hustler. I earned advanced degrees in that discipline, so if I wanted to show off my knowledge I could rightly call myself “Doctor ***********”. But since no true hustler wants to show off his real game we'll forget...

Moving on up CHAPTER TWELVE: BENSINGER'S Back in the 1960s when I started playing on the North Side of Chicago there were dozens of pool halls. But there was one pool hall that had a reputation for being Number One, the place where you had to go if you wanted to find the famous players and...

Honing His craft CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE BASICS OF POOL HUSTLING To get at the money the hustler requires a different set of skills. He has to watch people. He has to be a kind of amateur psychologist analyzing people's strengths and weaknesses. He's always on the lookout for a likely mark...

PART THREE: A BENSINGER'S BOY Never play if you can’t win. The name off the game is to win. I was the main man who people feared and lost their money too. I beat hundreds of people playing pool. I was the king and the best hustler. Nobody was in my class. And I won 95% off the time. I was in...

Wrapping up a wild lifestyle CHAPTER NINE: CARNEY KID ON THE ROAD Around this time a young guy named Jack Kerouac wrote a book called "On the Road". It was about bumming around the country and meeting all kinds of strange dudes along the way. It was about getting baptized into life beyond...

Getting down to business CHAPTER EIGHT: CARNEY KID: RIVERVIEW PARK For most kids, the teenage years are the ones you remember as school days. You mostly run with the herd or with your clique of friends. You play sports or act in the school plays or take up a musical instrument. You...

Getting down to business CHAPTER SEVEN: SHOE SHINE ***** I started my first real job and my first real hustle at the simplest kind of work there is. At the age of twelve I opened up my own shoeshine business. It might not sound like much, wandering the streets of Chicago with a footstool...

PART TWO: LEARNING THE TRADE CHAPTER SIX: SCHOOL DAYS, FOR WHAT THEY'RE WORTH Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I'd stayed in school and worked through the system. Maybe I'd have wound up as a doctor or lawyer. Maybe I'd have run a business or piled up a ton of...

The 'Windy City' breathes hope CHAPTER FIVE: THE BASEMENTS OF CHICAGO South Haven was a small town of about 5,000 people on Lake Michigan with tidy farms on the outskirts. That was the best thing about it, because we'd been used to that kind of slow-paced living back in Austria. We were...

The farm life again. CHAPTER FOUR: SOUTH HAVEN ANOTHER TEMPORARY HAVEN We stayed in New York only long enough to look around and get ready for the long cross-country train trip to Michigan. You might as well have said “Oregon” or “Alaska” or “Argentina”! We knew nothing about a place...

A New Free Land CHAPTER THREE: GOING TO AMERICA As far as I'm concerned, Austria was the most wonderful place on earth. I had my family and my dog Booby. I had all the freedom to wander and play that anyone could ask for. But times were very hard in those years after the war. People were...

Rolling along here. CHAPTER TWO: AUSTRIA: A TEMPORARY HAVEN Where we lived in Upper Austria, in the countryside around Attuning- Buchheim, daily life was more or less quiet. I say “more or less” because in April of 1945, a few months after we arrived, all hell broke loose. The Americans...

Here we go! CHAPTER 1 ON THE RUN The way I figure it, I was a born hustler. My mother told me that I was actually born in a wagon. This was in 1944 somewhere in Poland. If you know anything about history, you know that Poland in 1944 was not a place you wanted to be. Bombs were dropping...

A couple of weeks ago I started releasing pages of chapters of a book in NPR. I'm writing before it's too late. I figured it's time to let the more current 'Cue Games' oriented members/viewers get a peek. BTW, I left His name blank in the pages so far. If anyone realizes/guesses/knows whom...

Jimmy was a 'Personality' He had a lot of 'Style/Dress/Manner/Smooth Talking/Intimidating at the table.

Put some very dark 'Sunglasses' on, it bother You that much!

Not really. Like I said, His best playing days were when he was younger. The Best players playing 9 ball, Buddy Hall, Steve Mizerak, Nick Varner, Johnny Archer, Billy Incardona, Wade Crane, Jimmy Marino, Cornbread Red... could all give Jimmy the (8) for sure!

I can see them better! Why, does it bother You?

No One is scoffing at this idea! He just doesn't have the 'Merit' other choices for inductee's have! Jimmy didn't have 'Longevity' as a Top player! The Best pool He played was when He was very young, (19-25). At that time, 'Straight-Pool' was His Best game, when that faded out it became 9...