What time of night does this happen? I have yet to see any place like that. Maybe it does not happen where I live.
Legal closing time was 2AM so a forced shut down. Unless there was serious action on a table we tended to get bored and sit down to drink anudder beer or three sometime between twelve and one. It wasn't anything written in stone. I was in a player's book or two and no doubt it was mentioned that I drank a lot of beer and might be a softer target late night as that was when most road players showed up, making me a little suspicious of late night strangers. Might need to lay down my "A" game if a player came through the door with a hinged stick!
This was just a little two table bar a few miles above Ryan Airport. Nothing special about it other than it was on the corner of a major highway and a subdivision road that let me duck through a few back streets and to my house when I have indulged enough I didn't want to blow up balloons. Over the years it had developed into a nice small action spot and I was always ready for twenty a game action, often more but that was about maximum the local wannabe hustlers would want to play for.
The dance was almost always the same in a bar. Even if both players had twenty a game or more in mind the bet would start out at three or five a game progressing through the steps, three maybe, five, ten, twenty, somewhat rarely fifty a game, very rarely a hundred a game. I very very rarely played sets in bars.
If you don't have local bars like this and gambling is at least moderately legal around you, pick a bar or two and develop it into such a place. Easiest if you have a partner or two. You can come in openly together and bet each other small or you can come in five or ten minutes apart in which case the second player in can challenge the table unless the first player is already in action. This lets you set the bet at five a game and generally any other challengers will keep the bet the same out of courtesy of the person holding the table and you are off to the races.
Five a game won't make you big bucks especially having to lose a game here and there but it is pretty easy to make twenty or thirty dollars an hour without angering anyone. The main problem with bar hustling is that from what I hear the bets are still starting at three or five a game, just like it was in the seventies and eighties. The bar room gamblers haven't adjusted for inflation! Beer was typically seventy-five cents to a dollar in a can with low rent bars as cheap as fifty cents and a high class place might get a buck and a quarter max for a canned beer. Mixed drinks ninety cents to a buck and a quarter, rarely seventy-five cents or a buck and a half. Prices to drink and hourly wages for day jobs have been creeping up but it seems bets haven't.
You need to get in the grease awhile. Try this small time gambling for a week or so and come back to tell us about it. Or go bet more if that is your style. To bet more go in a pool hall or three and tell them you are looking for action. Pick your price you want to play for, usually by the set in a hall, and play down your skill level just a little. They expect everyone to lie so if you tell the truth they will still think you are lying. If you feel the need to use an alias I recommend you don't use Cesar Morales.
Sic'em!
Hu
