Are Air Barrels ever justified?

I was beating a guy one day and I knew he was about to air barrel me so when he said to flip it, I said post the money. He went nuts and started running his mouth and told me "Why don't we just go outside and fight for the money?" I told him to post and the whole pool hall fell out laughing :-)
 
SJDinPHX said:
In the early years, it was almost accepted. I've been on both ends of it.
Although never for the kind of $$$$ you are talking about.
In high $$$ races,(or even by the game) anyone who doesn't post up, WILL get airbarrelled eventually. Most pool player's have a slightly different code of ethics than the rest of the world, or so it seems. JMHO

Dick
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I have to second what Dick said here. In the old days when we played someone, say for ten a game, and finally busted them for eleven or twelve games, we knew the "air barrel" was coming and we had to win that game too. It was all part of the "deal" between pool players. If a guy went broke, he got to take his air barrel shot at you. Not all players would do this, but many did, and it was accepted as something we had to deal with. Remember, a lot of the time, we were trying to keep these guys happy and coming back.

To top it off he might ask you for a "gapper" after you pay the time. This was a small loan so he had some money in his pocket. That was usually another ten or twenty bucks. So let's say you won $120 at ten a game, and got stiffed for the last game, so you were $110 winners. Now you had to pay $8 in time and loan the guy another $10. Your net win is $92. And that's the way it went a lot of the time, because one day the shoe could be on the other foot.

The only good news is that if the guy wanted to play you again, first he must pay back the loan, and you get the first game on the wire for the one he didn't pay you before. So it does eventually come back this way. And this is actually how things worked to a greater or lesser degree among real pool players. Now if you're in a strange town none of this holds water unless you play someone who knows you. And if I played a stranger who came into my room, he was absolutely posting!

I'll go even further here. When I played with a sucker (anyone who I could give weight to and rob easily), I would often let them cheat me. Yes, you heard me right. If I knew the guy was good for the money, if we were putting games on the wire, I would occasionally let them "steal" a game off the wire. Or maybe I would "forget" to mark one of my games. My opponent/mark would think he was getting away with something. But in reality he was just delaying the inevitable.

I even let guys steal balls from me in One Pocket. They never knew that I knew. It didn't matter, I was in total control of the game. I could win at will. You get my point. Sorry to say it, but I guess I was a bit of a hustler in that time. :)
 
Yikes!

watchez said:
... Yes, you can milk a cow every day but only slaughter it once. That is a good rule to follow. But I don't care to milk a cow if he is going to shit on my head when I do it.
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If you are milking a "he" you are milking a bull. Getting your head crapped on is the least of your worries! :D :D :D

Hu
 
Fatboy said:
Nah, I have armed body guards, they take care of me just fine. :grin:
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Since you approve of Air Barrels - you better hope that your body guards don't fire an air barrel at you and leave you hanging out on a rope by yourself ....or if you fire an air barrel at them and skip a paycheck, maybe they won't be there to have your back.
 
i haven't even read any posts on this thread,but here is my take. i grew up in the early 80s through ...now and i just kinda always expected an air barrel if i was playing by the game and say was up 6 or 8 games(getting paid each game) and when you won the last game and the guy said i dont quite have enough for the last game or " man can i keep that last game to eat on" i have never had a problem as long as the player didn't act like a jerk. of course if you were playing sets you posted.
 
You have to remember that most gambling pool players don't work for their money. Money bet is just for the rush and a # to keep score. So an air barrel to them is just a number...not hard earned money they had to work days for. Johnnyt
 
watchez said:
If you got this out of this thread, then you failed comprehension
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I am sppeed reading. Sometimes I miss stuff!

So, what about firing one off to a dude that owes your partner, is playing but not yet settled?

Air revenge? Air retribution? Air touche?
 
There was a time, though it was just a little before my time, that air barrels were somewhat accepted, if not expected. A person would go totally bust then shoot the final air barrel. The difference today is that no one ever plays long enough to go bust. Everyone shoots one or two barrels then runs out the door! :D
 
Black-Balled said:
I am sppeed reading. Sometimes I miss stuff!

So, what about firing one off to a dude that owes your partner, is playing but not yet settled?

Air revenge? Air retribution? Air touche?
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I would not play someone that owed a good friend of mine $$$$. In fact, I haven't. I would call my friend and let him know where he could be found.
 
corvette1340 said:
It came to my attention that some posters are trying to justify air barrels being shot in some circumstances. If a person loses a couple of thousand and then shoots an air barrel for the last $500 set, is it then justifiable? How is this different than someone shooting an air barrel for the first $500 game or set? You are still basically taking a shot at winning money while knowing that you can't pay if you lose. It is the same as stealing is it not? Discuss.
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Its simple. This type of air barreling is usually accepted and justified amongst gamblers and pool players that depend on pool alone as their income. There are some exceptions, but if I beat a guy out of 2k and he airs me the last game so be it and if I ever get another quarter out of him it would be a bonus. In fact, in most cirucumstances next time I saw him I would nullify the debt in order to get him to gamble some more, money posted of course. However, it would never happen because the correct way to gamble is to put the money up. This is not to be confused with pay after every game. The first game is posted to avoid any barrels being launched. I hate to say it, but really, if you get a barrel shot at you it is technically as much your fault as the detonator. It's kind of like busting a guy and then giving them some money back, which I've done before. Usually they ask to borrow and I come back with, " I can't loan that to you, but I'll give you this", which usually depends on on how much I won, but typically 10 to 15% of the score.
 
I was in Cincinnati in 1991, and we played all day and all night at Beechmont Billiards. I started off playing Tommy Stephenson and we played for like 6 hrs and he came up one set on me. After it was over, Tommy and I were sitting there shooting the shit and he says to me..hey your game just walked in the door. He points out this guy and says that guys a big go off..drug money. Tommy tells me he plays the guy with (if I remember correct) the 7/8 wild. I figure I would go offer the guy the same game and the locals would tell him me and Tommy played 6 hrs and he beat me even. Thats pretty much the way it goes down and pretty soon we are matched up playing $20 and then $30 a game nineball.

After about 3 hrs he has me stuck almost 10 games and he is high as a kite doing coke in the bathroom every other game. He was smoking cigarettes and he would lay the cig after a drag on the table rail and then go sit down and end up lighting up another one. At one point he has a cigarette on every rail and i was moving them to shoot. I was trying to not create any waves and just play pool and finally after many hrs the guy's game starts breaking down and I start playing better. I bust him, he borrows more money and I bust him again and he again borrows money. For a while it seems that he has no end to the amount of people willing to loan him dough. Finally, as the sun is coming up I beat him for the last of his money and by then we are betting 50 a game and the last game I was relieved for this to be over and never thought twice about how he had airballed me the last game. This was one time I was glad the airball came, I had been playing pool probably 15 hrs with only a brief 30 min break and I was exhausted.
 
as others have said, the air barrel closes the deal

As others have said, the air barrel closes the deal and ends the playing. If the other player does win the game he air barreled you on he is still down to two barrels, the one he just won from you and the next air barrel that he is gonna fire again :D , so he is usually just prolonging the inevitable. Occasionally a player comes back from the air barrel to come out ahead but the very reason it is a great story is that it is so rare.

Aside from doing it just to yank somebody's chain as I mentioned in an earlier post, I can only remember firing an air barrel once in my life and it was on the next thing to a lock. I was in my teens, it was a hundred a game, and the only way I could lose was scratching on the eight ball. Pooling funds with two friends with me, I had about forty dollars. I told them that if they saw me scratch on the eight ball or it fall out of order we were late for the door. That was about forty years ago and I haven't forgotten my one real air barrel.

Hu



uwate said:
I was in Cincinnati in 1991, and we played all day and all night at Beechmont Billiards. I started off playing Tommy Stephenson and we played for like 6 hrs and he came up one set on me. After it was over, Tommy and I were sitting there shooting the shit and he says to me..hey your game just walked in the door. He points out this guy and says that guys a big go off..drug money. Tommy tells me he plays the guy with (if I remember correct) the 7/8 wild. I figure I would go offer the guy the same game and the locals would tell him me and Tommy played 6 hrs and he beat me even. Thats pretty much the way it goes down and pretty soon we are matched up playing $20 and then $30 a game nineball.

After about 3 hrs he has me stuck almost 10 games and he is high as a kite doing coke in the bathroom every other game. He was smoking cigarettes and he would lay the cig after a drag on the table rail and then go sit down and end up lighting up another one. At one point he has a cigarette on every rail and i was moving them to shoot. I was trying to not create any waves and just play pool and finally after many hrs the guy's game starts breaking down and I start playing better. I bust him, he borrows more money and I bust him again and he again borrows money. For a while it seems that he has no end to the amount of people willing to loan him dough. Finally, as the sun is coming up I beat him for the last of his money and by then we are betting 50 a game and the last game I was relieved for this to be over and never thought twice about how he had airballed me the last game. This was one time I was glad the airball came, I had been playing pool probably 15 hrs with only a brief 30 min break and I was exhausted.
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uwate said:
I was in Cincinnati in 1991, and we played all day and all night at Beechmont Billiards. I started off playing Tommy Stephenson and we played for like 6 hrs and he came up one set on me. After it was over, Tommy and I were sitting there shooting the shit and he says to me..hey your game just walked in the door. He points out this guy and says that guys a big go off..drug money. Tommy tells me he plays the guy with (if I remember correct) the 7/8 wild. I figure I would go offer the guy the same game and the locals would tell him me and Tommy played 6 hrs and he beat me even. Thats pretty much the way it goes down and pretty soon we are matched up playing $20 and then $30 a game nineball.

After about 3 hrs he has me stuck almost 10 games and he is high as a kite doing coke in the bathroom every other game. He was smoking cigarettes and he would lay the cig after a drag on the table rail and then go sit down and end up lighting up another one. At one point he has a cigarette on every rail and i was moving them to shoot. I was trying to not create any waves and just play pool and finally after many hrs the guy's game starts breaking down and I start playing better. I bust him, he borrows more money and I bust him again and he again borrows money. For a while it seems that he has no end to the amount of people willing to loan him dough. Finally, as the sun is coming up I beat him for the last of his money and by then we are betting 50 a game and the last game I was relieved for this to be over and never thought twice about how he had airballed me the last game. This was one time I was glad the airball came, I had been playing pool probably 15 hrs with only a brief 30 min break and I was exhausted.
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I once beat a guy out of several thousand dollars playing Tonk for a hundred a game and double on undercuts and gins. He was a wealthy Bingo parlor operator. After the last game, he reached in his pocket and pulled out his last few bills. It amounted to about thirty or forty dollars. I told him to just forget it. ALL my pockets were stuffed with bills already. He insisted on paying me.

He went up to the counter and got the girl who was working there to give him all her bundled up ones. He came back over and handed me this stack of one dollar bills, in bunches of twenty each, held together with paper clips. It was one hundred dollars. I didn't want to take it, but he said he pays all his debts. So I took it. Then he asked me if I played pool. This was about 7AM after we had been playing cards all night. I told him I play a little. So he said we have to play some One Pocket sometime.

I have never seen him again, but I've only been back in Rusty's one time years later. I have been told that he was a bigger sucker at pool than cards. I guess I dogged it on this one. I was in town for the Trade Show in Ft. Worth and had a plane to catch. This was the show where Fats got inducted into the HOF. I had a choice to go back to Dallas the next night or watch Fat's induction. So I stayed.

The long version of this story is going into my book.
 
Never

If you are in far enough that you are bust in the first place, what would make anyone desparate enough to think that one more shot at the table will solve your problems after you've obviously been hitting them bad to begin with. Walk away and come back to fight another day.
 
SJDinPHX said:
In the early years, it was almost accepted. I've been on both ends of it.
Although never for the kind of $$$$ you are talking about.
In high $$$ races,(or even by the game) anyone who doesn't post up, WILL get airbarrelled eventually. Most pool player's have a slightly different code of ethics than the rest of the world, or so it seems. JMHO

Dick
Click to expand...

As Puckett used to say, " a man that don't shoot an air barrel just ain't trying hard enough"!
 
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