Ever have a hustle backfire .........
- Thread starter tim913
- Start date
Not sure it was a backfire, but it didn't play out like I thought it would...
I got word they have been gambling good at a room near me and I haven't been in there 5x in the last 5yr.
Had a couple hours to kill and decided to go in and hopefully get action by the game and end up a game or two loser in the short time I was there.
Started some 10 a game 9b and damn if I didn't lose 4 in a row. Quick calculation, should this pattern continue...imma gonna lose about $200 like that, lol.
Dude I am playing scratches on the 8 and 9 4x and I win a couple, and now I am winner.
I mentioned I was on short time at the start and when we are 10 min away from the end buzzer, dude says 'last game' and I am 1 winner.
He won it and we quit, even.
Think I am set up pretty good...plus I said I did not do the 1p, so maybe I can go to the well more than once, should I learn how to play 1p since last visit!
I got word they have been gambling good at a room near me and I haven't been in there 5x in the last 5yr.
Had a couple hours to kill and decided to go in and hopefully get action by the game and end up a game or two loser in the short time I was there.
Started some 10 a game 9b and damn if I didn't lose 4 in a row. Quick calculation, should this pattern continue...imma gonna lose about $200 like that, lol.
Dude I am playing scratches on the 8 and 9 4x and I win a couple, and now I am winner.
I mentioned I was on short time at the start and when we are 10 min away from the end buzzer, dude says 'last game' and I am 1 winner.
He won it and we quit, even.
Think I am set up pretty good...plus I said I did not do the 1p, so maybe I can go to the well more than once, should I learn how to play 1p since last visit!
There was a guy who came through Tuscaloosa when I was in school there around 1998. Me and a friend had started this ring game at a place called 4th street billiards, not sure if it is still there or not, but we were beating frat guys out of chump change all night....It was a pretty sweet deal since in a college town, the goal is usually to drink until you can't function as a human. we would usually walk out a up a hundo or so.....that would by a lot of Natural Light back then.
Anyway, this guy that looked about our age came in and asked to get in...wasn't long until he had most of the money. He just always seemed to come with a "lucky" shot on the money balls. After the Ring game busted he asked me if I wanted to play some on the side. Hell I was a college kid and didn't have any money to speak of, but told him I would play him some 9 ball cheap, seeing as how he didn't look that much better than me.
I. Never. Shot. He put a 5 pack on me and took my last 50 bucks. I will never forget the conversation:
Me: Man your the best player I've ever played, what's your name?
Him: Well, you ever hear of "Pensacola Will?"
Me (Lying): Sure, hasn't everyone?
Him: Well, they call me Mobile Will, just so you don't get us confused.
He went on to tell me that they had already made between 8-10 k during the week they had been in T-town and were just out to unwind and have fun their last night in town...
I don't know if Mobile Will ever made a name form himself, but I will never forget the night he gave me my first education on what a good player really looks like...
Anyway, this guy that looked about our age came in and asked to get in...wasn't long until he had most of the money. He just always seemed to come with a "lucky" shot on the money balls. After the Ring game busted he asked me if I wanted to play some on the side. Hell I was a college kid and didn't have any money to speak of, but told him I would play him some 9 ball cheap, seeing as how he didn't look that much better than me.
I. Never. Shot. He put a 5 pack on me and took my last 50 bucks. I will never forget the conversation:
Me: Man your the best player I've ever played, what's your name?
Him: Well, you ever hear of "Pensacola Will?"
Me (Lying): Sure, hasn't everyone?
Him: Well, they call me Mobile Will, just so you don't get us confused.
He went on to tell me that they had already made between 8-10 k during the week they had been in T-town and were just out to unwind and have fun their last night in town...
I don't know if Mobile Will ever made a name form himself, but I will never forget the night he gave me my first education on what a good player really looks like...
This didn't happen to me but I laugh when I think about this. A buddy of mine was playing some $200 sets on the best table in the room, most of the time we would be playing for 5 or 10 a game with 5 or 6 different guys. This dude walks in and puts his quarters up and starts hitting on the waitress, another buddy of mine walks over to tell the guy they are playing a set and the "hustler" says do you want to play some. Of course my buddy says sure after he walks over to get his cues the guys tells the waitress I think I found me a sucker. They started playing 8 ball race to 5 for 50 and my buddy is up 2 sets and the guy ask to play 9 ball for a hundo a set. They start playing my buddy never laid down the entire time they played and just slaughtered the guy 4 more sets in maybe a hour and a half. Meanwhile my other buddy grinds out 200 after playing for 6 hours. I told my buddy the guy found a sucker to suck the cash out of his pocket.
I liked playing those challenge tables. Five or six guys in and nobody seemed to realize you were taking most of the money. There was a ratty old place in Satsuma LA that we just called Satsuma, it didn't even have a name! I think it had one of the small neon beer signs in the window. Come to think of it, that was where I got hustled for nickel and dime change. In three months I was about three hundred down to Old Joe. They only sold beer in there but Joe had an old sport coat he wore that was also a distillery. He always had a pint bottle he was sipping on and never ran out no matter how long he played. It was many years later that I recalled that Joe never seemed to get drunk. Whiskey or tea? One bottle was whiskey but he had multiple bottles in that coat.
I never gave it much thought, kinda the theme for me in those days, but if Joe wasn't there when I showed up he was right behind. Somebody diming me? Did Joe own the place? There were always a few cowboys and farm boys playing on the nastiest rattiest old nine footer in the world almost, and Joe. One young man or another tended the bar. I don't think women were banned but I never saw one in there.
Old Joe was in his seventies or eighties and he could have been called Slow Joe too. He didn't deliberately move slowly but he walked at a crawl and shot so slowly that a ball never left the bevel of the pocket when he made a ball. Joe could run out on you without stalling and take fifteen minutes, one or two eternities, to do it. I was under twenty and full of fire. This old place had no ceiling, no AC, not much in the way of screens on the windows, the cloth on the table was ripped and torn, stained with mostly beer but best not to know what all. The wood plank floor had gaps between the boards wide enough cigarette butts could be swept through on the rare occasions the floor got swept.
As a general thing I could beat anyone in the place, except Joe. I played better than Joe when I played other people but I couldn't deal with his slow play. I would give him the table and sit on the edge of my chair as he shot and moved around the table. When he missed I would jump up like my butt was spring loaded. Too eager, I would miss a ball or blow shape and the torture began again. Being more than a little stubborn I kept battling Joe for months and he kept taking my money and that of most other players, three dollars at a time mostly. Minimum wage was a buck and a quarter an hour and few of the other players in the room were making more, some less. Some of these guys made twenty a week and found. They would walk or hitchhike to Joe's when they got paid and generally go bust there and go back to work the next day content. They had enjoyed their night on the town!
Joe plucked me like a chicken for months. When I think about it Joe was doubling or tripling his pension every month right there in that old bar. I gave it some thought, just wasn't acceptable that Joe could keep on beating me. I finally figured out to relax in the chair, slump back, act half asleep. When I wasn't shooting just be a mildly interested observer. First trip I tried this I finally beat Joe! Took him for fifteen or twenty at three a game. Next time in and from then on, Joe never played me more than one or two games if he played at all when I was in the room. I wasn't his sucker anymore but he wasn't giving back the money he had won either!
While he wouldn't have said so I always considered Joe one of my pool mentors. From then on when somebody slow played me, intentional or not, I would kick back in my chair, maybe fake a yawn or two, and relax. I genuinely rested in the chair instead of running wide open even when I was seated. I went from being able to play three or four hours to being able to play twelve or more, sometimes twenty-four and a rare match longer than that, thirty-six hours or more.
Joe, I really think unintentionally as far as the slow play, hustled me for low hundreds. Looking back, I am pretty sure he was sipping tea much of the time making it an out an out hustle. However, him inadvertently teaching me to relax in the chair won me thousands in total over the next ten years or so.
That old bar was about twenty miles east of me and I used it for a pump up spot when I was headed east for about ten years. One day I passed by and it was closed, never to reopen to my knowledge. I missed it, hundreds of bugs on the table, Old Joe, and all! Somebody must have been a hell of a salesman that came through around WWII or a bit later. Every country store and bar seemed to have one of those old nine footers that hadn't been recovered since about that time. Price to play when I first started was usually a dime, sometimes just a nickel. By 1970 they were up to a quarter, mostly.
Joe could run out on that old table, eight or nine ball, when he was ancient. Only when it was too late to ask did I wonder how he played as a younger man. Was Joe once a feared player? I am unlikely to ever know! We were never what could be called friends but like many another pool room character or denizen of the night as I called the gamblers, scammers, and small time hustlers I met along my way, I miss him sometimes.
RIP Joe.
Hu
Don’t know if it has already been said in here and can’t remember who said it but “The only way you can be hustled is if you are trying to hustle.”
My first rule was don’t play for any more than I can afford to lose or be cheated out of.
I am big enough to play for money. Are you? Was the gist of my opening. If they were they would usually inquire as to the wager. To which I would respond, “whatever is comfortable “.
Never missed on purpose. But I did pay closer attention for $20 than $2. Besides the way to stall is miss shape but never a shot.
My first rule was don’t play for any more than I can afford to lose or be cheated out of.
I am big enough to play for money. Are you? Was the gist of my opening. If they were they would usually inquire as to the wager. To which I would respond, “whatever is comfortable “.
Never missed on purpose. But I did pay closer attention for $20 than $2. Besides the way to stall is miss shape but never a shot.
duly noted...
Your last sentence is spot on, (from what hustlers have told me).
My friend Frank moved to NC and teamed up with a loud mouthed backer named Joe. Joe carried a shaving bag full of cash and loved to flash it. Frank got to playing a pretty sporty game and took down a couple small local tournaments, so Joe took him out looking for "Action." The first poolroom was good sized with many busy tables and a hamburger cafe. The evening crowd was there. Joe stood in front of the tables and in his "head rooster" way shouted "Listen up! I got a player here willing to play anyone $100 a rack 9 ball." The entire room went silent. Then a small voice from a booth spoke up "I'll try you some." Frank looked and it was Nick Varner. This was 1987. They didn't play.
Funny one i thought i would share. Several years ago i was at the TAP nationals in Carolina. I was in one of the side action rooms where they were playing $50/game 8 ball. after winning a few games, the table narrowed down to just me and 1 other guy. He introduced himself as Cliff and said he was a "6" (none of which I believed). For the next 5 hours we played $50/game 8 ball at an extremely high level with me coming out 1 game winner. I told my friends that night that if i seen him again i would ask him to play 9 ball. He moved real good and his pattern and safety play were excellent, but i thought maybe he was an 8 ball specialist and switching to 9 ball might tilt the matchup a little more in my favor. So the next day we see each other again and agree to play $200 races to 7 on the bar table (playing 9 ball) to start. We were feeling each other out before raising the bet and we both knew it. He proceeded to break and run 7 straight racks without getting 1 inch out line on a single ball the whole set! I shook his hand , paid him, and joked that he showed way to much speed! His reply was "i figured if i missed, you would have done the same thing to me". i laughed and we got to talking a little more and i found out his real name. i will keep it private but im pretty sure many of you have figured it out by now. i played his road partner (who actually was a TAP 6) in the finals of the 9 ball singles that year and lost on the hill. Kid shot REALLY GOOD. A couple weeks later that kid was on the cover of a magazine for winning a pretty big pro tour event. Dam that Josh Roberts was a REALLY GOOD TAP 6! And his road partner "Cliff" is one hell of a player well. "Cliff and i made some good money together the rest of that event feeding each other players and he is a super nice guy.
I believe "Cliff" had a stroke a couple years ago. Haven't heard anything in about a year but he was coming along
so-so then. Maybe someone will chime in and let us know how "Cliff" is doing. I'm in Birmingham and I've not heard of him
being around here any. Hope he is doing well.
SomeDeadGuy
Member
I should have said ”a bankshot from over 1/2 the table length off the long rail banking it into the side pocket on a 9 foot table.
For my 21st bday a "friend" beat me out of 160 playing snooker with the wild 6. I had never played snooker before. Bar closed a few months later and I bought their tables. Practiced snooker for a few months and invited that "friend" to play some wild 6. I was running over him until I banked the 4 off 3 spot into the head cushion and into the side nearest it. He said I can't beat you.
That friend and I played many sessions of bar games-5&9 money ball ,3 ball,and 8ball. He survived numerous bouts with cancer but it finally got him. Miss that pool room dawg.
Yeah hustling somebody's girlfriend that happens often.Other than looking at the wrong end of a S&W 44mag nothin' really comes to mind.
No trim involved. Me and a buddy were flat-out hi-jacking this bar back in the late 90's when one of the 'robee's' figured out that they couldn't win. Things calmed down and turned out ok but that stainless 'Smith looked like a f^&**n howitzer. Funny now, not so much then.