best stories about taking off a sucker

C

cesarmorales

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
The best story I know about a total not knowing what the hell is going on person getting taken for some cash.

Moyers pool hall, Austin, Texas, 1970's. Some new University of Texas student is hanging around Moyers pool hall just playing pool for fun with friends. This place had plenty of vultures hanging around 24 hours a day.

A vulture starts talking to this mark in a friendly manner and they sort of make friends. The mark starts visiting Moyers on a regular basis to hang out with his new so called friends. The vultures find out that he has $20,000 in cash for his four years of college. Somehow his poor parents saved up the money and gave it all to him when he started at UT.

The mark notices that his new friends are gambling at pool and making money. He finds this exciting but has no pool skills so the vultures are not able to rope him into a pool game.

But, they tell him about playing craps. Back on a nine foot table, next to the golf snooker table they start playing craps late at night and let the mark win a few hands. "He is a natural, a born crap player, nobody can beat him". That is what they tell him.

Hey kid, there is a pimp that comes in here that plays for thousands and if you bring your cash here, show him you have some money, you can win a million dollars off of this guy.

Sure enough, the pimp shows up, silk suit, a couple of girls with him that looked like hookers and he was waving wads of cash around.

They set it up and the kid gets his cash out of the bank and they go at it.

I think it took about thirty minutes for the kid to lose his 20k. All of the vultures in on it were pushing him to bet more, bet higher, that was just a bad roll, you will get it back, your a natural. I saw times where the kid should have won the hand but the pimp would swipe up the dice and say he lost and the kid had no idea what happened.

I remember when the kid realized he was broke, he just started crying and walked out the back door of moyers and was never seen again.

Ok, I will get crap about this being a bullshit story from some of the people on AZ billards that are always trying to be negative about any posts but I think there could be somebody from the Texas area that is familiar with this story.

They may be able to name the vultures too.
 
cesarmorales said:
The best story I know about a total not knowing what the hell is going on person getting taken for some cash.

Moyers pool hall, Austin, Texas, 1970's. Some new University of Texas student is hanging around Moyers pool hall just playing pool for fun with friends. This place had plenty of vultures hanging around 24 hours a day.

A vulture starts talking to this mark in a friendly manner and they sort of make friends. The mark starts visiting Moyers on a regular basis to hang out with his new so called friends. The vultures find out that he has $20,000 in cash for his four years of college. Somehow his poor parents saved up the money and gave it all to him when he started at UT.

The mark notices that his new friends are gambling at pool and making money. He finds this exciting but has no pool skills so the vultures are not able to rope him into a pool game.

But, they tell him about playing craps. Back on a nine foot table, next to the golf snooker table they start playing craps late at night and let the mark win a few hands. "He is a natural, a born crap player, nobody can beat him". That is what they tell him.

Hey kid, there is a pimp that comes in here that plays for thousands and if you bring your cash here, show him you have some money, you can win a million dollars off of this guy.

Sure enough, the pimp shows up, silk suit, a couple of girls with him that looked like hookers and he was waving wads of cash around.

They set it up and the kid gets his cash out of the bank and they go at it.

I think it took about thirty minutes for the kid to lose his 20k. All of the vultures in on it were pushing him to bet more, bet higher, that was just a bad roll, you will get it back, your a natural. I saw times where the kid should have won the hand but the pimp would swipe up the dice and say he lost and the kid had no idea what happened.

I remember when the kid realized he was broke, he just started crying and walked out the back door of moyers and was never seen again.

Ok, I will get crap about this being a bullshit story from some of the people on AZ billards that are always trying to be negative about any posts but I think there could be somebody from the Texas area that is familiar with this story.

They may be able to name the vultures too.
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Thats a Pretty F uped Story
 
Once in Albany, GA I saw talented hustler John Ferber talk an idiot into a no win bet. Ferber said that he would play the 9 ball Ghost and he was willing to bet that he could clear the table before his third miss. If Ferber were to scratch, that would count as one miss and Ferber would get ball-in-hand for the next shot. Completely insane that a good player could get two free misses playing the ghost.

Of course the ghost won the first two games and the hook was set. Ferber proceeded to win the next 15 games and made around $1,600. The whole time the game was being played Ferber made it look very difficult and the mark was none the wiser.

As a spectator I enjoyed the show greatly. I was laughing the whole time.
 
I was like that kid in 64. In San Diego in the navy 17 yrs old hung out at 7 seas billiards and college billiards.I SAVED $500 to come home before i left for nam. Imade the mistake of saying i had $ in front of some*****scum.tThey let me hear how if they had a stake they could win all this cash.TO make a long story short they dumped me. The old guy at 7 seas clued me into what a dump was.I LEARNED EARLY WHAT POOL PLAYERS WERE. Thanks to dave leBLANC (SAN DIEGO DAVE) BIG RALPH AND YES SWANNE. PS you guys remember the sailor from the uss providence named jimmy paybacks are a*****.
 
taking off suckers TOTAL LOWLIFE

The people who tricked that kid out of his college money are total scum in my opinion.Anyone who thinks this is ok or clever should be put in the same classless dump.These are the same people who think beating up helpless people is ok and fun. This is the kind of scum that gives all pool players a bad name.
 
had to edit

catpool9 said:
This story starts out in 1975 and ends in 1984,
David Harcrow
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Ah well, since David pulled the story I pulled the quote. A shame, it was the best story in the thread!

I heard a few stories about me over the years, mostly about racing. Funny thing is that none of them were true, good or bad!

Hu
 
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I didn't get the cash.

I was in college and couldn't afford to lose much. I would only play cheap games I knew I could win. There was this old guy that would always come in on the weekends after the dance at the senior citizen center and I'd beat him and then the bar would close and I'd go home with my twenty or thirty bucks. I'd heard he owned race horses and had plenty of cash, but I never saw it until this...

One night he came in and asked me to play 9 ball for a dollar a game. I obliged and quickly made $3. He said double or nothing and I said sure. Well after doing that for a while, we were playing for almost $200 a game and I got the 3-9 combo dead. Mind you he's paying off every time. And I'm just waiting for him to go broke. I line up to shoot, miscue and he gets even.

Turns out, I ended up the sucker.
 
no big deal when you do the math

Dannydizzan said:
I was in college and couldn't afford to lose much. I would only play cheap games I knew I could win. There was this old guy that would always come in on the weekends after the dance at the senior citizen center and I'd beat him and then the bar would close and I'd go home with my twenty or thirty bucks. I'd heard he owned race horses and had plenty of cash, but I never saw it until this...

One night he came in and asked me to play 9 ball for a dollar a game. I obliged and quickly made $3. He said double or nothing and I said sure. Well after doing that for a while, we were playing for almost $200 a game and I got the 3-9 combo dead. Mind you he's paying off every time. And I'm just waiting for him to go broke. I line up to shoot, miscue and he gets even.

Turns out, I ended up the sucker.
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Start off at one dollar and double the bet every time you lose. Doesn't matter if you finally win 20 dollars or 20 million the first time you win, your net win will be one dollar. Now if he suckered you into playing a second game for $200 . . .

Hu
 
Nobody did it better than Grady&Alf

Hello. Good question about taking off suckers.
In the 70s Grady Mathews were traveling together but, at this time we were in Nashville, where I lived. There was a pool room owner named Bob Roney who played OK but went off to everyone who came through. I got him a few times. Bob swore he would never play another stranger. Grady and I were trying to figure out a plan, when we found a tortoise trapped on his back, in the road. We put it into a paper bag and Grady carried it into Bob's pool room and said he was Tiweena Slim from Bogy Bottom and he wanted to gamble on pool if he could keep his turtle behind the counter so he "could get some sleep" at which time he took it out of the bag and told it "Good night." Naturally everyone, especially Bob, thought he was a goofball. At the night's end Grady had all of Bob's money, the cash in the register and all he could borrow. When Grady got across the street to the car, Bob stepped out of the front door and threw the turtle across the road, still in the bag, and said "Hey! Don't forget your turtle. No turtles were injured in the making of this pool score. I used this story in my new book, in case you're interested.
Keep it nice. Alfie
 
sopadre said:
The people who tricked that kid out of his college money are total scum in my opinion.Anyone who thinks this is ok or clever should be put in the same classless dump.These are the same people who think beating up helpless people is ok and fun. This is the kind of scum that gives all pool players a bad name.
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Yes they are scum. But, keep in mind the kid thought he was stealing too. I think some people have said in other threads "a hustler can't hustle and honest man".
 
Gmanpoke...Here's the direct quote from Jack White 30 years ago..."You can't hustle a hustler, and you can't rob a thief!" LOL Still true today...:D

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com

Gmanpoke said:
Yes they are scum. But, keep in mind the kid thought he was stealing too. I think some people have said in other threads "a hustler can't hustle and honest man".
Click to expand...
 
You mentioned that you saw this kid getting cheated and you did nothing about it?

Or let me guess, wasn't your place, except you were close enough to see the face of the dice so you must have been in there good.

I wouldn't call this a taking off a sucker story at all. This is a sad post about someone being taken advantage of, you can call him a sucker when in reality people should have helped him avoid that situation totally.

cesarmorales said:
The best story I know about a total not knowing what the hell is going on person getting taken for some cash.

Moyers pool hall, Austin, Texas, 1970's. Some new University of Texas student is hanging around Moyers pool hall just playing pool for fun with friends. This place had plenty of vultures hanging around 24 hours a day.

A vulture starts talking to this mark in a friendly manner and they sort of make friends. The mark starts visiting Moyers on a regular basis to hang out with his new so called friends. The vultures find out that he has $20,000 in cash for his four years of college. Somehow his poor parents saved up the money and gave it all to him when he started at UT.

The mark notices that his new friends are gambling at pool and making money. He finds this exciting but has no pool skills so the vultures are not able to rope him into a pool game.

But, they tell him about playing craps. Back on a nine foot table, next to the golf snooker table they start playing craps late at night and let the mark win a few hands. "He is a natural, a born crap player, nobody can beat him". That is what they tell him.

Hey kid, there is a pimp that comes in here that plays for thousands and if you bring your cash here, show him you have some money, you can win a million dollars off of this guy.

Sure enough, the pimp shows up, silk suit, a couple of girls with him that looked like hookers and he was waving wads of cash around.

They set it up and the kid gets his cash out of the bank and they go at it.

I think it took about thirty minutes for the kid to lose his 20k. All of the vultures in on it were pushing him to bet more, bet higher, that was just a bad roll, you will get it back, your a natural. I saw times where the kid should have won the hand but the pimp would swipe up the dice and say he lost and the kid had no idea what happened.

I remember when the kid realized he was broke, he just started crying and walked out the back door of moyers and was never seen again.

Ok, I will get crap about this being a bullshit story from some of the people on AZ billards that are always trying to be negative about any posts but I think there could be somebody from the Texas area that is familiar with this story.

They may be able to name the vultures too.
Click to expand...
 
cesarmorales said:
The best story I know about a total not knowing what the hell is going on person getting taken for some cash.

Moyers pool hall, Austin, Texas, 1970's. Some new University of Texas student is hanging around Moyers pool hall just playing pool for fun with friends. This place had plenty of vultures hanging around 24 hours a day.

A vulture starts talking to this mark in a friendly manner and they sort of make friends. The mark starts visiting Moyers on a regular basis to hang out with his new so called friends. The vultures find out that he has $20,000 in cash for his four years of college. Somehow his poor parents saved up the money and gave it all to him when he started at UT.

The mark notices that his new friends are gambling at pool and making money. He finds this exciting but has no pool skills so the vultures are not able to rope him into a pool game.

But, they tell him about playing craps. Back on a nine foot table, next to the golf snooker table they start playing craps late at night and let the mark win a few hands. "He is a natural, a born crap player, nobody can beat him". That is what they tell him.

Hey kid, there is a pimp that comes in here that plays for thousands and if you bring your cash here, show him you have some money, you can win a million dollars off of this guy.

Sure enough, the pimp shows up, silk suit, a couple of girls with him that looked like hookers and he was waving wads of cash around.

They set it up and the kid gets his cash out of the bank and they go at it.

I think it took about thirty minutes for the kid to lose his 20k. All of the vultures in on it were pushing him to bet more, bet higher, that was just a bad roll, you will get it back, your a natural. I saw times where the kid should have won the hand but the pimp would swipe up the dice and say he lost and the kid had no idea what happened.

I remember when the kid realized he was broke, he just started crying and walked out the back door of moyers and was never seen again.

Ok, I will get crap about this being a bullshit story from some of the people on AZ billards that are always trying to be negative about any posts but I think there could be somebody from the Texas area that is familiar with this story.

They may be able to name the vultures too.
Click to expand...
the fact that you state this is your "best story" enlightens me on your character... perhaps if you emulated your avatars alter ego you would get more out of the game... After seeing this can any of us ever lament as to how the PGA makes millions while the PBA starves...
 
I concur. There is nothing funny nor interesting in hearing of a parents life savings wiped out along with 4 years of college tuition.
 
Questioning my character because I tell a story about a sucker getting taken is like condeming CNN for airing stories about Bernard Madoff who took off suckers for 18 billion dollars.

Assuming that I was a part of this scam, when I never mention me being a part of it is pure ignorance. Ignorance: "lacking knowledge or information as to a particular fact" Ignorance does not mean you are stupid, such as having a low IQ but it means you are not knowledgeable to the way things are.

I only reported what happened. I was at Moyers one night, there was a crap game going on at the back table, I sat up on the wall about ten feet from the table, if you remember Moyers you will remember the back wall having raised seats. I saw the kid loosing.

Yes, I saw how the pimp grabbed up the dice and told the kid he lost even though he should have won.

If you thought I should have jumped up and said, hey, he should have won that hand, then you need to be educated to life in a pool hall. You never cut into somebodies action, even if you know they are taking off a sucker. Only if the sucker is a friend YOU NEVER GET INVOLVED WITH SOMEONE ELSES ACTION.

If you do, then you may have to deal with buying new tires for your car, or even worse plastic surgery for your face.

It was after the kid was broke and leaving the place out of the back door did I learn the full story about how he had been suckered.

This post was not ment to honor people who take off suckers but there is a sucker born every minute.

Most of the people replying to this post had the right idea and contributed a story, I am sorry that a few had to come up with ignorant responses.

Just this week, a guy shows up at the gambling pool hall and loses 150 to player A. He shows up the next night and loses another 100 to player B. On the third night I call up player A and ask him if he is going to go to a local tournament and he says, no, the sucker is in here and playing player C now but I may be able to jump on him after he looses to C. So, I go to the gambling pool hall and player C has taken the sucker for another 150 and the sucker comes over to me and tells me how he could not figure out how he was losing. Player A was waiting for his chance but did not get any action that night. Hey, the guy was going to give his money to someone, that is a fact, he is a sucker.

That is how it works. Player A was telling me how he and other players would hang out for months at a place. No action at all. Then he goes to buy a burger at McDonalds and some suckers shows up at the action pool hall and gets take for three thousand dollars by another player. You have to be at the right place at the right time.

Figure it out, these suckers are going to give their money to somebody, Player A said it was like they hate their money, they just have to do something stupid.

But in the end, all of them, the suckers from the pool hall or the suckers that lost 18 billion from Bernard Madoff were all looking for easy money.

As far as comparing the golf world with the pool world. There is just as much sandbagging going on during golf money matches as there is in the pool room. There are other reasons as to why golf pros make so much more money than pool pros. It has to do with TV time.

Here is a new sucker deal going around now, has nothing to do with pool but it just shows how many suckers are out there. Unless you are a total idiot you may be familiar with the mortgage meltdown. How people were put into homes with a lower interest rate to get them qualified with the suggestion that when the interest rate went up they would be able to afford it because they should be making more money.

Since 2007, about 8 million homes have been foreclosed on or are in the pipeline to get foreclosed on. Thus the government has made new regulations to tighten down on sucker loans that are then sold to another real estate holding company that ends up taking the loss.

Here is the new sucker deal. Since the suckers can't get a bank loan sellers are doing 3 year loans and the buyer needs to get a new loan in three years. Of course the buyer could not have purchased the house with a bank loan because it was more than they could afford but they are happy with a bigger house then they could affort. So, in three years the owner asks for a balloon payment and then takes back the house and resells it to another sucker.

Suckers exist, they are out there, telling sucker stories does not make me a bad guy or does it make the internet bad for telling stories about stupid people in general.
 
cesarmorales said:
Questioning my character because I tell a story about a sucker getting taken is like condeming CNN for airing stories about Bernard Madoff who took off suckers for 18 billion dollars.

[...weak rant attempt to justify position snipped...]

Suckers exist, they are out there, telling sucker stories does not make me a bad guy or does it make the internet bad for telling stories about stupid people in general.
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Actually, the reason why you're getting the reaction you are, is because you're not just "innocently telling" these stories, but instead that you're GLORIFYING them. As if "taking off a sucker" is a glorious thing to do, or that "anyone who falls for these schemes and scams and gets their money taken, no matter how intelligent that person is and how insidious the scam is, is a glorious act."

The fact that you're glorifying these acts -- when you don't know the in-depth particulars of them (e.g. how do you know the kid wasn't given the hard sell and pressured into the position of betting his college savings) -- is very telling of your character. The stance often given by scammers is, "I didn't put a gun to your head to force you to put your money on the line." Sure, firearms may not've been used, but probably some seriously coercive tactics were.

Sure, there are some seriously gullible people in this world. And some of them fall for the silliest of scams -- worthy of candid camera. But not all people are this gullible, and sometimes -- no, make that many times -- some very intelligent and otherwise sage people get taken by insidious scams wrapped in layers of coercive tactics. There is quite literally a science behind these coercive tactics -- it's called "social engineering."

That Bernie Madoff example you cite to "help" your stance? Actually, it backfires, in that it was the largest financial fraud in history. Do you really think "all" of the people that fell victim to this fraud were "suckers" as you put it? Do *you* think if you were in the position to invest money, that you "are too smart" to fall for a fraud of this magnitude? Oh sure, you're going to say "yes," because, afterall, you're not a "sucker," right?

Sorry, I don't think romanticizing about some poor kid getting scammed out of his college tuition is "on the level." The only suckers in this society are the leeches who suck the lifeblood out of it, participating and glorifying these kind of underhanded acts.

-Sean
 
gotta be a line somewhere

Back when I was very young and dumb I let other pissant young hustlers convince me that the "big con" style of hustle was part of pool. This is the kind of thing where it wouldn't really matter if pool was involved or not, the pool is a minor part of it. I targeted a guy and took him for about sixty dollars, a nice guy that wouldn't have gambled for more than a couple dollars if he hadn't been led by the nose into it. I felt like crap afterwards.

About six months later I tried again. I wanted to be a pool player and "hustling was part of playing pool." Again I deliberately targeted an individual and conned him into betting way over his head. Took him for less than two hundred. Felt like crap for weeks afterwards.

I made myself a couple rules after that. One, I would never target someone to con and hustle again. Two, I'd never be the one to raise the bet over $5.00 a game, five dollars being pretty much the top end that people played recreational pool for. 9.05 an hour was top union wage for my trade at the time so making twenty or thirty an hour playing was doing OK and there were always plenty of wannabe hustlers wanting to jack the bet and let me make a good payday too. Hustlers were still fair game, do unto others as they try to do unto you, but I would never target working stiffs again.

After that I only passively hustled people, never considered it hustling. I hung bait out and if somebody tried to hustle me, they were the one that made a decision to prey on someone not me. I'm still hard pressed to feel bad when somebody that tries to take advantage of me at anything finds themselves with the gooey end of the stick.

When we choose to gamble there is a fine line between right and wrong. Every one of us has to decide where that line is for ourselves. How many of us jump in to protest when we figure the spot is a ball in our favor? Somewhere between there and conning a kid out of his parent's life savings there is a line. Very very few of us see the line as being in the same place.

Hu
 
No, no, no, Sean, a sucker is: a slang term for someone considered gullible enough to fall for a very obvious prank or con and go about unaware of it.

Now think about this real hard Sean, the main reason they are gullible is because they assume something. They assume they have the nut in a bet and/or will gain big rewards with little risk. Can you understand that assumption is the first step to being a sucker.

If you know anything about the pool world you will realize that taking off suckers is something that just about every top pro has a story about. Go to CJ Wileys webpage and read the story about, DID YOU SEE THE MOVIE. Look up some of the Ronnie Allen videos where he talks about shooting air barrels or robbing people. And it does not just have to do with pool. Golf magazines have stories about hustlers taking off suckers on the golf course. My real estate friends have so many stories about making sucker real estate deals.

But yes, pool is stuck with the public perception of hustling and taking off suckers. It is not because of my thread, it is the way it is.

I find it hard to understand how I am glorifying this story when I use the term Vulture to describe the actors that were involved? That is your assumption, isn't it, even after I explained in my follow up post that it was not my intention of glorifying taking off suckers.

As far as knowing if the kid was forced to bring his money to the table. Hey, you are acting like a cheap attorney now, assuming things. All I did was relate the story from what I heard and saw.

As far as the Bernie Madoff example. I retired at age 40 from a very good career in real estate. I put my money in CD's, low return, low risk. No, I would have not invested with Madoff or the stock market. Yes, those suckers did not check out where their money was going, it is really easy to do.

You make alot of assumption. Figure it out, that is the first step to being a sucker.
 
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