A couple of photos from the Dallas pool scene in the 1960s

SJDinPHX said:
James Christopher (AKA the Sniper) and I go way back to when he was a kid growing up in Corpus Christi. Frank Rodriguez and I went down there one time, and he gave me fits on a Bar Box (3 X 6 big cue ball)

We played for about 2-3 days off and on, and it was only Rods (Banana's) sharp moves on the rail, that got us out of there with the $$$. I think James and I actually broke about even, in games played. We later teamed up a few times and made a few scores. Sharp manager, and a square shooter. Always played all games well.

Talked to Charlie Brown a few weeks ago. He said James beat some guy for about 12K recently (in Mobile I think) So I guess he's still in action.

PS.. Not your fault Bill, but that is a terrible picture of him...Is that a "mullet" haircut he's sporting ?..:eek:
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Dick, I "borrowed" the photo from a Website that showed pics of "Arkansas Pool Players." You might recognize a few on this site: http://imageevent.com/coram/arkansaspoolplayers
 
mandersotx said:
Are the initials B.I.?
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Ican see where you might get the idea. Billy wasnever a Tusch Hog at all. he was never loud, just Billy. He was though A pretty good Golden Gloves Boxer and stil a great boxing fan. I thought it was Robert Clark.LOL
 
BillPorter said:
Sorry, I am familiar with the name, but I never knew him. Is this the guy? The one on the right?

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That's him. See what I mean about the big teeth?
 
BillPorter said:
A guy I was helping with a book about his life as a pool hustler asked my opinion about using a particular person's real name in the book. As we discussed this issue, I recalled having seen a couple of photos of the person in question when I had visited them a few years back in Dallas. The author asked if there were any way he could get the photos for his book, so we embarked on a project of tracking down the pics. A friend of mine in Dallas (Mike Haines) was able to go to the person's house and eventually they came up with the photos. Mike took them to Fed Ex/Kinko's to be scanned and sent along to me. I edited them and sent them along to the guy who is writing the book.

So it occurred to me that someone on AZ might be old enough to remember the world-class tush hog in these pics. Anyone? Anyone?

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I'm guessing not many people fired air barrels at those guys.
 
alstl said:
I'm guessing not many people fired air barrels at those guys.
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Might have done it once, not likely to do it twice....

Actually, as Dick McMorran correctly pointed out, Vernon (the muscle guy) was probably more accurately described as a bully than as a tush hog. On the other hand, he did do some money collecting in his day and there are some stories about him collecting from people who didn't initially want to pay up. Vernon came up with some creative ways of persuading people to settle their debts and I'll let you imagine how one of these methods led his being nicknamed "Ice Pick" by a few insiders.
 
BillPorter said:
Well, I know that Vernon was sure it was Danny Matthews when he gave the photo to Mike Haines yesterday. That "Bald Eagle" nicknames sounds right, but I'm not sure. Danny was a pretty smart gambler, but Titanic busted him one night on a dice proposition. (How many rolls of a single die to roll any given number. Ti gave Danny 3 rolls one time and 4 the next, alternating 3 and 4 rolls. That is equivalent to 3.5 rolls but unfortunately for Danny, 3.8 is the break-even point on that bet.)
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Bill, how did Ti come up with propositions like this? Was he secretly a math whiz or something? That's pretty smart.
 
donut said:
Bill, how did Ti come up with propositions like this? Was he secretly a math whiz or something? That's pretty smart.
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Ti had very little formal education, so it seems unlikely that he did the math behind this proposition. It is my belief, though I can't prove it, that some of Ti's propositions, the ones that involved probabilities/statistics, came from mathematicians/statisticians. While he didn't seem to have the math abilities to figure them out, he definitely had the memory and smarts to keep complicated propositions in sharp focus.
 
BillPorter said:
Ti had very little formal education, so it seems unlikely that he did the math behind this proposition. It is my belief, though I can't prove it, that some of Ti's propositions, the ones that involved probabilities/statistics, came from mathematicians/statisticians. While he didn't seem to have the math abilities to figure them out, he definitely had the memory and smarts to keep complicated propositions in sharp focus.
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Thanks, Bill. Everything I hear about Ti makes him sound like a pretty smart cookie. And thanks for posting the photos.
 
[QUOTE=BillPorter;
I may not be remembering this right, but didn't Vernon get physical with you once? Rubbed your face in a bush or something like that?

He did have me over a table once with his fist ready to hit me but reason prevailed and he passed.

Jerry Trigg had the best stroke I ever saw. Only problem was he would draw the cue ball 3 rails for position when he could just stop it. Took a while to beat him.

We all spent a lot of time with Titanic. Me most of all.

Do you have the book on Ti? Great read.

Bill Stroud
 
bstroud said:
BillPorter said:
I may not be remembering this right, but didn't Vernon get physical with you once? Rubbed your face in a bush or something like that?
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He did have me over a table once with his fist ready to hit me but reason prevailed and he passed.

Jerry Trigg had the best stroke I ever saw. Only problem was he would draw the cue ball 3 rails for position when he could just stop it. Took a while to beat him.

We all spent a lot of time with Titanic. Me most of all.

Do you have the book on Ti? Great read.

Bill Stroud
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Yeah, I wasn't there that night; I probably got the story from Alfie Taylor.

As for the Titanic book, I read one some years ago, but I don't recall the title. Why don't you check and post the title in this thread. None of these young'uns have even heard of him. I'd bet that if you gathered some experts on the history of gambling, Ti would be rated among the top five gamblers of the 20th century.

Everyone knows you as a cue maker, but not everyone knows you played a pretty sporty game of pool. I dug around among my old pool pics and found one of you at the table. Do you know when and where this was taken? I do in case you have forgotten.

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