Let's Make Sure There's a One Pocket Hall of Fame Dinner This Year @ DCC!!

I'm not going to argue with professional arguers -- been there done that same old same old.

If anyone wants to actually help make the next One Pocket HOF dinner happen, you all know you can find me.


Cool. I'm not going to argue with a professional 1pocket dilettante -- been there, done that, same old same old.

Lou Figueroa
 
I'm certain the "Voice of Accustats" could get many to help out if only someone would pay him. Guess that's too much to ask of a person considered by many to be at the top of the poolplayers list. I'm sure a "family emergency" or something will pop up to prevent him from helping out and (god forbid) actually donating his time and effort to continue his so-called "good friend of 40 years" tradition, I would even give him permission to read "You'll Be Up Here Yet" if he wants.

Maybe someone could tear the ex-player on this forum away from online poker and get him to help out pool. I'm sure many would follow his lead.

P.S. Lou F., stirrers can only stir shit if there is shit present. It seems there is.

Dennis
 
I'm certain the "Voice of Accustats" could get many to help out if only someone would pay him. Guess that's too much to ask of a person considered by many to be at the top of the poolplayers list. I'm sure a "family emergency" or something will pop up to prevent him from helping out and (god forbid) actually donating his time and effort to continue his so-called "good friend of 40 years" tradition, I would even give him permission to read "You'll Be Up Here Yet" if he wants.

Maybe someone could tear the ex-player on this forum away from online poker and get him to help out pool. I'm sure many would follow his lead.

P.S. Lou F., stirrers can only stir shit if there is shit present. It seems there is.

Dennis


Careful, Cowboy. BI might come over here and threaten to take his ball home, lol.

Funny though... I see there's a thread over there now providing hosannas to Steve and knocking AZ. It's funny because over the years the onepocket.org guys have aways disparaged this group as "the other group" the "AZanies" and such.

But at the same time, the second they want to sell something -- a book, DVDs -- or promote one of their events -- they run right over here and run amokked amongst the great unwashed.

Funny how that works.

Lou Figueroa
 
Careful, Cowboy. BI might come over here and threaten to take his ball home, lol.

Funny though... I see there's a thread over there now providing hosannas to Steve and knocking AZ. It's funny because over the years the onepocket.org guys have aways disparaged this group as "the other group" the "AZanies" and such.

But at the same time, the second they want to sell something -- a book, DVDs -- or promote one of their events -- they run right over here and run amokked amongst the great unwashed.

Funny how that works.

Lou Figueroa

Lou,

I take full and the only credit for calling this site the "All-Zaniness" site, don't be spreading my credit around;)

I banned that forum from my computer after my last post there so I have no clue what's going on over there (but I know it's all kissy-face friendly).

P.S. Is "amokked" really a word or did you make that up?

RBL
 
Lou,

I take full and the only credit for calling this site the "All-Zaniness" site, don't be spreading my credit around;)

I banned that forum from my computer after my last post there so I have no clue what's going on over there (but I know it's all kissy-face friendly).

P.S. Is "amokked" really a word or did you make that up?

RBL


Ya, but others picked it up.

As to amokked, it's a Smorgism, along with: dan't, Lucy, illuminated, and some others.

Lou Figueroa
welcome to Club Zany
see you by the pool
for happy hour
 
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I'm not going to argue with professional arguers -- been there done that same old same old.

If anyone wants to actually help make the next One Pocket HOF dinner happen, you all know you can find me.

Steve, don't pay any attention to these whiners. They talk about how easy it is to put together a dinner with the place, food, speakers and inductees and then get enough participation to pay the bill. But you don't see any of them doing any organizing, they're just experts and can tell you how easy it is.

They probably haven't even been to the dinners and shown any support for the event. I'll see you in '18.
 
Steve, don't pay any attention to these whiners. They talk about how easy it is to put together a dinner with the place, food, speakers and inductees and then get enough participation to pay the bill. But you don't see any of them doing any organizing, they're just experts and can tell you how easy it is.

They probably haven't even been to the dinners and shown any support for the event. I'll see you in '18.


I've put together *many* dinners far, far more elaborate than anything Steve has even dreamt about. I have been to several of *his* dinners and bought stuff to support. And, if I committed to an annual event, it wouldn't take me three years to do it.

I look forward to watching how you support the event in 2018 :-)

Lou Figueroa
 
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I've put together *many* dinners far, far more elaborate than anything Steve has even dreamt about. I have been to several of *his* dinners and bought stuff to support. And, if I committed to an annual event, it wouldn't take me three years to do it.

I look forward to watching how you support the event in 2018 :-)

Lou Figueroa

Lou,

As I'm sure you know I have also donated to the HOF dinner for 1P.org. and I have also "donated" several S,M & S's to be raffled off and the proceeds went to the HOF dinner (but I drink a lot and memory is not strong). I never asked for a plug nickel (whatever that is) from anyone and donated the books and my time keeping track of the raffles. I think I have about 24 Shots, Moves & Strategies books now and God knows what I'll do with them.

I guess upon hindsight it would have been better to be a creep who needs to be paid to help out than a good guy who did it out of kindness and concern.

Dennis
 
Lou,

As I'm sure you know I have also donated to the HOF dinner for 1P.org. and I have also "donated" several S,M & S's to be raffled off and the proceeds went to the HOF dinner (but I drink a lot and memory is not strong). I never asked for a plug nickel (whatever that is) from anyone and donated the books and my time keeping track of the raffles. I think I have about 24 Shots, Moves & Strategies books now and God knows what I'll do with them.

I guess upon hindsight it would have been better to be a creep who needs to be paid to help out than a good guy who did it out of kindness and concern.

Dennis
You have been very generous in your support over the years, Dennis, and I thank you for that.
 
Lou,

As I'm sure you know I have also donated to the HOF dinner for 1P.org. and I have also "donated" several S,M & S's to be raffled off and the proceeds went to the HOF dinner (but I drink a lot and memory is not strong). I never asked for a plug nickel (whatever that is) from anyone and donated the books and my time keeping track of the raffles. I think I have about 24 Shots, Moves & Strategies books now and God knows what I'll do with them.

I guess upon hindsight it would have been better to be a creep who needs to be paid to help out than a good guy who did it out of kindness and concern.

Dennis


oh yeah, sure. You did good stuff supporting that site. So did I and SJD.

How'd that work out, lol.

Lou Figueroa
next time
go with Plan B
 
About the dinner a little. The first dinner was at the Derby City Classic in January 2005. The way that came about was kind of funny. Originally, I had assumed the One Pocket HOF would just be something online, but I did have a plaque made for Grady, who was the top vote-getter in our first online poll for the fledgling One Pocket HOF, and I had brought it to his tournament in Gulfport in November 2004. In a short break in the tournament action I gave him the plaque and figured that was that. But afterwords, he said something like, "That was great, but we ought to have a dinner and I'll spearhead that."

Well the DCC was coming up in a couple months at that point, but I checked with Greg Sullivan and with the Executive West and found out there was in fact a small meeting room available if I was willing to commit. Grady volunteered to be the MC, but all of the organizing, the financial commitments, etc, fell on me. God bless Grady for his enthusiasm, but the grunt work all fell to me, and no, I did not have ANY experience organizing and publicizing anything like that. I did not then nor do I now work in the pool industry -- my wife and I are in the kitchen cabinet business, lol. Even my website, onepocket.org was less than a year old so basically no one in the national pool world knew me.

Anyway, with my wife's support I committed to the E West for something like 24-30 dinner seats in that room and started to look for people to fill the seats, and I started work on creating printed program for the event. To be honest, I did not even know if the other inductees we had slated to induct would even show up. However, as it got closer, Weenie Beenie said he would come, and someone said they would bring Bugs Rucker down from Chicago, and even Efren said he "would stop by." Rumor was that Ronnie Allen might come too. But still very few people had committed the $50 for the dinner prior to DCC.

This is from that first dinner:
GroupSmilingDCC-018_001.jpg


Even when I got to DCC myself the Saturday before the Tuesday night dinner, there was not much buzz and I thought the dinner would be a complete and costly failure. Then RA showed up, and Beenie, and Bugs and people started to get excited, and suddenly 30 was not enough, so I went back to the E West, and they had no larger rooms but they said they could squeeze up to 45 people in. And much to my amazement, we sold out and had to turn away people!

And the dinner went great! It turned out that, which I certainly did not anticipate, it was a pretty amazing mix of funny stories, and real heartfelt sadness and appreciation all rolled into one night. I mean, the idea that hardened pool hustlers like RA and Beenie would come to tears blew me away. And Efren not only stopped by, he stayed the whole night and had a great time. Freddy the Beard was just a guest there, but he got cajoled into speaking a bit, and it was obvious from that little bit that he was a natural and from the next year, he was co-MC with Grady.

One other thing happened just the week after I returned home from the DCC. I ended up winning a football pool for something like $4500. I took that as a sign that it was the good Karma from that dinner, and my wife agreed with me to use that money to help make sure the One Pocket HOF dinner would continue -- at least until the money ran out.

The next year the dinner grew to around a hundred, and it actually grew to over a 120 for the peak years. We had 11 HOF dinners at DCC in all, between the E West and the Horseshoe. Every year I had to commit ahead of time to how many seats, and sometimes we had more but over the last few years with the recession and all, the numbers declined to 80-90.

Let me also say, I have never been very good at promoting the dinner. And relative to the press that the BCA HOF gets, partly as a result of that, I have never gotten much support from the established pool/billiard print media either, with the exceptions of the late Conrad Burkman, Professor Q-Ball, and to a certain degree Dave Thompson and a couple of others. If someone is good at that kind of thing and would like to help, PLEASE step forward, lol.

The $4500 disappeared long ago, and during the last few declining attendance years, my wife and I made up the difference in costs/revenues for the dinner. Over the years we have had a number of very loyal and generous individuals who have steadfastedly supported the dinner, but never any corporate support. If anyone is good at generating that, again, PLEASE step forward if you are interested. The bottom line as far as why there was no dinner last DCC is that I was seeing even less pre-commitments to that dinner, yet I was faced with having to guarantee a number to the Horseshoe. Remember the part about my wife and I being in the kitchen business? Well our line of business fell exactly in one of the segments of the economy most hard hit by the last recession ("housing collapse" they called it, lol). We could not take the risk of another loss at that time.

Oh, and I neglected to mention that both of our co-MC's, who had played such key roles helping me make the HOF what it was, died within a year or two of each other. That hurt in many ways, and still does.

So there were 11 great years that I am very proud of, and the thing that I feel best about is how these great players and their family, friends and fans were so appreciative of being honored -- many of whom were totally overlooked by the BCA HOF because of gambling, the fact their game wasn't 9-ball or 14.1, or whatever. And more than a dozen of our honorees have since died, but they got to revel in their honor while they were living. I'm proud of that.

Whoever wants to help bring the dinner back can contact me. It will be back in 2018, although the dinner itself might change, because of the cost of the kind of spread we were providing.
 
oh yeah, sure. You did good stuff supporting that site. So did I and SJD.

How'd that work out, lol.

Lou Figueroa
next time
go with Plan B

Plan B?..Might that stand for getting Banned, for trashing the biggest creep who ever posted on any pool forum, ever?

PS..Steve, your preceding post was very informative and interesting!..Let me just say, that were I not banned, I would
still be right there supporting it with you, as I always was!..I think you understand, the year of my welcome induction to
the 1P HOF, just happened to coincide with one of the lowest points, ever in my life!..I am sad that you seem to have overlooked that detail!
 
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I'm going to put my two cents worth in here, whether anybody likes it or not.

I've been on the internet for almost as long as it has been around and I have played pool for more than 50 years, so I am not a rookie on either subject.

Being a pool enthusiast, pool related information was one of the very first things I searched for on the internet. I wanted to see how much information was available and I also enjoyed reading. Many years ago, I ran across pool forums to include this site, onepocket.org,, the old .rsb site, etc. I read lots and lots of the forums, looked at for sale stuff, and pretty much anything else that interested me.

For MANY years, I always went to the sites and read things as a "lurker"...I never signed up for any accounts, even though they were free. It wasn't until the last few years that I ever bothered to create an account on any pool forum.

Even way back then, one thing I immediately noticed on the sites was that there were about a half-dozen or so members there who were very vocal and seemed to cause a lot of unnecessary anguish to other members. I won't name any names, but I see some of those names still posting on whatever sites they haven't been removed from. The same named members were silenced, temporarily banned, over and over, until the point they finally were banned for good. How can it be that the same individuals get banned (at least once) from every site they go to? Can it be the fault of every other member and it is a conspiracy? I'll let you figure that out. I think I know the answer.

As far as having a dinner for these grouchy old people who spent all day banging balls into rails, I couldn't care less, one way or the other. That should be up to whomever wants to run it, finance it, or thinks they are so fortunate to know them that it is all worthwhile.

FWIW, I'll host a dinner for them if they show up here in Hawaii. I think I may come into some money soon. I'm about to win some in this match of one-pocket that me and some old codger started in 1962. I think I have him down 7-2 in our first game. If I can make one more ball, I'm quitting.

I'll be springing for the first 6 Hall of Famer's Happy Meals down at McDonald's. I think they may even give you free coffee refills. Y'all can sit there for a couple hours and BS like the rest of the others do, until the paying customers show up.
 
My two cents - I love One Pocket, by far the most creative pool game there is. I tried posting on onepocket.org and offered my opinion on several threads, including WWYD. I found myself getting spoken down to by the more established site members who essentially treated my observations with disdain. It was more than a little disheartening and caused me to finally quit posting there. It felt to me like if you weren't in the elite clique, then what you had to say was not relevant and had no value.

Too bad because I'm not a guy in a diner when it comes to One Pocket, having the good fortune to have played with and watched the best players of the last 50 years.

I also supported Steve's dinner for years and enjoyed every minute of it. It's too bad that it hasn't worked out better for Steve, but maybe his core group of supporters could come through for him. Freddie was one of my closest friends in pool for over forty years (more like 45), and he always called me Jaybird. He was one of the most intelligent men in the game and truly loved it with all the warts and weirdos that inhabited our little world. I could relate to that since I also cherish my memories around all the hustlers and outlaws I have encountered in the pool world. They weren't all good memories but they made a better man out of me.

Good luck to Steve in his endeavors and maybe I'll try my imitation of Fats one more time. :thumbup:
 
My two cents - I love One Pocket, by far the most creative pool game there is. I tried posting on onepocket.org and offered my opinion on several threads, including WWYD. I found myself getting spoken down to by the more established site members who essentially treated my observations with disdain. It was more than a little disheartening and caused me to finally quit posting there. It felt to me like if you weren't in the elite clique, then what you had to say was not relevant and had no value.

Too bad because I'm not a guy in a diner when it comes to One Pocket, having the good fortune to have played with and watched the best players of the last 50 years.

I also supported Steve's dinner for years and enjoyed every minute of it. It's too bad that it hasn't worked out better for Steve, but maybe his core group of supporters could come through for him. Freddie was one of my closest friends in pool for over forty years (more like 45), and he always called me Jaybird. He was one of the most intelligent men in the game and truly loved it with all the warts and weirdos that inhabited our little world. I could relate to that since I also cherish my memories around all the hustlers and outlaws I have encountered in the pool world. They weren't all good memories but they made a better man out of me.

Good luck to Steve in his endeavors and maybe I'll try my imitation of Fats one more time. :thumbup:

Let me interrupt this thread to insert this: Jay, I really, really like your article in The Billiards Buzz. Well done!

Okay. You all can return to your regular programming. :p
 
About the dinner a little. The first dinner was at the Derby City Classic in January 2005. The way that came about was kind of funny. Originally, I had assumed the One Pocket HOF would just be something online, but I did have a plaque made for Grady, who was the top vote-getter in our first online poll for the fledgling One Pocket HOF, and I had brought it to his tournament in Gulfport in November 2004. In a short break in the tournament action I gave him the plaque and figured that was that. But afterwords, he said something like, "That was great, but we ought to have a dinner and I'll spearhead that."

Well the DCC was coming up in a couple months at that point, but I checked with Greg Sullivan and with the Executive West and found out there was in fact a small meeting room available if I was willing to commit. Grady volunteered to be the MC, but all of the organizing, the financial commitments, etc, fell on me. God bless Grady for his enthusiasm, but the grunt work all fell to me, and no, I did not have ANY experience organizing and publicizing anything like that. I did not then nor do I now work in the pool industry -- my wife and I are in the kitchen cabinet business, lol. Even my website, onepocket.org was less than a year old so basically no one in the national pool world knew me.

Anyway, with my wife's support I committed to the E West for something like 24-30 dinner seats in that room and started to look for people to fill the seats, and I started work on creating printed program for the event. To be honest, I did not even know if the other inductees we had slated to induct would even show up. However, as it got closer, Weenie Beenie said he would come, and someone said they would bring Bugs Rucker down from Chicago, and even Efren said he "would stop by." Rumor was that Ronnie Allen might come too. But still very few people had committed the $50 for the dinner prior to DCC.

This is from that first dinner:
GroupSmilingDCC-018_001.jpg


Even when I got to DCC myself the Saturday before the Tuesday night dinner, there was not much buzz and I thought the dinner would be a complete and costly failure. Then RA showed up, and Beenie, and Bugs and people started to get excited, and suddenly 30 was not enough, so I went back to the E West, and they had no larger rooms but they said they could squeeze up to 45 people in. And much to my amazement, we sold out and had to turn away people!

And the dinner went great! It turned out that, which I certainly did not anticipate, it was a pretty amazing mix of funny stories, and real heartfelt sadness and appreciation all rolled into one night. I mean, the idea that hardened pool hustlers like RA and Beenie would come to tears blew me away. And Efren not only stopped by, he stayed the whole night and had a great time. Freddy the Beard was just a guest there, but he got cajoled into speaking a bit, and it was obvious from that little bit that he was a natural and from the next year, he was co-MC with Grady.

One other thing happened just the week after I returned home from the DCC. I ended up winning a football pool for something like $4500. I took that as a sign that it was the good Karma from that dinner, and my wife agreed with me to use that money to help make sure the One Pocket HOF dinner would continue -- at least until the money ran out.

The next year the dinner grew to around a hundred, and it actually grew to over a 120 for the peak years. We had 11 HOF dinners at DCC in all, between the E West and the Horseshoe. Every year I had to commit ahead of time to how many seats, and sometimes we had more but over the last few years with the recession and all, the numbers declined to 80-90.

Let me also say, I have never been very good at promoting the dinner. And relative to the press that the BCA HOF gets, partly as a result of that, I have never gotten much support from the established pool/billiard print media either, with the exceptions of the late Conrad Burkman, Professor Q-Ball, and to a certain degree Dave Thompson and a couple of others. If someone is good at that kind of thing and would like to help, PLEASE step forward, lol.

The $4500 disappeared long ago, and during the last few declining attendance years, my wife and I made up the difference in costs/revenues for the dinner. Over the years we have had a number of very loyal and generous individuals who have steadfastedly supported the dinner, but never any corporate support. If anyone is good at generating that, again, PLEASE step forward if you are interested. The bottom line as far as why there was no dinner last DCC is that I was seeing even less pre-commitments to that dinner, yet I was faced with having to guarantee a number to the Horseshoe. Remember the part about my wife and I being in the kitchen business? Well our line of business fell exactly in one of the segments of the economy most hard hit by the last recession ("housing collapse" they called it, lol). We could not take the risk of another loss at that time.

Oh, and I neglected to mention that both of our co-MC's, who had played such key roles helping me make the HOF what it was, died within a year or two of each other. That hurt in many ways, and still does.

So there were 11 great years that I am very proud of, and the thing that I feel best about is how these great players and their family, friends and fans were so appreciative of being honored -- many of whom were totally overlooked by the BCA HOF because of gambling, the fact their game wasn't 9-ball or 14.1, or whatever. And more than a dozen of our honorees have since died, but they got to revel in their honor while they were living. I'm proud of that.

Whoever wants to help bring the dinner back can contact me. It will be back in 2018, although the dinner itself might change, because of the cost of the kind of spread we were providing.

I am coming. DCC or bust for me in 2018. It sounds dreamy.

Thank you for keeping the One-Pocket Hall of Fame alive. The stories and interviews you have are golden pool nuggets. I devour every one of them, and in fact, I have used them as reference material on more than one occasion when writing about pool-related matters. The old pool print media doesn't have dates and other things like your website does. It's a goldmine for someone like me.

In case anyone hasn't said it lately, thank you, Steve. :smile:
 
My two cents - I love One Pocket, by far the most creative pool game there is. I tried posting on onepocket.org and offered my opinion on several threads, including WWYD. I found myself getting spoken down to by the more established site members who essentially treated my observations with disdain. It was more than a little disheartening and caused me to finally quit posting there. It felt to me like if you weren't in the elite clique, then what you had to say was not relevant and had no value.

Too bad because I'm not a guy in a diner when it comes to One Pocket, having the good fortune to have played with and watched the best players of the last 50 years.

I also supported Steve's dinner for years and enjoyed every minute of it. It's too bad that it hasn't worked out better for Steve, but maybe his core group of supporters could come through for him. Freddie was one of my closest friends in pool for over forty years (more like 45), and he always called me Jaybird. He was one of the most intelligent men in the game and truly loved it with all the warts and weirdos that inhabited our little world. I could relate to that since I also cherish my memories around all the hustlers and outlaws I have encountered in the pool world. They weren't all good memories but they made a better man out of me.

Good luck to Steve in his endeavors and maybe I'll try my imitation of Fats one more time. :thumbup:


Towards the end of my time over there I pretty much had the same experience.

Basically you could not/can not disagreed with certain members over there. I told this personally to Steve (when he PM'd me asking why I wasn't posting stuff I was posting here on AZ, on his site): the problem I have with the group is that if you don't kowtow to certain guys your opinion is discounted out of hand.

Steve wants a very civil, very polite site. That's fine. But in several cases he fails to see who is baiting who. He either remains unaware, turns a blind eye, or perhaps he just finds it a useful way to eventually get rid of guys he's not fond of. As far as being a fair, unbiased site owner/moderator -- fergetaboutit.

But bottomline: it's his site so he can do what he wants with it. He invested heavily in certain guys and practices and now it is what it is. A lot of guys are happy with it and the endless streams of WWYDs. Good luck to Steve.

Lou Figueroa
 
Plan B?..Might that stand for getting Banned, for trashing the biggest creep who ever posted on any pool forum, ever?

PS..Steve, your preceding post was very informative and interesting!..Let me just say, that were I not banned, I would
still be right there supporting it with you, as I always was!..I think you understand, the year of my welcome induction to
the 1P HOF, just happened to coincide with one of the lowest points, ever in my life!..I am sad that you seem to have overlooked that detail!


At the time that was going on, SJD, I wrote a strongly worded post in the Member's section that was in total agreement with you. THAT guy was, by far, the worst thing to happen to a pool forum since Fast Larry.

But Steve chose to turn a blind eye to what was going on.

Lou Figueroa
 
At the time that was going on, SJD, I wrote a strongly worded post in the Member's section that was in total agreement with you. THAT guy was, by far, the worst thing to happen to a pool forum since Fast Larry.

But Steve chose to turn a blind eye to what was going on.

Lou Figueroa

My two cents - I love One Pocket, by far the most creative pool game there is. I tried posting on onepocket.org and offered my opinion on several threads, including WWYD. I found myself getting spoken down to by the more established site members who essentially treated my observations with disdain. It was more than a little disheartening and caused me to finally quit posting there. It felt to me like if you weren't in the elite clique, then what you had to say was not relevant and had no value.

It appears the only thing keeping the site afloat, is the endless stream of WWYD arguments!...It is a shame , very knowledgable pool people, have expressed their frustration with certain people, and no longer care to post there!..It was once the best pool forum on the net, where the thoughtful exchange of sensible ideas prevailed.

I'm sure Steve has always done what he thought was the right thing!..I think he is beginning to realize he may have made some unfortunate errors in judgement!..You reap, what you sow!..IMO, The recent omission of the HOF dinner was, for whatever reason, a very sad commentary!..Nevertheless, even though I am now reduced to lurking, I do sincerely hope the
site will somehow return to the enjoyable experience it once was!
 
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Maybe after a few people got into the One Pocket HOF that shouldn't be there - Steve decided to give it a rest til the voting committee comes to their senses.
 
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