Bring Back Hustling Culture

SBC said:
Sheltered existence of league players who demonize gambling while letting league corporations fleece them.
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Some people think they need to drink to play pool.

What’s worse? Drinking or gambling?

If I drink ½ of a beer I can’t make a ball, sober I can run 2 balls.

I’m a lite weight lol

Fatboy 🍻
 
Fatboy said:
That’s my understanding as well. Came from croquet on a rainy day in France. Couldn’t get wet, so a indoor version of a similar game was created.

Mallets were replaced by cues. I don’t recall the when advent of pockets in place of wickets occurred.

The word “pool” it is my understanding came during some period of economic hardship which was wide spread and work was limited so people gambled as a means to a end when there was little employment or money. Talk about tough action.

We still call it pool today, which is inaccurate as to the origins of the game.

Leagues are about the newest iteration of this sport.

And wow can you write. I need the 5 ball in writing from you!

Best and thanks, fun topic

Fatboy <——-missed history class as well😀
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I like to write ...

Often I don't take the time to do a good [let alone great] job of "proof reading" and as best as I can tell Lucifer himself is my "fucking" spell checker especially when using "me hemorrhoid" phone from Samsung ...

his "boss" apparently does work in mysterious ways, [or is that in "hilarious" and/or malicious" ways?]

BTW, I might write up a chapter or two about my "road trip" back in the early 70's for the primary purpose of sending it to his surviving older brother [who I hope still survives to this day] ... Doug was one of my best ever friends and not only introduced me to pool on the trip, but taught me how to play well enough [and quickly enough] that after 10 weeks on the road I was making money playing [although NOT hustling!] for cash against guys that had been playing for 5 - 10+ YEARS ...

What a trip!

It would include a lot of humor in it, as ...

I have a "brown belt" in self-deprecating humor and a "black belt" in self-defecating humor ... [or maybe its the other way around?]

WTF is self-defecating humor you ask?

Well, you'll actually have to ask ...
 
SBC said:
Sheltered existence of league players who demonize gambling while letting league corporations fleece them.
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League players get the thrill of competing without having to gamble. Years ago if you were a pool player and you wanted to see if you could actually play you had to match up with somebody and play.

We often had almost competitions with other pool rooms. We'd end up driving maybe 40 miles and spend the night there matched up playing their players and they may do the same. No big money involved nobody getting angry or wanting to pull a gun. Just a little symbolic gun fighting.
 
middleofnowhere said:
League players get the thrill of competing without having to gamble. Years ago if you were a pool player and you wanted to see if you could actually play you had to match up with somebody and play.

We often had almost competitions with other pool rooms. We'd end up driving maybe 40 miles and spend the night there matched up playing their players and they may do the same. No big money involved nobody getting angry or wanting to pull a gun. Just a little symbolic gun fighting.
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Sure was fun!

Going to different rooms every weekend to gamble and playing on home court during the week with your friends cheap to get better for the next weekend and maybe a big score.

The process of getting better, adventure to new rooms or some joints you might go to just often enough they were familiar but they weren’t home court. And friends along the way.

Good times. I suppose league is a form of that, but I’m too independent to be told where to go, when to play and follow some schedule. I’m the captain of my own ship in pool & life.

All good fun
Fatboy ⏰🎰
 
Biloxi Boy said:
I am beginning to feel that the exposure and interests here at AZB are so divergent that Mike should consider two new sub-forums: Gambling Related and Non-Gambling Related.

I am struggling mightily to understand how some folks have had such little exposure to the gambling aspects of pool. Did they just jump in yesterday? Are there now pool venues with no, or very little, gambling? It is one thing to not participate in pool gambling but to be involved in pool and lack a fundamental understanding is another. Will someone please explain?
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for whatever reason, i don't think you actually care, but since you asked...

i was maybe 9 years old when i first started smashing balls around on my cousins table. we played 8 ball and 9 ball (sans rules) with the house cues and chalked like we were drilling for gold. i don't think any of us ever saw a glimmer of a runout, once, ever, for years.

when i was 13 we moved into a house that had room for a table downstairs, so i begged my folks to get us one. we got a nice 8' furniture table with giant bucket pockets. i proceeded to smash balls around with friends when they would come over, and would do my best to get my folks to come down and play but they had little interest. i bought virtual pool 2 for PC and Lou Boutera himself digitally tought me how to break 9 ball and put draw on the ball (does anybody remember this ?? i've searched for the videos and cannot find them).

as i grew older and more involved in skating i played less and less pool until about the age of 19. every once in a while i would grab the cue and smack some balls around. i started to notice one of the slate beds had risen and there was a noticeable edge a third of the table. this got more and more irritating, but i wasn't good enough for it to matter much.

me and my lady had another couple as friends, and they had a kid. the mother was going to nursing school and working a job afterwards, and the father would watch the child during these hours. that left him with a lot of time to play. as we started to play for 3 hours a day and then 4 and then 6 and then 8 and then sometimes 12, our games developed. that edge in the table became absolutely unacceptable and i clocked about 19 hours completely redoing the thing all by my lonesome, one playing card at a time. i stretched the cloth as tight as it would damn well go and the table began to play noticeably faster.

my girlfriend bought me a $20 mizerak graphite cue from Big5 and i proceeded to scuff the tip away into nothingness trying to get a good grip on the cue ball. i replaced it with an elk master and did the same thing to it again, knowing nothing of burnishing. i cut up a $1 cotton glove so my chalky dusty graphite cue would stop clinging to my skin and really really started to hate the way that pool felt.

at this point, thanks to his majesty sir patrick flemming, i had spent countless hours watching Accu Stats matches on youtube and like many others was captivated by Efren's style of play. i had never considered a safety until watching him play 9 ball. after seeing the action these guys were getting on the cue ball and hearing the commentators mention "skid" (which, again, i had never considered), i realized that i had never once cleaned my pool balls. i think i used hot water and soap if i remember correctly, but christmas was soon and i was gifted a set of the aramith stone balls, and my first "real" cue (that i still play with today). my old man told me to pick out whatever i wanted. i knew nothing so i bought the one i liked the looks of most.

with this bad boy and the new balls i was quickly able to break and run 8 and 9 ball racks. i tried to get my buddy to play one-pocket but he was bored after 2 or 3 games. we played a whooooole lot of bank-the-8, and i had a few other goofy house rules like you could make your last ball and the 8 ball in the same shot as long as you called it. if i recall you also had to SHOUT "COMBO" before shooting a combination. we were goofy kids and i miss the hell out of when pool was that much fun.

Alas, this blessed and most cherished time of my life which felt like eternal bliss was only a short few months. i quickly packed up and moved to denver to pursue my career of professional rollerblading.

i was poor. very poor. and i missed having a table. the folks at the wynkoop brewery were kind enough to let my broke ass shoot pool for nothing and not order a single thing during the early morning hours of the mid week. i think they felt sorry for me. there was an older gentleman by the name of Ed, aged at least 70 who used to ROLLERBLADE to the billiard room to shoot by himself. i noticed his skates one day and mentioned them and we got to playing. i would see him there once in a while and he told me i had "a really damn nice stroke" which at the time was the absolute nicest thing anyone could have said to me, much less this older more seasoned shooter. if anybody knows who i'm talking about, please, i'd love to hear more about him. this was in maybe 2010.

my friends were all alcoholics, but i had done that dance at a young age and didn't do a whole lot of drinking. invariably i would end up as the designated driver, and occasionally whatever dive bar we would end up at would have a table. We would frequent Lancer Lounge, Gabors, Sobo 151 (which is still around and keeps good tables), and across the street at the Skylark. I used to go to the old Tarantulas back when it was upstairs and across the street.

so, as you can see, i never ran into any action, ever. occasionally some drunk asshole would wander over to our table and slam his quarter down, and i would generally just pack and up and leave and give him the table. more than once, i had a stranger demand that i play him for money. I'd seen The Color of Money ;) so i knew allllllll about YOU GUYS (haha just kidding y'all). i would always decline and offer to play for fun, and usually that was enough to get the fella harrumphing away with a grimace, mad that he wasn't able to steal from me. Mind you, this is when me and 3 to 5 other guys are all sharing one bar table to begin with. we were having plenty of fun and had zero interest in even ENGAGING with strangers, much less gambling with them.

this grew intensely tiresome for me and i had begun to rise through the imaginary ranks of rollerblading in my own mind, so at 23 i hit the road as a skater much as you "road players" do in search of new terrain and fresh faces. i lived off my bare bottom dollar for many many years, with no car and not even a cell phone (in 2013 this was unheard of). i didn't have any time to play pool, and when i did, i certainly didn't have a cent to gamble with even if somebody had wanted to play me. i stopped playing the game altogether.

now, its 2022. i picked up my cue last year, in absence of friends to skate with and motivation to do it alone. it has been a long and grueling several months and my stroke still feels off. i discovered a love of 14.1 and am terrible at it. i really wish i had learned to play straight pool when i was a kid, but alas. straight pool has humbled me and taught me many valuable lessons, and in the last week i started to run out 8 ball racks again.

i don't know any pool players in this town. i've posted on here and on facebook looking for folks to play with but it seems these days people only really care about their leagues. i went down to Felt a few times and played by myself but never once spoke to another human. i did, however, run into the operator of a league who was in the middle of straight pool match on the table next to mine. I asked him if he or anybody in his league might like to play some with me for practice outside of their league play, but nobody was interested in that.







so. that's how.
 
Minnesota Phat said:
I've only recently gotten serious about pool, and my experiences playing against anyone who will play me suggest to me that there's a real need for a niche between league play, tournaments, and casual games.
It seems like "hustling" is at the center of a lot of the romance and mystique of the game of pool. "Hustling" is not really the right word for what I'm talking about - Earl Strickland claimed that he wasn't a hustler, despite winning a lot of money on staked games - so by "hustling" I just mean wagering money on one's own skill.
The most famous pool movies are all about hustling, aren't they? The story of Earl Strickland from the Sky Sports documentary about his life is much more interesting than the stories of players who played a lot in grandpa's basement, joined a league, and then moved on to tournaments.
Tournaments, leagues, and casual play are all cool, but tournaments tend to be stuffy, leagues can sometimes be a bit cliquish, and casual players can sometimes be really annoying.
I go to some billiards halls here in Minnesota, and if anyone is placing stakes on games, it's extremely low-key, because I haven't seen it happen at all. Bar players will sometimes put some money down at bars, but not much, and I haven't found any bar where there's a culture of "betting" on games.
I think it would be really cool to see a table with a bunch of money on it, and a one-on-one game with more riding on the outcome than ego alone. As a novice player, I'd throw down a fiver here and there just for the opportunity to play someone who has dedicated himself or herself to mastering the game, and it would be thrilling if I actually won every once in awhile (which does happen sometimes - LOL). Playing anyone serious at a bar table typically costs at least $10/hour anyway, and hiring a coach is expensive as well - it's probably more expensive to be trained than by a coach than to be schooled by a hustler, if you keep the stakes low.
I think the decline of American talent in billiards is directly related to the decline of hustling culture in the USA - the incentive to master the game isn't what it once was, because being great at pool is no longer a ticket to a reasonably lucrative payday. Meanwhile, the Philippines has produced great players who came out of the hustling culture of that country, and I don't think that's a coincidence.
For a billiards hall to do it right, there would have to be clear, strict house rules for etiquette and the rules of the game, someone available to referee, and someone who could act as a bouncer, if needed. In some areas, there would need to be lobbying to change the laws to allow "betting" on pool. It would also be good to have certain "money" pool tables where seating is available nearby for interested onlookers to spectate - I think there are tons of people who would be interested in having a drink or a meal and watching top-level "hustlers" compete in money games.
While I personally dislike gambling, except for "betting" on oneself, the popularity of pool with the general public would likely skyrocket if spectators were also allowed to bet on games.
If there was a culture of hustling at pool halls, it would make playing for stakes much safer for all involved. A setup like the one I'm suggesting would likely evolve into great players playing against one another, but road players would show up sometimes, and every once in awhile some average player would get the courage to jump in for a game or two, and most likely lose, but maybe win (everybody gets lucky sometimes).
I think there are a lot of players who would at least put down five or ten bucks on a game, if the rules were clear and security was available - a quick glance at the cues being used at any billiards hall tells me that a lot of people are willing to spend a lot of money on upping their game. I've played quite a few excellent players who told me that the reason they don't "bet" on games is because they don't want to be involved in violent confrontations with hot-headed losers. I'd be willing to bet that if you eliminated the threat of violence or being robbed, and provided a referee to obviate arguments, you'd attract a lot of great players to money games, and then a culture of "hustling" would evolve that would increase the popularity of billiards halls and promote billiards in general.
Moral objections to "pool hustling" seem silly to me. If someone wants to put money down against me, I'd be an idiot to think that they're not trying to win money from me. Cheating is different, of course, and everyone should oppose cheating, but the art of the hustle is fair enough - if you think you have someone pegged as an inferior player, and you put money on that, then you're trying to hustle that person, and it's hustler vs. hustler, which is fair and square. If you're such a gullible rube that you honestly think a guy who is playing poorly suddenly wants to bet $100 out of sheer stupidity, you could probably use a reality check anyway, and it's not like you're being an angel yourself, if you're happy to skin someone who you think is stupid or drunk in the belief that you have a big advantage over him.
I'd also love to see more youth leagues, non-alcoholic leagues, family-friendly places to play pool, etc., but it's not a zero-sum game, and I think the soul of pool in America could be revitalized if a culture of "hustling" made a comeback in the USA.
Almost all current pool tournaments are basically stakes games anyway, and gambling is common in most areas of the country. Is it better for people to mindlessly open pull-tabs, fill out BINGO cards, push buttons on slot machines, or scratch off lottery tickets? Betting on pool is much more interesting on almost every level. Heck, betting on pool is even more environmentally-friendly than most other forms of gambling.
On technical issues, I would probably set up any betting system in a way that gives the state a bite in the form of sales taxes, donations to government organizations like first responders, or whatever. Otherwise I think there's a risk that Big Brother could get pissed off about small businesses competing with their gambling rackets (especially the state lottery), since the government likes to fleece citizens as much as they can get away with, and the house always wins. One clever move might be to convert 5% of overall winnings into lottery tickets when people cash out.
Willie Mosconi is great and all, but many of us would rather watch the ghost of Minnesota Fats practice the art of hustling than watch the ghost of Willie Mosconi silently clear racks in straight pool like a "true gentleman." Besides, Willie would probably never play any of us mere mortals, except maybe if we put some money on the table.
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It’s still alive and kickin, just gotta drive 2-3 hrs per day . There now y’all know my secret!
 
GoldCrown said:
Bring back hustling. The art of Two Friends and Stranger. Real class
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That's often funny I've had weaker players try and put me in the middle in like a ring game. The problem was the best they are going to do is divide my money amongst them, meantime I'll bust the both of them. In most cases they don't even play good enough to put somebody in the middle, that takes a little skill.
 
The gentleman that works with me on 1p (ahem...Tom Wirth) would go into a room and ask who is the best in the house. Tom could've hustle and would be great at it but never did as per his integrity.
 
WillieRackam said:
I like to write ...

Often I don't take the time to do a good [let alone great] job of "proof reading" and as best as I can tell Lucifer himself is my "fucking" spell checker especially when using "me hemorrhoid" phone from Samsung ...

his "boss" apparently does work in mysterious ways, [or is that in "hilarious" and/or malicious" ways?]

BTW, I might write up a chapter or two about my "road trip" back in the early 70's for the primary purpose of sending it to his surviving older brother [who I hope still survives to this day] ... Doug was one of my best ever friends and not only introduced me to pool on the trip, but taught me how to play well enough [and quickly enough] that after 10 weeks on the road I was making money playing [although NOT hustling!] for cash against guys that had been playing for 5 - 10+ YEARS ...

What a trip!

It would include a lot of humor in it, as ...

I have a "brown belt" in self-deprecating humor and a "black belt" in self-defecating humor ... [or maybe its the other way around?]

WTF is self-defecating humor you ask?

Well, you'll actually have to ask ...
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Self-defecating humor is when I say something that I think people might find humorous and then, before they even have a chance to react, I start laughing so hard that I crap my own pants ... [figuratively, of course] ... at least so far 😂!
 
Fatboy said:
Wow can you write!

What I didn’t like about color of money is the movie is based on the “dump” which destroyed lots of action in pool. The 61 movie was about a guy who sucked it up went back and won.

The 86 dump movie didn’t do pool any long term favors. Sure the pool rooms all got busy for a couple years and there was some easy action. But that’s a short sighted success by any measure. It also made pool players look like coke heads.

The 61 come back and win after the girl dies movie was a more typical plot as movies go. No harm done. Except it made pool players appear to be drunks.

If a sport or game needs a movie, that activity needs help. Not just a movie.

Best
Fatboy

PS: I’d trade my pool game to write ½ as good as you do!
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Hey Fatboy ...

I was going to double back on this earlier, but I was too busy goofing off ...

Mr. Tevis [I misspelled his name in my earlier post] was once again essentially documenting the pool culture as opposed to creating one from "whole cloth" simply for "literary" purposes in "The Color of Money". Since I was immersed in my business career during the time period he was writing about [played maybe 50 racks per YEAR for 20 years] all I can say is that the whole fucking world had changed a great deal from the "Happy Days" of Ritchie & Fonzie to the cocaine and desktop computer fueled decade of [various] excesses and 14% APR interest on incredibly liquid "money market accounts" in the "Ronald Reagan" era 25 years later.

The fall of the USSR was just around the corner in 1991 whereas 1962 had brought us the Cuban missile crisis.

By the mid '80s, climate change was becoming well accepted by people that didn't have their "heads in the sand" or "lodged deep within in their lower intestine"... [fyi, the 1st "Earth Day" was commemorated in the early '70s; and scientists had seen it coming for DECADES prior to that]

So ... I'll stick my neck out and "guess" that the billiard culture had changed as well during the 25 years that had passed between the publication of "Hustler" & "The Color of Money". The "dump" likely reflected what Mr. Tevas' had observed in the "real" world of billiards. The man was not ONLY a formidable writer and keen observer of human nature [and Mankind's foibles] but knew what the fuck went on in a pool room ...

Here's a quick [only 2 pages + a full page of "citations"] primer on Walter from the Wikipedia community ...

en.wikipedia.org

Walter Tevis - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org


I would love to read what he might have written about the billiard culture over the past 25 years as "our" [i.e., "American"] Millennials generation came of age and "matured" [I'll refrain from an "editorial comment" here ... IF I can resist before posting this reply 🙄]

BTW, I am well aware that not all "Millennials" are the same [nor are all "Boomers" cast from the same mold].

Everybody in our country would be better off IF everybody "kicked" their "confirmation biases" to the curb and performed what I call the "cranio-rectal extraction manuever" ... long enough to read [and reflect upon] ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials

Note the inset in the top right hand corner of the page. Tons of "enlightenment" about EVERYONE alive today awaits ANYONE alive today who is bold enough to take an honest look at it.

So, it's time for me to go back to work ... goofing off.
 
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CocoboloCowboy said:
What you wrote is a good read, people in the old day use to gamble on pool, gamble with bookie, or go to race track.

Think what has killed off a lot of this gambling is Indian Casino’s, and on line betting.

Know almost every night on TV I see ads for the Online Gaming joints.

Pool hustling is gone the way of many thing, because the World is changing.

People use to go to Las Vegas, Reno, Lake Tahoe, and other place in NV to gamble legally.

Now the option are more, and closer to home.
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People lose at pool it is poor skills. When they lose in the casino it is attributed to bad luck. At pool their friends are watching. They are anonymous in the casino. Ego is bruised when they lose in the pool hall.
 
R2PQZ said:
People lose at pool it is poor skills. When they lose in the casino it is attributed to bad luck. At pool their friends are watching. They are anonymous in the casino. Ego is bruised when they lose in the pool hall.
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Some people loose at Pool because money bet, they could loose is distraction.
 
soyale said:
how common is it for gambling matches to be played to a maximum loss ? Say, i have 20 bucks, and i’ll play you for $1 a game as long as you want until i’ve spent my 20 dollars.

Obviously this isn’t something you would do if you were trying to pull money out of the other guy, but for a friendly game, does this happen?

seems a good way to keep everything on the up and up between two gentlemen.

curious to hear the response to this, given everyones personal ruleset of moral conviction on action, gambling, hustling, conning, and all the thin lines in between.
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It's real common for people to play races to 5 for $5 for cheap action. You state you have $20 at the beginning and play til one player is broke. That's minimum 20 games and may end up being a lot more if you go back and forth. In all honesty 2 players of similar skill or with a spot could play for a long time this way.
 
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