I first saw pool when I was about 8 years old. My dad took me to the downtown pool hall and he had a beer and I saw people playing it for the first time. He got a table and I think we played one game. I don't remember if it was 8-ball or rotation, my dad wasn't a player and he just got the table because of me and I'm sure he won. He paid for the game and I don't recall ever going back in there, though I'd look through the door when I went downtown. Sometimes the door was open because it was hot inside. I can't remember if they had A/C or not.
The next time I ever saw a pool table was a bumper pool table in the back room of a taxi stand. It took a quarter to put in to get the balls out. I would save a quarter and go there to play. I would put a metal bar in the hole so that the balls would catch in the hole but wouldn't fall into the bed of the table. I would play for hours until somebody actually came up and wanted to play a game.
After that, another kid said they had a pool table in the basement of his church right next to the town library. I used to go to the library all the time because there wasn't anything to do, so now I found a new place to play and I didn't need a quarter. On the weekdays, there was usually nobody in the church (a two story building), so we'd go into the basement and play for hours and hours.
A couple years later, we moved to the opposite side of town and the pool hall (now moved to another location) was about 75 yards from our back yard.
This took pool, for me, to a whole new level.
The state law governing the pool hall stated that you had to be 21 to enter, without your parent being with you. They served alcohol and there was an attached walk-in and drive-thru liquor store.
I was around 12 and I started out by sneaking in the back door and sitting quietly and watching everybody play...both pool and snooker. They would occasionally throw me out and tell me that I was too young to be in there.
When there wasn't any action going on, I'd sneak over to the best snooker table and practice shooting the 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 balls and re-spotting them and shooting over and over. There were no racks at the table and you had to call the person working there if you needed to rack the balls. I didn't have the 40 cents to pay for a rack and I wasn't supposed to be there in the first place, so I'd try to do everything without drawing too much attention or breaking open the rack Eventually, they would spot me and tell me to quit and sit down or tell me I had to leave.
After they got tired of throwing me out, the owner offered to let me stay inside and play for free if I would work for $1 an hour and clean the tables and sweep the floor at night. I gladly took up his offer.
This is the pool hall I grew up in and worked in as a kid. By the time I was 16, I could beat everyone in the town. The owner of the place had two pool halls. The "old school" one that I worked in and a "kiddy" pool hall that was like a recreation center (no alcohol, cursing, etc...and kids were allowed). It was miles away on the opposite side of town.
Being able to go inside without getting thrown out allowed me all the time I wanted to watch, practice, and learn...plus I got a few bucks that I could buy sodas and snacks with while I was there. If anybody questioned why a "kid" was there, the owner had connections and nobody ever made a deal of it, to my knowledge.
Everybody else of my age was playing baseball, football, tennis, or just goofing off. If any of the other kids were playing pool, they were playing it at the "kiddy land". I was spending every hour after school and on weekends playing pool where all the adults were and where all the "action" was. I sometimes played 7 or 8 hours a day, six days a week, even on school days. On Saturdays, I'd play for 8-12 hours. I did this for years, until I graduated High School.
I started out playing snooker because I liked it the best and I learned well enough to beat everybody playing it. The only problem was that it wasn't a money game like pool and not a lot of people liked playing it, so I then concentrated a lot of my time to playing pool instead of snooker.
By the time I was 16, I was beating everybody in town and even playing people who came in from out of town. The owner, and others, used to take me out of town and stake me to play people. He would put me up against anybody in the house and would back me. I would get 10-20% of whatever I won and I won plenty. I used to walk around with about $1,500 cash in my pocket as a 16 year old. That was half enough money, at the time, to buy a brand new Mustang.
The owner instructed me if anybody came in the pool hall and wanted to play for money, that I should "quit" working for the time being, take as much money as I needed out of the register, and play them.
We later moved 8 miles out into the country, and on days and nights that I wasn't there, the owner would send someone or a taxi to my house to get me to come and play people if him or nobody in the pool hall could beat them. There were times when he would send a taxi to my house with $500, or so, and have the taxi driver take me to so-and-so bar to play somebody who had come in and beat everyone. Every bar in the town knew who I was and they all let me in and even served me beer. They would call the owner of the pool hall and alert them if a stranger came in wanting to play on the bar table.
It was a lot of fun to walk into a bar, as a teenager, and jump on the table with a stranger who had beat everybody in the house. Since the bar owners knew me, nobody ever really tried to jump me or rob me at the time...in which I was extremely lucky. I had a few moments in my later life where I wasn't quite so lucky.
When nobody in the pool hall would play 9-ball, I would resort to playing one-pocket with the old guys, even though it wasn't my favorite game. The one-pocket players were usually the older players who played for years and had the money to try to "high roll" people who didn't play as well when higher stakes or their bankroll was on the line. They couldn't "high roll" me, because it wasn't my money and the owner had more money than they did. I used to play them for $100 a game, which is equivalent to about $1000 a game today.
The whole time I worked in this pool hall, they never had a tournament and I never ever heard of them having a tournament before that. The "kiddy" pool hall had the tournaments and trophies and I never, once, went there to play. The owner used to tell me to go play the tournaments there, since he knew I could beat everyone, but I had no interest in playing other "kids" and/or winning trophies.
Once I left there and joined the military, I traveled all over and played wherever I was stationed in the U.S. and overseas. I continued to play pool at night almost every day of the week and on weekends for quite a few years. I made more money playing pool than I did working.
I quit pool for about 4 years in the 80s, started back for a couple and played really well, and then quit for about a dozen years.
During the years I played, I won the first two or three 14.1 tournaments I ever played in without ever having played a game of it. I practiced alone for a few days and even managed to run 69 balls in practice before I ever played against an opponent. I won every base championship and almost every tournament that they had at any base I was ever at one or more times for over a 25 year period, won the Taiwan island-wide championships back-to-back in 1975-76, and took 3rd place in the ND state bar table tournament. When I was in ND, I held the highest rating of any player in Grand Forks, ND and I only played once a week on a bar table league, while some of the rest played every day of the week and even owned pool halls.
Trophies, at whatever level, don't excite me. I just as soon play in a $5 ring game and win beers and juke box money as play for something to put on a shelf. I've thrown out and given away more trophies than I can count. I once won a weekly pool tournament so many times that they ran out of trophies and had to "back order" them. By the time they came in, they owed me 12 trophies and when I went to get them they were surprised that I wanted ALL of them. Once they gave them to me, I walked around the recreation center and gave them all away...one to every kid I saw until I ran out.
After working in the pool hall and playing for money for so many years afterward, there were times that I would practice by myself and people would come up and ask to play for fun and I'd tell them I didn't play for fun. Playing lesser players for nothing took my attention off the game and I didn't like that. So, whenever they came to play I'd try to concentrate and never give them a shot. I didn't care if they were a beginner, a kid, a woman, or anybody. I would send them racking without them ever making more than a ball, or two, at the most. Some of them would get discouraged and quit and others took it as a challenge to see how far they could get. Those that I thought actually had an interest in learning something, I'd take time and try to teach them instead of steamrolling them all the time.
After quitting so many times, and for long periods (12 years the last time), I started back about 4 or 5 years ago and play for a few hours, only on Sundays. I would like to play more, but I have to drive about 20 miles one-way through traffic and the city to the pool hall. It isn't open before 2 PM and going there after work is during the rush-hour period. Also, I wake up to get ready for work at 4 AM and I don't feel like staying there late at night.
I am almost blind now, without glasses (which I never needed to wear until about age 50) so I wear contacts on Sundays, just for playing pool.
I can still maintain an above A-level with that little bit of play. I catch a gear once in a while and string a few games. I had quite a few break and runs on Sunday, a couple or more 2-packs, and I ran a 5-pack not too long ago.
Pool still fascinates me as much as it did the first time I ever saw it or played a game. I think I have made a million balls in my life and shot every shot on the table at one time or another; however, I am still learning something every time I play.
I have no interest in playing for money any more...I have nothing to prove. I own land in the mainland, I own a house in Hawaii, two cars and everything is paid for, and have no bills.
I have nothing to win and everything to lose. If I could win your $300, would it improve my lifestyle? Knowing most of the people hanging out in pool halls today, I'd probably get stiffed for the money. The last guy that thought he was a "player" wouldn't play me for money, but wanted to play for beers. I don't drink so I told him let's just make it $5 a game, which is the price of a beer. He is always rated an A-level and likes to try to gamble with people but is kind of shady. I beat him about 6 out of 7, or something of the sort, and I looked around and he was GONE and never paid me the $25 or $30 he owed me. The money didn't bother me and I don't drink, so I wasn't going to die thirsty, but proved a point...the only pool player I can trust is ME.
