Do your coworkers take your pool game seriously?

One coworker was curious and decided to come to the pool hall on tournament night. He ended up seeing me matched up playing a $200 race to 7 and I happened to put a 4 on my opponent. The coworker was Mr Gossip in the office so by 3pm the next day pretty much the whole office knew I played decent pool.

That coworker I later found dead in his car from a drug overdose when he didnt come back from lunch one afternoon. feked up moment at my office for sure :(
 
I am in the Army and many of times there has been guys with egos bigger than there heads. I challenge every one of them when I get a chance and I have made a hundred off a couple of them. As for the guys I directly work with. They make up ridiculous nick names for me. Alot of them have no idea until they see me play. When I cash in a tournament and my name is mentioned on a website, I show everyone so they dont think I am full of it. Or maybe I am just bragging. Anyways thats about how it goes.
 
I have had people give me crap for spending $500+ on a pool cue. My standard response is someone who is into guitars and likes to play will drop thousands without blinking. Its the same thing with a pool cue IMO
 
If you are good at something and the people you work with don't see you doing it they will underestimate your ability. I used to be a distance runner and when I ran my first marathon I found out afterward that one of my co-workers had been taking side bets that I wouldn't finish. The reason was simple, he didn't see how hard I was training. The only thing that would have prevented me from doing 26.2 miles was a car running over me.

What's bad was I didn't find out until afterward that this guy was making side bets otherwise I would have bet as high as he wanted to go.

Same thing in pool or anything else. If you are good at it and they haven't seen you do it they will generally underestimate your ability.
 
I worked for a company once that paid my way to BCA Nationals in Vegas after I won both the BCA and VNEA Iowa state tournies that year. That was so cool! I used to have to play my boss there now and then, but looking back it was not really such a good idea because I think he held a grudge.

Since I almost never take vacation days unless I'm going to a tournament, my bosses always know what my hobby is. At the last company I worked for, my boss told me he won a lot of money playing in his college days. And several others wanted to get together and play sometime but we never managed to do it.

What always amazes me is the public perception of a "good" player. If you run several tables but make it look easy, they will be less impressed than if you make one simple cross bank. :)
 
I used to go play everyday straight from work, so I was always bringing my cues into work. Unfortunately, people got it in their head that it meant I was pretty good. I keep trying to explan to them that having your own cues means that you have enough money to buy them, not that you are any good with them. But everyone is well aware of my obsession (the pool cubicle decor and whiteboarded shots generally clue people in if they never spoke to me) and no one belittles it. With one exception: in pre meeting small talk, this one guy that said pool was as much a sport as pinball. Needless to say a heated argument errupted there.

Every couple of monthes, I coordinate a mini competition with my coworkers. We usually have an 8 or 16 player board. A couple people know how to play, the others come out for fun and booze. We play for bragging rights and the change left over from table time. It is usually a lot of fun.
 
My coworkers know I play, but I usually try not to play with them. The only game they know is 8-ball, and 8-ball is definitely not the game you want to play when newbies are expecting you to be good. It requires too much planning, and when necessary, defense. They won't understand the defense, so your only option is to try to run everything out. When you're doing this on bad equipment and half-drunk, and make the first 5 or 6 and then get safe, you're in for a realllllly bad time. Through sheer luck they will safe you their next 50 innings, and now your coworkers have just seen you "miss" 50 consecutive shots.

All this happened one night (I wasn't wearing my contacts either), and now my boss legitimately thinks I stink at pool. I tell him I have to take time off for the world championships and he looks at me like I have lost my mind. Kinda funny actually.

- Steve
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A guy I worked with beat me one time 15 years ago under those same circumstances...one game...one stinking game (I must admit I had consumed several adult beverages and maybe was doing a little woofing of my own)TO THIS DAY he references how he beat me and could have done it all day long if he wanted to...and no, he doesn't want to play me now because he doesn't need my money.....grrrrrrr

Bob
 
100kbet said:
Every job I've ever had it seems to go like this.

*pool get mentioned randomly*
me: I like to play pool, you play pool?
them: I could beat you
me: you want to bet on that?
them: sure, I used to play a lot
me: lets bet paychecks. my check vs yours. how does that sound? first person to win 10 games? that way I cant get 'lucky' on you in one game.
them *hem haw blah blah blah*

I figure one day I'll actually play pool with a coworker and play em for a little, just for the satisfaction of seeing their faces. :)

anybody else run into this much though?
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Once I was working on a computer contract with some guys from a huge worldwide consulting company. We went out for beers and played a little pool and I kept winning. I heard some of them reference another guy for the company who 'was the best player at xyz company'.

Anyway, a few weeks later, these guys have another outing planned and they invite me along. We start playing pool and I go on a tear. I'm jumping, banking, masse-ing balls in etc...

Finally, after a while a guy that was there checking in on the project wants to play, we play a game or two and he quits. The other guys are saying "Come on, keep playing, let's put some money on it."

The guy says "no guys, I can't beat him. Save your money."

It turns out that they had flown the best player in XYZ company to town specifically to play me and try to get me to go off. Unfortunately I didn't know about it or I would have laid down 'just a touch' to get him to play. But at least he was good enough to know how good he actually was.

I still laugh about it. But I could have made thousands that day as those guys are loaded (lowest paid among them was over 80K per year and one of them was a partner making 500+K per year). And this was in 1997.

~rc
 
I had a similar thing at a UFC 100/work party. One of my co-workers picks up a cue and says "ok, let's see this pool game i've been hearing about". btw he didn't hear it from me so I guess there is chit chat going on about it. Anyway, i'm thinking "if I win, so what, if I lose I will never hear the end of it from everyone. In the end I torched him but it could have gone really wrong. :D
 
asmith74 said:
I had a similar thing at a UFC 100/work party. One of my co-workers picks up a cue and says "ok, let's see this pool game i've been hearing about". btw he didn't hear it from me so I guess there is chit chat going on about it. Anyway, i'm thinking "if I win, so what, if I lose I will never hear the end of it from everyone. In the end I torched him but it could have gone really wrong. :D
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Yup...there is no upside to that situation....if you win, you should have won because you are so much better; if you lose you eat 10 pounds of poop forever but still no one will play you for cash.

Bob
 
100kbet said:
Every job I've ever had it seems to go like this.

*pool get mentioned randomly*
me: I like to play pool, you play pool?
them: I could beat you
me: you want to bet on that?
them: sure, I used to play a lot
me: lets bet paychecks. my check vs yours. how does that sound? first person to win 10 games? that way I cant get 'lucky' on you in one game.
them *hem haw blah blah blah*

I figure one day I'll actually play pool with a coworker and play em for a little, just for the satisfaction of seeing their faces. :)

anybody else run into this much though?
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Very good post. Actually my coworkers know I am very serious about pool and always wish me luck before a tournament.
My family on the other hand.........well, they think it's great that I have a hobby.:frown:
 
100kbet said:
Every job I've ever had it seems to go like this.

*pool get mentioned randomly*
me: I like to play pool, you play pool?
them: I could beat you
me: you want to bet on that?
them: sure, I used to play a lot
me: lets bet paychecks. my check vs yours. how does that sound? first person to win 10 games? that way I cant get 'lucky' on you in one game.
them *hem haw blah blah blah*

I figure one day I'll actually play pool with a coworker and play em for a little, just for the satisfaction of seeing their faces. :)

anybody else run into this much though?
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LOL, comes up a lot....

Actually, most are pretty cool about it and seem to respect the sport....they also like to follow-up with the, "oh, you must be a hustler" :D

A few have said that they are really good and they will play me for $100-$500.....and then, without missing a beat, I say sure, let's play.....all of a sudden they need to see me play first and then maybe :D

Funny thing, even in the office, you see the same woofing that you do here or in the pool hall :p
 
Great question!

In previous jobs:

--coworkers have been encouraging and supportive, but not very interested.

--coworkers once herded me during a lunch time walk into a poolbar and insisted I play a game with one of them. I beat him three games before he gave up, and later I learned he had a private bet with the other coworker that he could beat me. Neither had ever seen me play. Their bet was for treating lunch. I didn't get any jelly at all.

--one politician boss was always trying to figure out ways to make money out of me at his own fundraisers. I didn't encourage this and nothing came of it, but he sure tried thinking of schemes.

--one boss, during a drunken end- of- project team celebration out, tried to team up with me for drinks against local barplayers on doubles pool. The stress of playing in a noisy crowded bar, under black lights and disco balls, with my boss, while coworkers talked, while I was drunk, made me nearly useless. We came out even but my boss was clearly disappointed.


In this job:

My poolplaying is treated as a low- class, undesirable oddity, often used in attempts to embarrass me.

For just one example, yesterday during my birthday lunch my boss loudly tried to remember a place she went to recently with some out of town friends, and then single me out to help her think of the name of this unknown place-- with the encouraging announcement to the whole table that I was an expert on dive bars.

I had no idea what place she was trying to think of, and finally explained that while I knew pool halls, I didn't actually go to bars very often, and even then- not bars without pool tables. Not that it made me look any better...
 
Good thread!

I make it a point to not talk about pool to my coworkers anymore. My co-workers know I play pool, they will mention to others that I play pool, and if pool is on TV, they come and tell me all about who they saw and what time it was on (lol). But because they do not understand my passion or why I spend so much time doing it, I do not bring it up anymore. I have taken this stance for the last 7 years, b/c I had some bad experiences 8-9 years ago with coworkers not seeing how important it is to me.

As for playing coworkers, many do not ask me to play for money. They want to play for fun, but I don't like to ball-bangers or drinkers - I prefer instead to practice or spar with a better player to get ready for my next tournament. Plus, if I play pool with them, I would think it would give them an open door to bring it up to me and I do not want to talk about pool with them.
 
Ever come across this one!!!

A higher up in the corporate world automatically thinks he should be able to beat you at Pool. I mean, really, they have to be smarter since they have a more important position than you ... LOL
 
Nothing good can really come from telling coworkers about your passion for pool. It's all perception. Pool means i drink, gamble, stay up late and don't take my job really that serious. So now you have e'm already looking at you in a different light. I have learned after Three long stints at large companies that what i do in my spare time, I will keep to myself.
 
100kbet said:
Every job I've ever had it seems to go like this.

*pool get mentioned randomly*
me: I like to play pool, you play pool?
them: I could beat you
me: you want to bet on that?
them: sure, I used to play a lot
me: lets bet paychecks. my check vs yours. how does that sound? first person to win 10 games? that way I cant get 'lucky' on you in one game.
them *hem haw blah blah blah*

I figure one day I'll actually play pool with a coworker and play em for a little, just for the satisfaction of seeing their faces. :)

anybody else run into this much though?
Click to expand...


unless someone runs into me at the pool hall i don't tell anyone i play. there're too many negative images that it seems to imply. that and i don't want to deal with the "so you're a hustler?" BS. it's just too much to fade so i don't bring it up

you might want to watch that paycheck bet. one day someone might take you up on it
 
NewStroke said:
Almost everyday after lunch, jcurry from these boards goes to his desk and cries for like 30 mins after we play. We finally got his boss believing that it was menstrual but that was really difficult being that he is a man.
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Anyone here who knows you would understand. :sorry:
 
They should,, they dish out a percentage of there pay checks to me ,,
because of my pool game.....:grin-devilish:
 
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