infamous pool tournament in burlington.ill.

freddy the beard said:
JAMMY, I need the year for my memoirs. Keith and Cole were there. Both played great on incredibly tough pockets. But I dont remember anything about guys not showing up for their money rounds. Jimmy Marino and I had to play for 3rd place in the 8 ball and he sure as hell showed up to beat me.
I think it was 76 or 77. The attendance was pitiful. Cardone and Ronnie A and I forgot who else were the promoters. I eventually got paid a few months later.

Beard
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Freddy,

Keith said he was undefeated in the tournament, 5 and oh, and didn't show up the last day because he knew the tournament money wasn't going to be there.

Cole Dixon was there, but he wasn't there with Keith. They came separately. Keith says he thinks he was with Tony Banks.

Hearsay, according to Keith, is that Ronnie Allen and the other tournament promoter blew the stew gambling, across the riverbed. The bottom line, whether they lost the money gambling or whatever they did with the money, the money was not going to be paid, so why show up to play in a tournament when you know there's no purse.

Keith said he broke two ring games, beat Corella, Hubbart, beat Don McCoy twice. He said he won his own little tournament on the real tight equipment where nobody could make a ball.

Keith wants to know how come you don't remember him "breaking every S.O.B. over there," but you can remember who showed up to play in the tournament. :grin-square::wink:
 
JAM...It was Abso-freakin-lutely October, 1975. I had just graduated college a few months earlier, and started going "on the road". It was also when I had my "lucky" encounter with Keith (not so lucky for the other DOZENS of guys he plucked)! :grin:

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com

JAM said:
Interesting how "The Snap" has the date of Burlington as 1974 and Jim Rempe lists it as 1975. :confused:
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Scott Lee said:
JAM...It was Abso-freakin-lutely October, 1975. I had just graduated college a few months earlier, and started going "on the road". It was also when I had my "lucky" encounter with Keith (not so lucky for the other DOZENS of guys he plucked)! :grin:

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com
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LOL! I know what you mean, Scott. :grin-square:

Actually, Keith is quite fortunate to have his name praised in such high regards. I cannot tell you how much joy it brings to those on the regional tour or local tourneys when they beat Keith in a race to 5 or a race to 7. When they sink that money ball, it's as if they won "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." They drop to their knees and look up at the sky to their higher power for giving them the strength to defeat the almighty Keith McCready, even though it's a 50-something-year-old Keith McCready. It's actually kind of a compliment in a way. :wink:

When Keith was on the road, many years after your encounter, people would watch him play for days and days while he would be staying up a few nights with no sleep but in dead-punch stroke. These great grinders would be waiting in the wings to *then* get in action with him, hoping he'd be a little weak by that point. I mean, why play a man when he's wide awake and in dead-punch stroke? Better to rob him when he's running out of gas. That's how you're supposed to hustle, I think. Of course, when Keith lost, it gave them bragging rights forever more that, once again, they, in fact, did defeat the almighty Keith McCready. :yeah:

In Keith's memoirs, there are few happenings exactly like this. One happend on a golf course where one of today's pool super stars did exactly just that. It's Keith's fault, though, for allowing himself to get to run down with no sleep and/or in most cases get totally inebriated. In that state, one feels no pain and thinks they can give the world *once again* the 8. Well, you can't do that when you've had no sleep and you're drunk. :o

This was my biggest beef about attending pool tournaments for seven years straight. I remember my first trip to the DCC when it was at the Executive West in Louisville, I never got any sleep. We were either in tournament matches or gambling, all night long. I could hardly keep up with Keith, and I hated every minute of it, wondering why I would leave my beloved dog and comfortable home to walk the halls of a hotel like a mountain goat, up and down, back and forth, non-stop, following Keith the Pied Piper. I now realize things *must* be done in moderation on the tournament trail, but there's no stopping Keith when his nostrils are wide open. :sorry:

I guess the door swings both ways. The last time Keith played Shane Van Boening, Ronnie Alcano, Ralf Souquet, Hall of Famer Francisco Bustamante, Mika Immonen, Niels Feijen, and Alex Pagulayan, he beat them in a tournament match. Lucky encounters? Hmm, I'm not sure I'm willing to cede that assumption, but then again, I guess I'm a little biased. :ok:
 
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JAM said:
For sure, Freddy. When Keith wakes up, I will provide more color.

I do know he gambled a good player from Washington State on the offs in Burlington, as well as some others.

I wrote about this tournament, and I can't find the post on AzBilliards.

Right now, though, I'm on a search for a post I wrote about Allen Hopkins playing Jew Paul for big bucks years ago. I wrote it on this forum, and I cannot find it. I have searched and searched with different keywords, and the post just ain't popping up. I know I wrote it because I quoted an article from either Snap or National Billiard Newsletter. I wanted to share it in the thread for Jew Paul to receive the Lifetime Action Award from OnePocket.org's Hall of Fame.

I'll see if I can find the Burlington post I wrote after that. I've been searching for several hours now for Trivett, Burlington, and Jew Paul as keywords on AzBilliards and Google and my computer, coming up empty on all of them. It is very frustrating when I know these posts exist. :frown:

I guess I should go to work, though, because writing about pool doesn't pay my bills. LOL
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could it be this post?

http://forums.azbilliards.com/showpost.php?p=84127&postcount=10
 
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"CaliRed". said:
could it be this post?

http://forums.azbilliards.com/showpost.php?p=84127&postcount=10
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WOW! I spent two hours yesterday looking for this post about Allen Hopkins and Jew Paul. I wanted to re-post it on the OnePocket.org thread about the Action Lifetime award for Jew Paul. I still hate his moniker, but it is what it is. I think his real name is Paul Brosloff, but that's "subject to check." I'm sure I'll be corrected for my faux pas if it isn't. :grin-square:

CaliRed, you're the BEST! :)
 
1975

JAM said:
Found this little snippet in one of my older posts to add to your "memoirs," Freddy. :grin-square:

With all that great training provided by Danny [DiLiberto], Mike [Carella] went on to become one of the top one-pocket players in the world, and he was an excellent 9-ball player as well. This he proved in 1974 by placing second behind Jim Rempe in Burlington, Iowa, at the World 9-Ball Championships in a field of 165 of the top players in the world.
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Now, I think that the first Burlington tourn was in 1974 and Rempe won it. The next year I think was the 2nd tourn and it was an all around, featuring 9 ball and 8 ball for sure. I dont think there was any 1pkt and there may have been straight pool. I talked to Cardone last night and he was one of the promoters and he cant recall the year. The tourn was held in the Municipal Auditorium. There was no money because there were no paid sweators. The tourn was scheduled at the same time as the State Fair was being held. There was no attendance. As far as I know the payout money wasnt blown gambling. I did get paid later.

Beard

Beard
 
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freddy the beard said:
Now, I think that the first Burlington tourn was in 1974 and Rempe won it. The next year I think was the 2nd tourn and it was an all around, featuring 9 ball and 8 ball for sure. I dont think there was any 1pkt and there may have been straight pool. I talked to Cardone last night and he was one of the promoters and he cant recall the year. The tourn was held in the Municipal Auditorium. There was no money because there were no paid sweators. The tourn was scheduled at the same time as the State Fair was being held. There was no attendance. As far as I know the payout money wasnt blown gambling. I did get paid later.
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Freddy, there must have been two tournaments in Burlington, close chronologically, I'm thinking.

I read one post on this thread where it said there were 165 players, and then I saw this article about the tournament from the Star News, October 30, 1975: Pool Players Converge on Championship. [retrieved 2 November 2010]

Some of the nation's top pool players will compete for $25,000 in prize money at the world nine-ball championship which begins a four-day run here Thursday.

Sixty-four players from across the country will shoot for the $10,000 first prize in the double-elimination tournament, sponsored by the World Nine-Ball Association.

Among those entered are Luther Lassiter from Elizabeth City, Joe Balsis from Minersville, PA, Richie Florence of Los Angeles, CA, Mike Siegel [sic] of Chicago, IL, and Jim Rempe of Scranton, PA.
 
He sure did

JAM said:
Freddy,

Keith said he was undefeated in the tournament, 5 and oh, and didn't show up the last day because he knew the tournament money wasn't going to be there.

Cole Dixon was there, but he wasn't there with Keith. They came separately. Keith says he thinks he was with Tony Banks.

Hearsay, according to Keith, is that Ronnie Allen and the other tournament promoter blew the stew gambling, across the riverbed. The bottom line, whether they lost the money gambling or whatever they did with the money, the money was not going to be paid, so why show up to play in a tournament when you know there's no purse.

Keith said he broke two ring games, beat Corella, Hubbart, beat Don McCoy twice. He said he won his own little tournament on the real tight equipment where nobody could make a ball.

Keith wants to know how come you don't remember him "breaking every S.O.B. over there," but you can remember who showed up to play in the tournament. :grin-square::wink:
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Keith sure did break everybody that jumped up. He put on an absolutely unbelievable performance. One of the best in the history of pool. I just spent 20 minutes looking for a previous post I made about that same subject. Couldnt find it. The pockets on those freak tables were impossible. I had never seen tables like that before or since. The only two players who were whistling balls into those ridiculous pockets was Keith and Cole. I played Larry Liscotti bank pool on a table that had a pocket that wouldnt accept a straight back! If you hit the shot with speed it would spit it out. If you rolled at the pocket it would roll away from it. With the score my 5, to he still owed 2, Larry paid off and quit. We were playing for 300 a game. That's how brutal it was to play on those boxes.

Beard
 
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Just 9 ball or All Around

Scott Lee said:
JAM...It was Abso-freakin-lutely October, 1975. I had just graduated college a few months earlier, and started going "on the road". It was also when I had my "lucky" encounter with Keith (not so lucky for the other DOZENS of guys he plucked)! :grin:

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com
Click to expand...


Scott, was it 9 ball only, or all around including 8 ball?

Beard
 
Okay guys, enough of this. I was there too in '75 when Rempe beat Richie Ambrose in the finals. First prize was 10K with 5K for second. Dick Coffey was the promoter and a few of us got wind he was ducking out with the prize money after it was over. We called the cops on him and sure enough he had bought tickets to Vegas for him and his girl, and was planning to withdraw the money from the bank Monday morning and take off. The police stopped him at the bank that morning and foiled his escape. Sounds like fiction but believe me it isn't. By the way there were big crowds at the Municipal auditorium in Burlington that year! A local radio station wanted to interview a player and I convinced Mizerak to do it. He was shy back then!

The following year in '76 (the year Freddie is talking about), Ronnie got together with the guy who owned the hotel (forgot his name) and tried to do the tourney again. I talked to Ronnie prior to the event and I knew they were depending on the gate to make the pay offs. We called it "doing it on the if come." I took a pass on going back, as I knew it would turn out bad and it did. That was also the year that Ronnie had put on the very successful Bend, Oregon event (back in April) that was Eight Ball and 9-Ball. He had some better backers up there and all 33K got paid.

Just a little info you might like to know. Because Coffey got stopped at the bank, Rempe and Ambrose got their money. They were very lucky. The guys who went out early and cashed their checks were okay. It was the top five or six guys (maybe seven or eight) who won the big money who were going to get burned. And anyone else who hadn't cashed their check right away. I did play in the event and lost in the second round to Larry Hubbart and on the losers side to Richie Florence. That was to get in the money, so I won zero. I did make one small score in the back room betting against Clyde Childress when he was playing Banks with Youngblood. Everyone liked Clyde and I knew Blood was the better banker.
 
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Scott Lee said:
Freddy...It was ONLY 9ball in '75...but the gambling was wide open! I also remember that tournament, because Stroud brought me my first custom cue, delivered in Burlington, IA. :D

Scott Lee
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The best game of all was the big Ten Ball ring game that went on almost every night. By the way ring game Ten Ball has been around forever. That was also a staple at Johnston City in the 60's. Only the best players got in these games. In Burlington, Jimmy Mataya was the big winner, playing twenty a man for the most part. They would usually play five or six handed was not unusual. You win a game, you pick up $80 or $100. Jimmy must have made $2-3,000 in the game over a five day period. That was a big score back then.

I watched a lot of that game. Marino, Reid, Grady, Ronnie, Mataya, Cole, Incardona, Florence were a few of the participants. Believe me these guys could play, even way back when!
 
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Jay...I sure remember that ring game, being played in the hotel downtown. Florence had a brand new Balabushka delivered to him at the hotel, and it was stolen a day later. He went bust in the ring game, went down to the car lot, hocked his Caddy, and was back in action (my recollection is that Richie won big in that game). The game I was watching was 5-6 players, at $500 a head. Some serious dough changing hands every game.

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com

jay helfert said:
The best game of all was the big Ten Ball ring game that went on almost every night. By the way ring game Ten Ball has been around forever. That was also a staple at Johnston City in the 60's. Only the best players got in these games. In Burlington, Jimmy Mataya was the big winner, playing twenty a man for the most part. They would usually play five or six handed was not unusual. You win a game, you pick up $80 or $100. Jimmy must have made $2-3,000 in the game over a five day period. That was a big score back then.

I watched a lot of that game. Marino, Reid, Grady, Ronnie, Mataya, Cole, Incardona, Florence were a few of the participants. Believe me these guys could play, even way back when!
Click to expand...
 
Found this little nugget written by Keith McCready

So you remember Burlington, IA. That was really something over there. I got off the plane with little money. I had enough to play in the tournament and get me a room for one night.

I saw Dan Louie there, and Dan Louie staked me in the ring game. I busted the ring game, and then I played Don McCoy and busted him. Next, I played Mike Corella and busted him. Busted another ring game. Got jarred and played that guy that had open-heart surgery named Lorren that was a crook, one of Don McCoy's men. I played him 800 a game, lost 6 games by missing the 6-ball, the 7-ball, the 8-ball, the 8-ball, the 7-ball, the 6-ball until I realized the guy I was playing had jarred me. The balls became real fuzzy. At least I was smart enough to realize it. I pulled up 4,800 loser, but still had plenty of money.

I waited until the jar wore off, and then I busted Louie three times, played Larry Hubbard, busted him, and then Mike Corella again on the end. Those were tough tables, weren't they? I think those were some of the toughest tables we ever played on in life.

And let's not forget when Jimmy Mataya then officially barred me from the ring game because I was running too many racks. He told me I was too young, had to be 21 to play, but the real reason was that he knew I was the only one who could get out on those phoney tables.

If I do recall it right, I was 5-and-0 in the tournament, and then it was to be known that nobody was going to get paid. So I scrammed. Do I have it right, Freddy? Am I close? Let me know.

Source: Post No. 40 on Azbilliards Thread. :smile:
 
Proof of the 1975 Date. Receipt is from Bob Meucci to me via Fats on a unique MO-7
Fun to watch all the Greats in one place.
Slept in a VW Bus on the parking lot outside the arena.
Those were the days.
 

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