Do you see Challenge (winner stays on / quarters on the rail, waiting to play the winner) tables going on anymore?

middleofnowhere said:
I think that was part of the incentive to add more tables and ultimately some bars became mini pool rooms with like four and five tables. I had a place, a strip bar, where I used to really win a lot of money. This place had a very transient crowd you could go in there every night and hardly ever see the same people.

The owner closed the liquor store next door and put in five more tables. That was it, I hardly won any money after that. Like I said in my original post people would get on the table in a little group and it was their table you had no right to challenge.
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I had a guy who put ATM's in businesses tell me that he 2 places that he had the highest withdraw fee was strip clubs and gay bars. $10 fee was minimum.
 
Every place they had challenge table and I put a quarter up, I always took over the table and held it most of the night, if not until closing time.

I would lose a game occasionally, but as soon as I got back to the table, I would hold it for hours again.
 
Nick8400 said:
I don’t miss the bar for anything. I can’t stand drunk people, myself included!!
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I miss a few bars from over the years. My great uncle was quite wealthy. He owned a large farm, thousands of acres of very fertile riverbottom land. He also owned a little bar with about a dozen stools where he spent his afternoons and evenings just tending bar and enjoying being with people. Most bars weren't my favorite places but a few I enjoyed.

The pool halls I enjoyed were usually pretty old and ratty, the atmosphere was different than nice clean sterile new places. They opened up a wonderful new pool hall, nice, clean, well decorated, more like a family center. I went in two or three times, never rented a table. I went in several more places like that, just couldn't convince myself they were pool halls.

I did love the challenge tables. As a young man I tried to know every one of them within seventy-five miles of home. More of a ring game, at the time, a challenge table others, I found a table right after shoulder surgery. The money was pretty good but my surgeon had told me to wear a sling seven weeks if I wanted the shoulder to heal properly. Seven weeks I was good. The evening after the arm came out of that sling I busted that ring game all to hell!

Hu

Hu
 
vintagecollectibles831 said:
This is something that I have not seen, or experienced in what seems like ages.

It is not something you would see at a pool hall, but it is something you might see at a bar, with maybe only a few Valley coin op bar tables.

Back in the early 2000's, after my home town pool hall ran out of business, I would spend all of my nights going to this bar, that had 3 Valley coin op tables.

It is / was in a college town, and back in the early 2000's, the college kids loved to play pool.

So, on any day of the week, from maybe 9pm, until 2am, you could walk into the bar, and see like 6-10 stacks of quarters on the rail, with people waiting to play the winner of the next game.

I miss those days so much. It was such a good time, even though I was not a drinker. I just loved to play pool.

The players were rarely that good, so I could hold the table for a very long time, once I got my turn. Sometimes, I could hold it until 2am, when the bar closed.

And, the quarters never dried up. They just kept putting their quarters on the rail.

But lol, it would get so packed sometimes, in that bar, that I would constantly have to say "excuse me" to the people just standing around drinking, because there were no seats at the bar.

Anyways, I really miss that.

I imagine that it is just not a thing anymore, because I have never seen it again, ever since back in the early to mid 2000's.

Curious if you see it anywhere in your local town, that might only have a few coin op bar tables, where a lot of people love to shoot pool.
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Oh yeah!!
We're unsophisticated midwest hoosiers roun hea' stuck in a time warp. 😁
Whole buncha places like that still around. I bet you're going to get some stories on this one.
Excellent post boss!👍🏻
 
People should do something like this at the pool hall. Leave a dollar on the head rail if you want an opponent.

Instead of having to walk up to everyone, we could just look around the tables.
 
The challenge table was pretty common where I'm living now, even up until a few years ago. One local bar had a 6½ foot Valley that would get a line of quarters every Friday and Saturday night. That's what led me to playing APA back then. Everyone seemed to want to play by slightly different rules, and there were occasionally arguments, but they resolved quickly enough. Usually the players went over that quickly when the challenger was racking. Some refused to play "that APA slop", and since most were local and regulars, the order of who plays next usually went without much trouble too. A new owner of that place got two 7-footers, moved the pool tables to another room, and the challenge aspect just evaporated.
Contrast that to another place, a kind of a biker bar in a campground resort, always a big line of quarters, and a couple guys always cutting the line. This was a place where people often brought their own cues, and the level of play was better. They had APA and TAP there on weeknights. The bar usually had a band on weekends, and it was a great night out going there. The pool was pretty competitive until about 11:00pm, at which point it often switched to doubles, so more people could play. Lots of nights we played Scotch Doubles because it didn't give the best players as big of an edge, and nobody held the table long. That also seems to have faded off, and nobody really plays there on weekends. I don't even think they have leagues there any more either.
 
Still do it here. I got into the habit of just putting one quarter up in case someone jumped the line if I was in the bathroom. Now they pretty much all have a board.
 
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