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A List of the Greatest Pool Players of All-Time
- Thread starter Thomas Martin
- Start date
As we've so often noted on the forum, comparison across the generations, while a lot of fun, is near impossible. The game of pool has evolved, and the level of play today is well above where it was even ten years ago.
Pool is a truly global game today, and this was not true until recently. The list of Fargo 800+ players has at least one player from each of Albania, Bosnia, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iraq, Serbia, Estonia, Lithuania and Indonesia. For the most part, these were not even considered pool-playing countries a decade ago.
The level will rise again, and, at some point, the game will likely produce a couple of cueists that play better than Filler and Gorst. What the greats all have in common is that they mass produced titles against their own contemporaries.
Pool is a truly global game today, and this was not true until recently. The list of Fargo 800+ players has at least one player from each of Albania, Bosnia, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iraq, Serbia, Estonia, Lithuania and Indonesia. For the most part, these were not even considered pool-playing countries a decade ago.
The level will rise again, and, at some point, the game will likely produce a couple of cueists that play better than Filler and Gorst. What the greats all have in common is that they mass produced titles against their own contemporaries.
To that point, I recently watched videos of some matches between the best players from the 1980's and 90's. It looks like a completely different game the way they played back then. All balls spotting up, cue ball behind the line, pushout, and most of all the nappy cloth and the power stroke it took to play well on it. Their kicking was mediocre compared to today's players, jumping balls almost non existent and safety play very rudimentary by comparison. The game has changed dramatically in the last thirty odd years. Fast cloth, Texas Express and jump cues have revised everything.
8intheside
Well-known member
I’m not doubting his talent, but with such a small sample size it’s hard for me to name him the goat
8intheside
Well-known member
How did you forget Nick Varner!? Who in my opinion was a better all around player.
Agreed, Jay. When you watch it, the game of yesteryear seems antiquated on many levels.
Still, one point of confusion for me is that while the AVERAGE level of defensive play has skyrocketed, I still feel that Reyes, Pagulayan and Varner remain the three best ever in the area of 9ball defense. I keep expecting to find somebody of this generation whose 9ball defensive play surpasses theirs, but it hasn't happened.
8intheside
Well-known member
My top 10 in no particular order.
Efren
Shane
Nick Varner
Mike sigel
Willie
Wimpy
Earl
Fedor
Jim rempe
Alex P
Honorable mention. Allison Fisher
Efren
Shane
Nick Varner
Mike sigel
Willie
Wimpy
Earl
Fedor
Jim rempe
Alex P
Honorable mention. Allison Fisher
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Sun - Don’t forget Parica. In his prime and when Varner, Buddy, Siegel and Efren all in their prime he was not an underdog for the money. He also was maybe the most clean living player of all time. No smoking, drinking or bad eating habits. He just had a great game of nine ball.
All time? How about François Mingaud? He showed people how to spin the ball.
François Mingaud - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Mingaud was a prisoner. He is the one that gave pool a bad reputation we have been trying to escape ever since!
I never see Marie Antionette on these lists. Surely did as much as anyone to promote pool in her time. She had a solid ivory cue kept in a special locked cabinet. One key, and it stayed on a ribbon around her neck. Probably the real reason they cut her head off, to get that key!
Hu
8intheside
Well-known member
I heard he liked betting the ponies, not sure if that’s a bad “habit” or not. But yeah Pariica was a beast!
If you had seen him play you might feel differently. Harold had it all; great skill, great composure, great concentration/focus and a competitive drive to be better than anyone else at any and all games. He excelled at both the physical and mental parts of the game and did both better than anyone else I ever saw. I never saw him waver on any shot or in any situation. No hand wiping, frowns, or any other show of exasperation. He was always 100% positive he could do what needed to be done to win the game, and he did. Efren was the only other one who had that same quality, but even he did not exude the strength of Harold Worst.
I will only add that off the table he carrried himself with the same sense of inner strength. Harold Worst was a Man's Man, and he had the respect of all he encountered, be they a champion player or a top hustler. No one crossed him and no one really challenged him. He was revered by the entire pool community.
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If it was only about the money, we might have to proclaim Jack Cooney, legend of the Detroit action scene, the greatest player of all time.
No doubt Parica was a stone-cold killer in action, and over breakfast in the late 1990s, he told me that there was nobody in the world that would play him a 10-ahead set without a spot. A case can be made that Parica was the best player of the late 1990s, but his career resume falls far short of that which is found among the game's greatest legends. That is why he was not inducted into the BCA Hall of Fame until he was 65 years old.
Worst may have possessed a gear that was comparable to the greatest of all time.
Eddie Taylor once suggested that Worst and Lassiter were basically equals, and if that is so, Worst is rightly reckoned a player having had legendary talent at pool. Eddie raved similarly of John "Rags" Fitzpatrick, calling him the greatest all-around player he had ever watched. I am too young to have watched Worst or Fitzpatrick, both of whom died sadly and suddenly in their 40s, but their tragic deaths denied them both a chance to build the kind of resume of titles that may well have come.
Whether players like Worst and Fitzpatrick belong on the list of greatest ever is a debate for the ages. What's undeniable is that their playing speed makes them legendary players.
8intheside
Well-known member
I really appreciate your insight into Harold worst. It’s a shame he didn’t live longer. Who know what he could have accomplished!
Interesting post. I knew both players quite well, gambling with and against Jack Cooney and backing Parica in tournaments and watching him play so many times. First the latter, Jose Parica was the dominant rotation player of his era without question. ALL deferred to him in 9-Ball or Ten Ball. After he crushed Earl at Ten Ball, no one ever tried playing Jose even at either game. Buddy conveniently avoided him. Jose was to put it simply a better player than all the rest of the game's greats at that time. Not Sigel, not Varner, not Archer, not anybody was a match for him. Jose shot straighter, never missing a ball for hours on end and his cue ball control was something to marvel at. I could just sit and watch him roll that cue ball all day long. Yes, better even than the great Efren!
As for Jack he was the greatest money player the game had ever seen, and it was not even close. That he was a stone cold hustler, there is no doubt. But the fact that he was so successful at it set him apart. When all the other top hustlers were looking for four figure scores, Jack was making high five figure and six figure wins, and doing it a few times every year. Underneath all his hustling was a great pool player, perhaps the second best One Pocket player after Ronnie Allen. Jack was way too smart to match up with the other big guns of One Pocket like Shorty, Taylor, Bugs and Ervolino. It would only kill his action and he knew it. He did play one $100,000 set with James Walden at DCC some years back. That was Jack's swan song in pool and he went out on top.
I saw Jack's real speed when he had to show it, and he could come with any shot under pressure. His 9-Ball game was also top speed and he hid that fact well. A few very good players found out that it was not a good idea to challenge Jack at 9-Ball for big money.
Rags died at 40 in 1960. Worst died at 37 in 1966. I did not come on the pool scene until 1963 so I never saw Rags play, but he was also revered by all the top players of that era as the best of them all. And that assessment included Lassiter who was a contemporary of Rags. Lassiter may have been his equal at 9-Ball but at One Pocket the only other player mentioned in the same breath with Rags was Cincy Clem. It was always important to me to know about these great players, so I would ask people like George Rood and Marcel Camp about them. Rags probably should be considered a top ten player all time based on the recollections of his peers, but only because I never saw him play I did not include him. Rags was strictly a money player, having no interest in tournaments which paid a pittance compared to what he could win gambling.
A little P.S. to the above. Worst actually challenged Lassiter to a $10,000 challenge at 9-Ball and the game never happened. I was told that Lassiter liked his reputation as the world's best 9-Ball player and didn't want to take a chance on losing it. Worst next went after Ronnie at One Pocket, telling him that in a couple of months he would play him. That's when he got ill though and they never got a chance to play.
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