Greg Stevens Stories Please

jay helfert said:

James best game may have been One Pocket, but he played all games at a high level. He was asking Parica for the break, not even. James would not have gambled with Greg in his prime. He was too smart for that. Of course if Greg had been up for two or three days that might be different.

James and Jack did play a 50K (each) One Pocket match at DCC about 15 years ago. They played Eight Ahead and I think Jack was getting 9-8 or 10-8 (sorry I forgot exactly). I had a big piece of Jack's action and sweated it off and on for several days. I think it took four or five days to finish. Jack won. At the time it was the biggest pool match of all time, other than some of the huge games that took place in Detroit and with the Airplane man (Rosey) and of course Archie's game with Bobby Baldwin. The difference was that this was a real pool match between two great players and not just wealthy guys gambling high.

I hope James is doing okay. I liked that guy even though I didn't know him that well. He was a real sportsman who would get up there and play his heart out and never make a fuss about it. He and Jack played one of the best matches I've ever seen. Two warriors going at it full blast. That was an epic match.

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What was Gregs reasoning for staying up so long? He had to have known he’s going to play worse after having been up for 3 days. I’ve lived a “fun” life and can honestly say that even with “help”, playing pool for 3 days with no sleep is a difficult endeavor. His mental stamina must’ve been incredible.

Also, are the two matches you just mentioned in your book? Or can they be read about elsewhere?

Gatto138 said:

What was Gregs reasoning for staying up so long? He had to have known he’s going to play worse after having been up for 3 days. I’ve lived a “fun” life and can honestly say that even with “help”, playing pool for 3 days with no sleep is a difficult endeavor. His mental stamina must’ve been incredible.

Also, are the two matches you just mentioned in your book? Or can they be read about elsewhere?

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I don't think so. I do talk about Archie in both my books. In the first one I tell the story about gambling with him for 500 and 1,000 a game. In the second book I tell how Archie ran a thousand dollar bankroll into over thirty million in one year! It started with the pool match with Bobby Baldwin, the President of the Bellagio Hotel at the time.

Dean gave you the best answer for your first question. Greg had an addictive personality. He would play pool until he dropped and take "uppers" to keep himself going as long as he could. Then he would recover for two or three days and do it again. Rinse and repeat. As Dean said he was not the only one like that in the pool world. Personally I normally stayed up all night either playing, gambling or just watching pool until I was falling asleep in my chair. I would drag myself home early in the morning, sleep all day and do it again, day after day and year after year, for maybe eight years of my life! I only quit when I bought my first poolroom. I never took uppers either! The longest pool game I ever played was about sixteen hours long. I won over $300 playing for $5 a game! I will only add this one vivid recollection. I somehow felt good inside when I saw all the "suckers" stuck in traffic on their way to work at 8 AM and I was going the other way on the freeway and it was wide open. I know, sick huh!

I've seen far more addicted poker players who were just like that. They would get stuck and steaming and sit in that chair until they were dead broke and could borrow no more. Compared to the pool players the poker players were far worse imo. A broke poker player was a dangerous man!

My first long road trip was with Hawaiian Brian. Our road trip lasted two months. There area lot of stories from that trip but the one I remember most was when we hit the Le Cue in Houston. Brian matched up with Jack Terry and they played for almost three days. Brian played on the natural only smoking and drinking coffee. Jack was a whiskey drinker and got drunk at least three times during that match. White Crosses were prevelant back then but we knew enough not to take any as some of those drugs were spiked with something other than speed and you could "go off" due to those tainted drugs. Anyway Brian beat Jack out of $3500 at $50/game and the bet was never raised. A big score for 1970. I'm glad Greg Stevens wasn't there as a match with Brian would have surly happened and I don't know of too many players who could stay with Greg for a long session like that.

Does anyone have a picture of Greg Stevens?

Is Greg Stevens in this photo?

PoolBum said:

Is Greg Stevens in this photo?

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Sitting (LR) Don Watson, Joey Spaeth, Greg S.?, Bill Mullen?
Playing - Weenie Beenie shooting and looks like the guy from Philly who got shot, Harry Petros. He had a very hard break and a big stroke. I'll think of his name later.

jay helfert said:

I don't think so. I do talk about Archie in both my books. In the first one I tell the story about gambling with him for 500 and 1,000 a game. In the second book I tell how Archie ran a thousand dollar bankroll into over thirty million in one year! It started with the pool match with Bobby Baldwin, the President of the Bellagio Hotel at the time.

Dean gave you the best answer for your first question. Greg had an addictive personality. He would play pool until he dropped and take "uppers" to keep himself going as long as he could. Then he would recover for two or three days and do it again. Rinse and repeat. As Dean said he was not the only one like that in the pool world. Personally I normally stayed up all night either playing, gambling or just watching pool until I was falling asleep in my chair. I would drag myself home early in the morning, sleep all day and do it again, day after day and year after year, for maybe eight years of my life! I only quit when I bought my first poolroom. I never took uppers either! The longest pool game I ever played was about sixteen hours long. I won over $300 playing for $5 a game! I will only add this one vivid recollection. I somehow felt good inside when I saw all the "suckers" stuck in traffic on their way to work at 8 AM and I was going the other way on the freeway and it was wide open. I know, sick huh!

I've seen far more addicted poker players who were just like that. They would get stuck and steaming and sit in that chair until they were dead broke and could borrow no more. Compared to the pool players the poker players were far worse imo. A broke poker player was a dangerous man!

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I can remember several times in my playing life where I played for 12 to 16 hours and my game actually rose a ball or more during the sessions.
I always had so much else going on, it took me about 8 hours just to get down to only thinking about the pool game I was in.
I envied the guys who could just think pool, when I was gambling, but the other 95% of life, I was happy I was multi faceted.

Drug my old road partner out of a three day mess!

I passed by my old road partner's house and his wife said he was at the pool hall, had been there for three days. She and two small children were sitting there with no food.

When I got to the pool hall Bobby could barely stand and a wily old player that had bided his time until Bobby crashed was quickly taking everything Bobby had won in three days taking on all comers.

I knew it wasn't pool room etiquette but I didn't give a damn. I basically drug Bobby home by the ear! He had less than two hundred left after being up about fifteen hundred at one point. Bobby was a genuinely wild and crazy guy, he might have been up three days with a little help, he might have been up that long on the natch. When I got there he could best be described as semi-conscious.

I used to stay up thirty-six to forty-eight hours sometimes. Partially pool, sometimes other things. I learned that completely on the natch I would start hallucinating when I went long enough without sleep. I saw a white two story house in the middle of the interstate when I had been long enough without sleep. I remembered it sat on a hill about a half mile off the highway most of the time! Decided it was time to park the eighteen wheeler.

Playing pool I saw the effects of people getting tag-teamed and getting in games with somebody fresh when they were twenty-four hours or more without sleep. Made it a rule not to be the chump losing to a fresh player that couldn't reach my boot tops on a level playing field. Always made a date for three days or more further out with the guys wanting to play when I was fried. Most didn't want to do that, they were just looking for an easy mark with a pocket full of cash.

Hu

book collector said:

I can remember several times in my playing life where I played for 12 to 16 hours and my game actually rose a ball or more during the sessions.
I always had so much else going on, it took me about 8 hours just to get down to only thinking about the pool game I was in.
I envied the guys who could just think pool, when I was gambling, but the other 95% of life, I was happy I was multi faceted.

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I've always been a believer in playing long sessions to improve your game. Something happens after eight hours or so when you begin to get a little weary. Your body looks for easier ways to do things. You begin to make minute adjustments to your stance, stroke or ??. Those very small changes can raise your level of play when they become a natural part of your game. I don't know the science of it, just that it happens.

jay helfert said:

I've always been a believer in playing long sessions to improve your game. Something happens after eight hours or so when you begin to get a little weary. Your body looks for easier ways to do things. You begin to make minute adjustments to your stance, stroke or ??. Those very small changes can raise your level of play when they become a natural part of your game. I don't know the science of it, just that it happens.

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I asked Dave Hemmah once how long it took him to get in stroke. He said about 12 hours.

jay helfert said:

I've always been a believer in playing long sessions to improve your game. Something happens after eight hours or so when you begin to get a little weary. Your body looks for easier ways to do things. You begin to make minute adjustments to your stance, stroke or ??. Those very small changes can raise your level of play when they become a natural part of your game. I don't know the science of it, just that it happens.

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A few months ago, I played a 20-hour session. That didn't count for the time I had been up before I started playing. I probably was up for at least another 10 hears.

I played 20-hours straight with no eating (except a couple snacks) and a cup of coffee and an iced tea. There were no breaks, except for the bathroom.

My opponent was dying after about a 8 hours and kept asking me how I kept going and kept playing stronger and stronger. At about the 18 hours point I wasn't missing a ball and was free-wheeling and he couldn't make a ball. I was beating him 10 games to one.

I've always been able to play long sessions, even as old as I am now.

I could have kept playing for quite a few more hours, but I started when the opened and played until they closed, 0600-0200

When I was young and working in the pool hall, there were plenty of times that I played all day gambling and then we closed the pool hall down at night and played behind closed doors until they opened the next morning and we continued playing.

ShootingArts said:

I used to stay up thirty-six to forty-eight hours sometimes. Partially pool, sometimes other things. I learned that completely on the natch I would start hallucinating when I went long enough without sleep. I saw a white two story house in the middle of the interstate when I had been long enough without sleep. I remembered it sat on a hill about a half mile off the highway most of the time! Decided it was time to park the eighteen wheeler.

Hu

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I was long-winded....100 % on the natural all my life....unless you count black coffee.
...lots of three day gambling sessions...cards, backgammon, poker, gin...and billiards.

...what prompted me to respond to your post was the part about hallucinations.
I had read that the fourth day up it was natural to experience hallucinations...
...I’ve only had 2 four day sessions in my life....and I got them both times...
...like feeling a presence hovering in the peripheral.
...but I was ready for them because of my foreknowledge.

I feel we all need to dream....if you deprive yourself of sleep...the dreams will come in
the waking state.
Probably where the monks meditating in there desert cells got their marvelous visions.

I always felt a bit sorry for people that needed chemical warfare to do what I could do...
...naturally

pt109 said:

I was long-winded....100 % on the natural all my life....unless you count black coffee.
...lots of three day gambling sessions...cards, backgammon, poker, gin...and billiards.

...what prompted me to respond to your post was the part about hallucinations.
I had read that the fourth day up it was natural to experience hallucinations...
...I’ve only had 2 four day sessions in my life....and I got them both times...
...like feeling a presence hovering in the peripheral.
...but I was ready for them because of my foreknowledge.

I feel we all need to dream....if you deprive yourself of sleep...the dreams will come in
the waking state.
Probably where the monks meditating in there desert cells got their marvelous visions.

I always felt a bit sorry for people that needed chemical warfare to do what I could do...
...naturally

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There is a Joe Rogan podcast with a sleep expert (Matthew Walker) Where he talks about this.

You are exactly right. Alcohol, for example, doesn't let one dream when you sleep. Alcoholics get DTs and start hallucinating because they so desperately need to dream.

Here is a link to the podcast on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig

sixpack said:

There is a Joe Rogan podcast with a sleep expert (Matthew Walker) Where he talks about this.

You are exactly right. Alcohol, for example, doesn't let one dream when you sleep. Alcoholics get DTs and start hallucinating because they so desperately need to dream.

Here is a link to the podcast on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig

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Thanx for the link.....I will watch it

pt109 said:

Thanx for the link.....I will watch it

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It's a phenomenal discussion. It's very long but worth every second.

sleep took the back burner

pt109 said:

I was long-winded....100 % on the natural all my life....unless you count black coffee.
...lots of three day gambling sessions...cards, backgammon, poker, gin...and billiards.

...what prompted me to respond to your post was the part about hallucinations.
I had read that the fourth day up it was natural to experience hallucinations...
...I’ve only had 2 four day sessions in my life....and I got them both times...
...like feeling a presence hovering in the peripheral.
...but I was ready for them because of my foreknowledge.

I feel we all need to dream....if you deprive yourself of sleep...the dreams will come in
the waking state.
Probably where the monks meditating in there desert cells got their marvelous visions.

I always felt a bit sorry for people that needed chemical warfare to do what I could do...
...naturally

Click to expand...

When I was young I could get by on very little sleep. Two hours a night for about two weeks, a solid twelve-fourteen hour blast, back to the two hour thing. On the other hand, when I was ready to sleep, I could crash with a rock band playing next to me or on the pit wall at a circle track. I remember straddling the inside concrete wall and laying back after changing tires, "wake me up in forty laps or when there is a yellow flag." Short track, we changed tires between 35-45 laps back then. Used tires faster than fuel.

Funny thought about dreaming sleeping or not but it does make sense.

Hu

ShootingArts said:

When I was young I could get by on very little sleep. Two hours a night for about two weeks, a solid twelve-fourteen hour blast, back to the two hour thing. On the other hand, when I was ready to sleep, I could crash with a rock band playing next to me or on the pit wall at a circle track. I remember straddling the inside concrete wall and laying back after changing tires, "wake me up in forty laps or when there is a yellow flag." Short track, we changed tires between 35-45 laps back then. Used tires faster than fuel.

Funny thought about dreaming sleeping or not but it does make sense.

Hu

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I could run on 4hrs a night for a week then sleep for 12.
I fell asleep front row 50 yard line at the state fair tractor pull. Friend I was with said a lady behind us kept asking what was wrong with me. As there was a ambulance track side she was trying to convince him to call them to check me out. I was sleeping dont remember any of it!

Earlier I posted about Hawaiian Brian playing for three days on the natural and I was up the entire time also. Well when we finally got to the motel neither one of us could get to sleep. That's a horrible feeling just being so tired that you can't sleep. Of course we drank some alcohol and that helped but only for a few hours. It took a full two days to get back to a normal sleep pattern only to start all over again. Of course when you are in your 20's long sessions are a lot easier to manage.