How did you first start to play pool?

8

8onthebreak

THE WORLD IS YOURS
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I grew up around a freind who had a pool table, at 15 yrs old, hated playing at first...HATED IT!!!

Frustrated, but kept playing, then started skipping school to play, started getting tips from good players in pool halls, reading books, then Leagues, then tourneys...

Whats your story?
 
My brother who is 4 years older started letting me go to the pool hall with him and his friends when I was 13. You had to be 16 to play, but I was a big kid (6'3") so they never questioned my age. They actually did enforce the rule back in those days, so it was a big deal for me. Instantly fell in love with the game. :cool:
 
I started to watch Shawn Murphy on snooker table at 9 years old. Years later my family have a vacation to visit my grandma who stay with my uncle at his old house.
My uncle recently bought a 8" pool table, and that is the beginning of my addiction to pool. I always play when i wake up, then stop at lunch, continue to play and stop until dinner, than continue to play and only end when my father hit me with broomstick.
 
About 4 years ago me and a then close friend use to go to this crappy little bar. Whilst sitting there twiddling our thumbs, i said lets play pool. He at first refused, not wanting to be embarrassed. I went up and played a game on my own he joined me. He got hooked shortly their after, although i really was not at the time. He then bought a cheap Sears pool table. Which he temporarily had at my house and we would play games. That's basically how it started for me.
 
We would visit relatives in Albuquerque, NM once a year and my great aunt and uncle had a table. We would stay there for a few days to a week at a time and there was literally nothing else to do. No cable TV, and this was before video games and the internet were wide spread. Literally stuck in a house with the only source of entertainment is the pool table.
 
Back in my high school days I would visit my best friend's house, and his family had an Olhausen table in their home. So he & I would play pool whenever I would visit. I can remember that they had a small rack of cues on the wall, which included a very classic 70's blue aluminum pool cue. I can remember how an aluminum cue could be warped. That amazed me. Eventually we were playing enough pool at my friend's house that we began to start going to our local pool. Then seeing the stock of custom cues for sale I decided to sell off half of my comic book collection to buy my first cue, which was an Adams Steve Mizerak merry widow cue.

When we graduated high school my friend went to a different college than I did, and I didnt really play pool during my first year at college as I got hooked into Bowling. But eventually I found my college game room facility which was stocked with 7 Gandy 9 ft tables. That got me back into playing pool again.
And when I discovered that it was definitely alot easier to carry a 20 oz pool cue back & forth between home & college than it was a 16 pound bowling ball I quit bowling entirely and stuck with pool.

That's my story and i'm sticking to it.
 
I was 16 and used to live near a bar,, and they had a table in the back , went over with my uncle 1 night ,played some 8 ball ,and was hooked.. The bar tender was cool , and would let me come in on my own afterwards,, I started going to pool halls for the bigger tourneys and its all history from there,, won over 50 tournys,, placed in well over 100 ,, and captained the 1st all family team in west Pa. to a Pittsburgh Premiere 9ball league Championship....

Now im coming to a pool hall near you,, flip a coin,, its game time..:joyful:
 
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When I was a little kid I had one of those 3' or 4' toy tables with the little balls and the fold up legs. Funny thing is it had a ball return system. On Tuesday nights my dad played volleyball at the "Y" and I'd go with to watch. After, we would go into the billiard room and play for a while on the "big" table before heading home.

In about 6th grade a pool hall opened in my neighborhood that pretty much became my hang out. When that room opened I sold the slot cars and bought a cue.
 
At the age of twelve I met a new friend whose father bought a home table. The father had grown up in a family that owned a pool hall. Every night after dinner the father, his two sons and I would play rotation. The father explained a couple of fundamentals on how to get shape on the next ball. Within a couple of weeks I was dominating the rotation games.

Two years later (1962) there was a slot car racing fad in the USA and a man opened a room with three slot car tracks within a couple of hundred yards of my junior high school. Everyone I knew got into slot car racing for a while but when the fad started to die the room owner removed one track and installed two new Gandy 9 footers. You can guess what happened. Kids abandoned the slot cars for the pool tables and within a few weeks the other two tracks were removed in favor of more Big G Gandy tables.

I was the only experienced player in the room and every day I would teach the other kids how to lose all their lunch money playing 9 ball.
 
My dad used to go to Stanford campus every weekend to hang out and play chess. So in the building he would hang out in, he would take us (myself, brother, and sister) to a room that had just a pool table and said we had to stay there until he would come to get us after a few hours. So there we stayed fiddling with the pool table, not having a clue. My brother and I were barely tall enough to play on the 9ft table, but I always attribute that phase as to why I'm so good with the bridge now :)

Anyway, the bug bit me, but it was only once I was in high school I would play pool every week at the campus rec-center. It's stupid but funny that I learned how to to be a decent shot-maker and strongly understood the use of English early in those highschool days, but admittedly didn't actually know any proper rules for 8 or 9 ball until I was in my later 20s. I'm embarrassed to admit that.

Anyway, after long break from the game, only playing again within the last few years, I live for it.
 
My brother took me to play when I was probably around 11 years old. Payed the house man to rack the balls 5 cents a game. Was immediately hooked. Place had 8 snooker tables, so I got hooked on snooker as well. Played till I got married at 22, quit for 25 years, then picked it back up after divorce. Play one hole every chance I get now days, and still love the snooker, though that 12 foot table punishes me now days.
 
My father was a great pool player, he was bringing home money on a regular basis from the pool halls. We are talking about a thousand here or there, maybe five thousand sometimes. He was also a real estate developer and that was his main job. As I grew up he was not around much, always working real estate or going on road trips with pool players but I had a great life with my mom taking me on trips which were financed by my fathers real estate and pool money.

When I would ask my father about playing pool he would never suggest that I get involved. Our den was full of five foot tall pool trophies. He told me that there were way too many suckers out there that loose money to him because they think they are the best. He just flat out told me, get an education. My father had dropped out of 6th grade but was smart enough to learn how to make a great living.

I just did not have an interest in playing pool at the time, I was more into motocross and racing ten speed bikes.

He did take me to a pool hall when I was about thirteen years old, it was the finals of some league play and all I remember about it was meeting some really cute girl there that was about my age named Rebecca, hahaha.

Ok, how did I start playing pool. I went to the University of Texas in Austin and one night my father calls me up and tells me that he is in town with some friends at Moyers pool hall. Come on over and I will buy you something to eat. I show up and he has a couple of top players with him from San Antonio and a guy named Little Al Romero from Cali.

As I watched the action going on against some of the best players in Austin, Black Danny or Silky was one of them, I was amazed, that cue ball control, etc just freaked me out. It was like magic.

So, I started playing some pool.
 
I started playing when I was 6. My mother cooked for my uncle who own a billiards bar in Chicago. He had a private table in the back room for big money games and he would let me play on it when there was no action. His place, Booies, was somewhere near 54th and Honore. Maybe someone remembers the place. His hustler name was Booie the Trench. I know a lot of mob people went into his place. BTW, the food was great too!
 
It was the Boy Club in Miami, Florida. Not the PC BOYZ & GWIRLS Club of today, it was 1954. They had two Pool Table I live on when I was at the Boys Club of America-in Miami, Florida.
 
My uncle couldnt get himself laid, so he ended up dating a washed up hooker. She had a kid and he didnt, so he would bring me along to make it look as if they had something in common. They had a full size table over at her house, and I was facinated by the game right away.

So the hooker shot herself in the head, and somehow my uncle acquired the pool table. But we had so much crap in our basement, the table never actually made it onto the floor. I would go down there as a little kid and just admire the huge table propped up on the wall, and play with the ball set.
 
These are all gr8 stories thanks for sharing them.
For me I think it was a few things?
#1 I have images from the Wide World of Sports still stuck in my head.
#2 Then there were the ladies. I don't know what it was but seeing them all dressed up nice nice playing pool but it also made an impression. soo much so that my senior yr of high school I skipped school with a girl and asked her to wear a pants suit to go to the pool room with me. This was my 1st pool room and we're talking cigs and spit on the floor, poker in the back, lol, got her home 5mins before mom pulled up!
#3 2 friends, one with one of those 4ft sears tables and the other with a bumper pool table, wait just remembered, his neighbor had an 8 or 9ft and we went there a few times too.
#4 a social club my mom & dad use to bring us to on sundays had 2 bar tables AND THEY WOULD NEVER LET ME PLAY! I'LL SHOW YOU BUG CLUB!

Then I went in the army played a lil at the rec center, bars in Columbus GA, my dad sent me a 5 piece cue and I remember meeting another guy from Missouri and he looked at it and said "you got the 8" I didn't even know what theat meant, lol we turned out to be buddies and good enough to get hustled by David Howard at a sat afternoon strip club tournament :) wasn't till about 4-6yrs later watching my first accu stats with Allen Hopkins and you guessed it did I realize who robbed us that day. Actually we were begging to be robbed, he just had to say ok.

When I cam e home from the army and started going to night school I heard of a pool hall in New Bedford and went to check it out one Sat afternoon. I didn't notice anything special tillI was leaving and stopped to watch the monthly tournament that was going on and it was then that pool finally friggin hit me on the head! There were about 8 players left and they were all controlling whitey. I said to myself, self, you gotta get lessons son! Got my first commentary less accu stats, meucci cue and 9ft table from Mike X and probably my first lesson too, Thanks Mike & Gail for being there!
Next 3 yrs were work, pool, work pool, no school and its been just pool ever since :)

Good thread, thanks for starting it and it leads me to a question that I'll mention here but think I'll start another thread for it.
How do people get involved in pool from 2000 on?
 
1955

8onthebreak said:
I grew up around a freind who had a pool table, at 15 yrs old, hated playing at first...HATED IT!!!

Frustrated, but kept playing, then started skipping school to play, started getting tips from good players in pool halls, reading books, then Leagues, then tourneys...

Whats your story?
Click to expand...

I'd played a few games on miniature toy tables, but my first "serious" play was in 1955, when my father took me to a bar with a bumper pool table. In a very short time, I was "unbeatable" on that little box, and the owner banned me from playing, as my dad was winning too many $ and drinks betting on me. I then had to go to the pool halls that let kids play during the day, though not at night (they served beer and you had to be 18 to drink beer in those days). I can remember, like it was yesterday, the smell of cigars and 10 cent tap beer, the spitoons on the floor, and the wonderful "clack" of the clay balls...

Donny L
PBIA/ACS Instructor
Gainesville, Fl
 
I was let off in Oct 2008, and I finally said I'm gonna start playing. I grew up bowling, and had always watched Trick Shot Magic and Classic matches on ESPN before bowling. Anyways, I googled pool leagues, found APA, and joined in November. The house owner was my team captain, so he gave me free pool. I spent on average 10 hrs a day there for an entire year until I left for the Navy in Oct 2009. Now I'm running at B speed.
 
I had a friend who's father had a table when I was 7. He showed me how to hold the cue and make a bridge. I was a bit too short but still liked the game.

A few years later my father owned a feed store and on the next block was Blackman's Pool Hall. It was rough place where the owner kept a 357 on the wall. I think the shadiness of it was a huge draw and the danger that I imagined happened there after nightfall.

The rest is history.
 
I started playing when I was six at the local Moose Lodge playing the old guys and played at home against my dad for who was going to do the dishes after dinner.
I didn't take is seriously until my mom signed me up for a pool tournament at age 15. I won the tournament and made an 18 year old guy cry.
I was hooked after that. :D
 
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