You see America , you meet people , you PLAY POOL . . .
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- Thread starter ghost ball
- Start date
So who's cheating the old school cowboys ? Takes two players to make a bet . .
Not every Road Player is a Hustler . Not every Hustler is a Road Player.
Hustler masks/hides his ability to lure in marks , and then picks up his speed when the bait has been taken . There is some dishonesty involved here . . .
Road Player may simply play his best pool right along . Talent in handicapping allows him to determine who he can beat , who he's going to lose to , this talent helps him to negotiate give/get spot . Road Player doesn't have to be the best shot in the room , just the best handicapper.
But if the Road Player feels he is the best in the room , he might burst through the front door saying " I can beat anybody in this room ". Is that hustling , in your opinion ?
Some Hustlers work one big city and never leave it - there's over 8 million people in NYC - what are they gonna say - he's the medium height guy with brown hair ?
I have no love for Insurance Salesmen - but that's a topic for the NPR forum . . .
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Didnt know it was a Moore film. You're probably right but i dont see it mentioned on Wiki though im too impatient to read it all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me
PS- Not confused now but if you didnt tell me about Ghost Ball & Ghostball, i never would have figured that out.
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S
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Some players have to be careful what stream they jump into. :nono:
Hu...I rarely if ever live 'high on the hog'. The numbers I quoted are dead on, to cover a cheap hotel, gas money, food, and the other misc. expenses we all incur. I was simply saying that $100/day ain't NO comfortable living for anybody I know. That's about $35K a year (before taxes...which of course hustlers don't pay), if you played EVERY DAY, and booked no losers (unlikely). If you work a real job, your takehome from a $35K job would be somewhere north of $2300 a month. That won't feed most families, along with a mortgage, vehicle payments, insurance, etc.
Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com
Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com
I can cut that in half and never miss a meal
Scott,
I do remember our conversation when you visited and know you don't travel plush. I'll make a safe bet that you still live a lot better on the road than over 90% of the old time road players did, looking at any rolling twelve month period. If I had to I could get fat on what I ate for five dollars a day right now. Even today I can find all of the action I can stand moving around without spending a hundred dollars a week on fuel. Rooms, depends on how low you are willing to go and how often you are willing to "camp" in your vehicle. A back room of a pool hall looks pretty good sometimes too.
You do have to put a lot more miles on your vehicle to cover your classes and exhibitions and you have to be much more presentable to make your business work. I wouldn't like it much but I could live on the road for 1/3 your quoted costs. There was a time when I spent a week on the road for twenty-five cents a day. I was working a job and it was a dry county without a pool hall within miles so my options were sharply limited. That was early eighties but it wasn't that much cheaper then! I lost a few pounds but it didn't do me any real harm.
Very very few road players fed a family alone. A few did but most were like probably over 75% of the labor pool. No savings, no insurance, no safety net to speak of. A wife or girlfriend working was usually the best security they had. We talk about a few on AZB but for every one we talk about that did good there were dozens that scraped by or couldn't even scrape by on their own. That is why they turned to all of the other things that get pool players in trouble.
I'm fat and soft and planning to stay that way. I turned down traveling with a top road player for just that reason years ago. I knew I had a lot better deal at home.
Hu
Scott,
I do remember our conversation when you visited and know you don't travel plush. I'll make a safe bet that you still live a lot better on the road than over 90% of the old time road players did, looking at any rolling twelve month period. If I had to I could get fat on what I ate for five dollars a day right now. Even today I can find all of the action I can stand moving around without spending a hundred dollars a week on fuel. Rooms, depends on how low you are willing to go and how often you are willing to "camp" in your vehicle. A back room of a pool hall looks pretty good sometimes too.
You do have to put a lot more miles on your vehicle to cover your classes and exhibitions and you have to be much more presentable to make your business work. I wouldn't like it much but I could live on the road for 1/3 your quoted costs. There was a time when I spent a week on the road for twenty-five cents a day. I was working a job and it was a dry county without a pool hall within miles so my options were sharply limited. That was early eighties but it wasn't that much cheaper then! I lost a few pounds but it didn't do me any real harm.
Very very few road players fed a family alone. A few did but most were like probably over 75% of the labor pool. No savings, no insurance, no safety net to speak of. A wife or girlfriend working was usually the best security they had. We talk about a few on AZB but for every one we talk about that did good there were dozens that scraped by or couldn't even scrape by on their own. That is why they turned to all of the other things that get pool players in trouble.
I'm fat and soft and planning to stay that way. I turned down traveling with a top road player for just that reason years ago. I knew I had a lot better deal at home.
Hu
To a certain degree, I agree with this.
You often times hear a lot of baloney about "knockers." But frankly, why would you be interested in letting an out-of-towner rob the locals? I mean, presumably, these are guys in your home room, friends, enemies, but probably all competitors. Why wouldn't you try and get the line on a player to get closer to a fair game. IOW, do whatever you can to keep the dough in the local economy. A few years back a local pro snuck Tang Ho into town and let him match up with a local who had *no chance, zero, nada* playing even and would need huge honking amounts of weight to have any kind of a fair shot. I knew it was Tang, but didn't hear a match happened until the next day. I was disgusted with the local pro who let it happen.
Lou Figueroa
right as usual
Lou,
You are absolutely right. Why let a stranger take the money out of local circulation? Being a reasonable kind of guy I want to go take other people's money but keep all of the local money in local circulation to try to get a shot at it myself!
Hu
Lou,
You are absolutely right. Why let a stranger take the money out of local circulation? Being a reasonable kind of guy I want to go take other people's money but keep all of the local money in local circulation to try to get a shot at it myself!
Hu
I was in a no win situation when in Florida for maybe my third winter. The pool room i hung in down there-Grovers was a stop for every road player. Schmidt came through as J J, Putnam came through as Shannon Daulton's backer "Bubba", Marco Marquez, Lyle gay w no moustache and head shaved Larry nevel and Racheal as tourists-many more.
I had made many friends in there and every so often a road player who i was also friends with came through- I would just try to leave. Once that arose suspicion and when they found out he was from the greater NY area, even though the guy lost, i was accused of setting the place up.
Another time the roadies asked me to flat set the place up by playing the roadie who would stall, arguing with the guy, causing a scene etc I refused and lost a friend but on reflection, it was a pretty good loss.
Gary wasn't the first to try this technique to throw off the pool detectives . Way back in 1933/34 , Joe Procita posed in a Brunswick group photo wearing a 'Lone Ranger' style mask . Guess he didn't want everyone recognizing him out on the road either ! See the photo :
http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=197147