One of my "mentors"
I put mentors in quotes because Old Joe or Gentleman Joe didn't deliberately mentor me. I was playing pretty decent bar pool at this point, making money consistently most nights, booking few losses until I ran into Joe. This story is long, pass if you are in a rush. It is about slow play and dealing with it though.
Joe was tall, thin, and ancient. He was at least in his seventies, possibly his eighties. We played on a ratty old nine footer in a 24-7 bar. It was the front room of a house built in a style once pretty common on the busier roads. The big room served as store or other business with living quarters in the back. This place was maybe forty by forty, had an ambitious sixty feet or so of bar that ran front to back and across the back wall, and one ratty old nine foot table. The place didn't have a name but the table was open to challenge and the bet was three dollars almost all the time. You could pump up there any time if you were willing to chop wood at that three dollars a game and lose one now and then to keep others interested. The action was like the bar, 24-7.
Anytime I showed up Joe wasn't far behind if he wasn't there already. Did somebody drop a dime? Did he own the place? I don't know. Seemed like every time I came in I ended up playing Joe whenever I visited for months. Joe was s-l-o-w! Without stalling, glaciers grew and shrank while he walked around the table. He never shot hard enough an object ball lost contact with a pocket bevel. The hell of it was that Joe could run out and take ten or fifteen minutes doing it.
The chinese water torture was nothing compared to playing Joe. I was in my late teens and would sit literally on the edge of a bar stool waiting for Joe to miss. If and when he did I would jump up impatiently and shoot too fast. Either I failed to pocket a ball or I blew shape, failed run out after run out. Joe would just take a swallow from an Old Crow half-pint bottle and totter up from his stool and finish the table! The place only sold beer but Joe always toted his own drink in his ancient sport coat he always wore. He never ran out. Only years later did I wonder if some of those multiple bottles had tea in them instead of alcohol.
I felt sure that I had better table skills but Joe owned me. I was several hundred down never playing for more than three dollars a game. Minimum wage was $1.25 an hour and that was all most in there made. That worked out to a dollar an hour after taxes so three hours work was on the line each game, not that small of a bet viewed that way. I had to find a way to get by Joe!
After a lot of thought I decided the ticket was to go from eager and even anxious competitor to mildly interested spectator while sitting well back on the bar stool, feet off the floor. Lean the house cue somewhere, no need to hold it every moment.
Joe never beat me again. After a couple of sessions he would only play me one or two games and he would get off the table. Never got my money back from Joe but that was some of the best money ever spent. In the next seven or eight years learning to cool my jets in the chair made me thousands total.
Aside from anything else, I burned a lot of energy in attack mode all of the time. A six or eight hour session wore me out, sometimes a lot shorter sessions. As a mildly interested spectator I got some rest in the chair and twelve hour plus sessions left me far less tired than sessions half that long had before. When I catch myself on the edge of a chair now I deliberately slide my back all of the way to the backrest. I might fake a yawn or two to tell my body to relax. Nothing to do but watch for fouls or the other person's time at the table to end. Fast play, slow play, speed no longer bothered me. If you want to spend five minutes on a straight in shot I'll sit in my chair seemingly half asleep.
Sailor's advice is excellent when it is your turn to shoot, no nonchalanting at the table, mentally or physically. Seeming nonchalance in the chair is a good thing. If your opponent wants to spend four times the amount of time you do standing and walking around, remember he is the one wasting energy, let him. It is likely to get under his skin when his stalling is totally ignored.
Hu