Hi Hu!!
I know a player, spooky good. Nobody knows his true speed, but he consistently runs 200 plus in practice. Older road dawg, never played in tourneys, but beat every top player of his day dumb enuf to to step up - for big coin. Very selective player. One good score last all year. Anything else was gravy.
I've heard tell he had to run a certain number of balls everyday after school b4 he could eat or do anything else. Sounds similar to your routine. Lol.
Recipe for a monster.
Nodoubtaboutit.
Speaking of routines, the more sadistic of saddam's sons was put over the olympic team. I seem to remember he flat killed a few competitors but some of his other training methods were interesting. A runner not run fast enough to suit him? He had them beaten on the bottom of their feet for hours. This seems like it would slow them down but apparently it did a lot for their mental game!
There were some unknowns in pool. I was pretty well unknown but the underground knew of me. Road players came knocking on my door and their grapevine had me becoming known to them. I became a running horse owner and trainer and that didn't leave much time for pool. Then came a wife and young'ns. A few years later I found myself on 24 hour call. So long pool!
I wonder if there are still some underground players like you mention. I suspect so, many are content to do their own thing. Some from older eras were big money specialists. In the old days these guys came to town and took off a good score and went away often with nobody including their victim aware they had been targeted by somebody making a living off of people who could afford to lose a good score.
Problem today is credit cards and ATM's, nobody totes big cash. It wasn't that common in the old days either, gentlemen would write checks and accept them between their fellow gentlemen. Titanic Thompson took off the man that owned Chrysler. One of the first things he did was take away a top of the line car. Ti wasn't a one trick pony though. He could take down the cash with pool although probably no better than a B player today. He could take it down with cards, golf at which he was world class left handed, very close right handed. After only winning by a stroke right handed he would offer somebody a chance to get their money back, he would play them double or nothing left handed the next day! Finally he had a whole list of ridiculously tough prop bets. Most of them didn't involve trickery other than getting someone to take the bet.
Hu