Pro pool is dead and the booming bar scene you describe killed it. Pool is no longer a hobby or competition, it is what you do while you are getting drunk. You might charge 'vets' of the game to mold these people into pool players, but the 'vets' of the game generally prefer to play in actual pool halls rather than bars with pool tables, unless they are drinking themselves or looking to make some money, neither situation really conducive to sharing the game with others. The 20s and 30s crowd you describe is mostly absent from pool halls.
Don't worry about bar players' game, with time and experience they learn how to take care of themselves. What needs to be focused on and increased is the number of bars with pool tables (especially those with more than 1 pool table, which can act both like bars/restaurants and smaller pool halls) and the general number of players in those bars (keep the tables constantly occupied). Leagues and cheap tournaments are a great way to do so.
I agree, there seems to be no shortage of players even in my small town, theres a line of people waiting to play every evening, and more and more of them are getting their own cues. Those of you who think people prefer bars now just to get drunk are completely wrong, when i was doing pool halls, cheapest around was 8 bucks an hour for two people. If you are just talking, eating your sandwich, going to the bathroom, watching the game on tv, you are paying 8 bucks an hour the whole time, thats why i eventually stopped going to them. In bars you pay by the game,(and if you are winning other people are paying, Ive played 3 hours of pool with as low as 1 dollar cost before) if you wanna take a break, you sit down and enjoy a beer and watch some one else play, and everyone waiting for the table watches the game and everyones into it and it makes it funner, if you lose, your off the table, so you try harder. not every bar is a dive, and ive seen quite a few good players rotate through . If pro pool is dying its because more people want to play than watch from the stands
Pool in bars, or at least in hybrid bar/poolhall places, is the most attractive and profitable form of pool for this one and the following generation of players. The sooner everybody realizes and accepts that, the faster we'll be able to help out and speed up this natural evolution of pool. The majority of players wants to play, not watch, and their desire is to have fun and potentially do well in a league, with no strict rules and pressure. Let's give them that wherever possible. Pool ain't dying as long as people like it. And they like it only if they can set up their own rules, play in a friendly environment, with people they know, and not take the game all too seriously.
That is true and I would be one of the first to agree, but pool has gone through a few changes. Many of the older players on here, I have been playing for more then 50 years, will know what I am talking about. Pool for the longest time had a real advantage because it was teamed up with bowling. Bowling alleys had pool rooms in every bowling alley and they were in like every city of any size in the country.
No matter where you were in this country you were just a short drive from a pool room. Brunswick lanes always had rooms that had like 20 and 30 Gold Crown tables. Usually well maintained and family oriented. That is not to say many were not hardcore. The famous Congress billiards in Miami you can read about in Freddys book was in fact a bowling alley. As were many of the action rooms around the country. Pool basically had a free ride on the coat tails of bowling and this went on for many years. It was really something, you would go to the pool room and not leave all night. The bowling alleys had everything. Full service bars as well as restaurants. You would be in the pool room and you could get anything from an ice cream sunday to a steak dinner. What today rivals that?
Even back when pool was really going good the stand alone pool room was a tough racket and they often closed or moved as costs went up or landlords wanted to develop the properties. It is not just today. The bowling factor will never come back and there is nothing to replace it, In fact bowling alleys themselves are closing all over the place. There used to be 6 or 7 in my town and every one had a pool room, today there is 1 and it has a few bar tables.
The new thing is the bar, you can always depend on finding a table or two in a bar if you want to play. For many players today, bar pool is pool. Good bad or otherwise it is a evolution that has taken place and at least for now bar pool is the face of pool. I am not sure I can see what will bring back the classic pool rooms in the future. The COM fostered a number of new rooms but they began closing as fast as they had opened as time went by. Mostly due to bad business plans from the start, Many were just not sustainable due to the high cost they had. This was very foreseeable and it was never a surprised to me when I would see one close.
Pool is not dead but it is different.
True words. Pool can't survive in the mainstream on its own. Maybe we should accept it's simply the nature of the game. For an average guy pool is hard, dull to watch and even dull to play in a classic pool hall environment. No regular young man or woman, especially teenagers, likes the idea of spending several hours in a poolhall on a Friday night. Surrounded by old people, no interesting music, strict rules of conduct, no food or drinks, or at least no good places to sit and take a break while drinking or eating... I mean, they could even get mocked at and called weird by their classmates. Remember that in mind of modern generation pool is an old game for old people, dull and a bit "geeky". However, if those same teens play pool in a bar, while getting drunk, chatting and having fun with their friends and with other guys and girls, talking and laughing out loud, walking around the table, listening to popular music or a live concert at the same time, then it's super fun and cool. There's no pressure, they can play bad, verbally taunt and laugh at each other (in friendly boundaries), show off in front of audience, and above all, they can pay much, much less for the same amount of pool.
That is actually true. I put on quite a few tournaments in pool rooms. You may have some of the best players in the country there and people will not pay a dime to watch. They just don't care. They would call wanting to know when the tournament will be over so they can come in and play. No interest in seeing Buddy Hall or Mike Sigel play, none.
Pool seems to not really be a very good spectator sport, not even by players. People like to play pool not watch it. I once in an interview and made the comment, "Pool is like fishing, everybody likes to fish but no one would pay to watch someone else fish". It became the headline of the article.
Well, my humble opinion would be that we shouldn't worry about pro pool for now. If it's meant to die, let it die. It would be a tragedy, but let's face the reality that in a game where 99.99% of players in the world probably don't even know that pro pool exists, and could never name a single pro player, the role of pro pool is completely insignificant to the game on a global level. It could vanish today and nobody would care. It could survive and even do better, and still nobody would care. The fact is, very good pool players are actually those rare weirdos who take pool way too seriously (not that it's a bad thing), and pros are lunatics on a whole different level. I mean, in the mainstream they'd probably get ridiculed, something like professional checkers players. They'll never be respected and accepted, let alone famous like football and basketball stars, at least not in the near future. Professional pool scene will most likely remain underground for a long time. So, the only key to its survival and growth is a huge base of those mainstream casual and bar players who usually know sh*t about pool. However, among every 1000 casuals there will be one weirdo who'll study the game, read books and become really good. Among every 1000 weirdos, there will be one especially talented lunatic who'll make a living out of pool. Now please do the math. If we attract masses of players on the casual level, and, let's say, increase the global number of pool players 10 times, the pro scene will explode and thrive as well.
Pool is hard.
I think starting out pool is even harder than golf. Most people instinctively understand how to pick up a club and whack it at a golf ball. Any kid that has ever held a baseball bat thinks they can hit a golf ball. Watching these same kids try to hit a cue ball for the first time can be scary, especially if it's being done on my table. (Now I'm not comparing the two games once you are past the initial swing or twenty. That would be a conversation for a different thread.)
I think pool can be very intimidating to a lot of people just trying it out for the first time. There is really nothing natural about bending over a pool table and trying to form a proper bridge and then attempting to strike the cue ball. It's just not a natural thing to do.
Because pool is so hard, it was only inevitable that the evolution of the creation of pool players would change. It is SO MUCH easier for people to be introduced to the game via the bar/league route. Starting out playing pool on a 9 foot table vs. starting out on a bar table is like the difference between starting out playing golf at Augusta vs. whooping it up with your buddies at a local par 3 course. Which one is easier? Which one is more fun?
For years "serious" players have looked down on the different leagues and their players. I was guilty of this myself. So most serious players have stayed away from league play. Therefore, the league operators cater their systems to the less serious players. This is only natural, but as more serious (read decent) players start migrating toward league play, I think we will see more of a catering to the serious players. At least I'm hoping for this. I guess only time will tell.
So get out there – join a league and have some fun.
Everything you said is true. That's what those amateur leagues and competitions are for. We have APA, now we'll have GPPA, there are also No Conflict competitions and other smaller organizations. If they play the cards right, they could surely introduce masses into pool and rapidly grow the global interest for the game. Now if there were similar leagues in all of Europe, Asia and other parts of the world as there are in North America, pool would most likely do much better today. They only need to keep the league structure and the rules adapted to average players, not the super skilled ones (that doesn't mean handicapping is necessary), and you have the potential.
