Biloxi Boy
Man With A Golden Arm
Illegal gambling used to keep things going.
Pool's latest growth in popularity is due to...?
- Thread starter 1pocket
- Start date
“Illegal gambling“ can’t keep up with legal gambling. Money gambled at casinos means less money gambled at pool.
Biloxi Boy
Man With A Golden Arm
When the casino wins, they bank the cash. Money won by a player stays in the game.
Never thought of it as illegal…….fun was my idea of action, still is. Am I a criminal?
Those joints suck SO MUCH money out of the gambling economy, so does poker-the rake is no joke.
Pool gambling has very little cost associated with it, table time? Which is most areas is trivial. Sadly the era of pool action is pretty much over with.
MR 9 Ball.....Is it because:
- ...a general surge in interest in retro ("analog") vs digital? I mean pool is basically as analog as it gets! Yet it has the bright colors, action and to a certain degree sounds, of video games lol. Plus of course the winning and losing. But pool doesn't need virtual reality -- it already has it
It is not a blockbuster movie this time! ("The Hustler" and "The Color of Money" of course)
- The prevalence of handicap formulas that rule all the leagues, and most of the local tournaments, which have broadened the power of weaker players, such that they feel more valued and have so much of a better chance of winning matches?
I'm thinking both.
Is why all entities are improving.
But ''laughingly'' & normal.... with play increasing...
Big Egos of the employee groups of newly formed billiard organizations have arrived.
Now there's a rule it's ok to slop in balls in 8 ball and keep on.
The the World Bodies are playing politics, not pool.
In major bar table competitions like Ultimate Pool.
They have many employees, but they Don't Have....someone overseeing the actions of each employee, like we all have at work.
Nobody....
. It's just another pool tournament .Because of the internet video world, everyone wants to be on ''social media'' to prove they are cool.
Like the refs back in the early days of the BCA, many refs didn't play play good, but loved the power trip they had over better players.
ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.... the immature egos of the pool world, will never go away in the. U ssss of A.
bm
More prize money! The more the prize money increases the more young people will be taking a serious interest in the game. If there was ever a pro tour with multiple million dollar purses, you would begin to see new poolrooms opening up to accommodate them. If professional pool was ever looked at as a logical choice for a talented young person, similar to how it is today for golf and tennis, then it might actually become a regular high school (college?) sport. It's not an expensive sport to fund for a school and kids the world over love to play pool. They always have!
Still too much negative history being associated with pool even though all the other major sports have many more killers, drug dealers, dope heads, abusers, gamblers etc. They just have better spokespersons
That's a hard one to overcome. Golf had the same problem for decades. Money changes everything!
The person/entity/company that figures out a way to replace kid's fones with a cue(at least for a couple hrs a day) will start a tidal wave imo. Having a place to play and giving them a taste of the game is the hardest part. Its getting better i think but we, the U.S. i mean, is still a LONGGGGGGG way behind Asian/European programs.
boogieman
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that ping.
I mean, who on earth could have a problem with their 8 year old going down to the local bar to play a few racks?
Heck we used to have boys/girls clubs that played pool. Tables at bowling alleys, skating rinks, once in a while in a church basement. Now Europe and Asia both have similar clubs (but way more professional way of teaching) and we just have Smokey Joe's tavern for the youth.
We have to compete with phones and cheap entertainment and there's no programs or places for the kids to play. The US so far behind on the international pool scene. What was it, 20-30 years ago that other countries started taking pool seriously? Imagine that, kids that grew up with good instruction and a place to play competitive pool at a young age are using us a whipping boys. Who'da thunk.
For every big name pool player in the US that fought it out, elsewhere there are a dozen kids that take it just as serious in billiard clubs. This is a much bigger talent pool for the creme to rise from.
If we as a country want to be competitive we have to train the kids. I don't see it ever happening, but if pool was in the Olympics that might give a reason to do so.
I always thought video games would kill pool. Long before AI, tablets, and phones there were arcade style video games. When i was coming up -- I played a lot of Stocker! I was so good at it -- I probably could have parlayed those skills into being a fighter pilot or something. Maybe pool is making a comeback now that the popularity of a game like Stocker is starting to wane, even if just marginally.
Then there's 9 ball. I don't know guys....I always thought 9 ball was just for bangers, but it turns out everybody is doing it, and if eveybody is doing it, there's a lot of guys doing it.
Then there's 9 ball. I don't know guys....I always thought 9 ball was just for bangers, but it turns out everybody is doing it, and if eveybody is doing it, there's a lot of guys doing it.
And they don't come in to practice and many have an attitude that you owe them on league nights. My favorite was the guy who proudly showed me the cheap decal cue he bought online while standing next to the 15 or 20 new cues I had on display.
They show up for free pool Sundays, pay $60 to have a LePro put on at a tournament somewhere and call me a "ignorant bastard" because I won't fix it for free when I would have installed one for them for $15. Brian.
I would never put a LePro on the Balabuska my "mentor" gave me.
There aren't enuf jails dude!!Never thought of it as illegal…….fun was my idea of action, still is. Am I a criminal?
In many cases paying an old Player to play was how we got our instruction.Those joints suck SO MUCH money out of the gambling economy, so does poker-the rake is no joke.
Pool gambling has very little cost associated with it, table time? Which is most areas is trivial. Sadly the era of pool action is pretty much over with.
What's your address again??
That was the “only” lessons back when I started playing. Want to learn? Go play. Nobody was giving away anything.
The free lessons now is another reason why the overall standard of play is much higher now than 30 years ago among average players. Let’s say 500-700 Fargo range players. Free lessons have nothing to do with champions born gifted. They are gonna play great anyways and got help coming up when their talent was recognized. Average guys had to earn it.
The world changed. I loved the process of beating weaker players and picking my spot to take a shot at a better player and sometimes winning or getting a lesson…..that’s what made me value my game. Not some silly random number to brag about or complain about or to sandbag with.
Money won and money lost was my rating. And it still is in life. Not my fico score…….
Fatboy <———happy to live in the past
I was born in 66 which is the absolute perfect time for video games.
I remember Pong in 72 or 73. The Radio Shack, Sears etc all had a “pong” game you could hook up to your TV by 1976. A few years after that Atari 2600 came along when I was in 7th grade I’d guess. The Golden Age of Arcades hit in 79/80 right when I started high school. Then home computers had huge libraries of video games.
That’s the timeline. Again I was the absolute perfect age for all of this and I was addicted video game junky for a decade. It was my only addiction in life to speak of, I don’t have an addictive personality. When I do something I’m all-in but can stop anytime. Except video games I couldn’t for years. Getting better at what I played was always the goal. Period. That holds true today with everything.
I started banging balls around when I was 10-11 at a bar/greasy spoon my dad and used to go to on the weekends by the shooting range. I loved pool instantly and knew I wanted to play. But the video games and pinball were taking up most of my free time unless I was with my dad-he was cool.
The arcade opened in 80 around the corner. It had pins in the front room, video games in the middle and 2 bar box in the back. The pool tables got zero use there. Nobody played that was my age, only older guys who rarely came in.
In 82 my dad got a pool table, I played on it a lot with zero lessons, my dad couldn’t play a lick. Still I played more video games than pool. Until 85 when I started going to to pool room and the action drew me in right away,
I was just turning 18 and that looked better than a job. Still does, I’m not a job person. I wasn’t ever great at pool but the action was enough to drop the video games and the rest is history. League pool wouldn’t have ever interested me at all.
So that’s my story and my observations growing up in the arcades and pool rooms from 85 forwards which still had lots of video games stuffed in them to make $ was there for me to watch it all play out.
It’s my opinion that video games shifted many many people away from pool and into video games during their formative years then into other interests. Video games robbed a generation of players from pool. A few of us switched to pool for various reasons, but I’d guess it’s way less than the people born in the 50’s or 40’s.
Pool was strong in the 60’s & 70’s started dying in the 80’s. Do the math. I was born in 66. Also the Realestate boom didn’t help pool as it priced lots of rooms out of business especially starting in the 90’s into the 2000’s.
That’s what I’ve seen over the last 40 years.
Fatboy<——-becoming one of the old guys one day at a time
️️Edit: I believe people play or do what’s in front of them if they enjoy it. That’s what started me in video games. But there’s not much depth in those old school video games. Today’s video games can be complex and hold people much longer. Pool obviously is complex and holds people.
My motivation was there in pool for $ and video games were getting dull. I’m a world class player of one old video game to this day. That’s kinda cool.
Back to what’s important, the $ drew me into pool, I love pool and the people I’ve met. When I saw pool was called for me at a standard of living I wasn’t satisfied with pool wasn’t so pretty anymore and when I found a way to earn more $ I dropped pool as o was burned out. Like others have, was easier for me to drop being a mediocre player.
I came back to pool when I had made my $ just to get better at pool because it was a job unfinished. I played again for years, got better the 2nd time. Stopped again and haven’t started.
I still play that one video game now and then, but only because I’m good at it. I don’t play any other video games.
Online poker took a lot of young guys in 2008 away from pool, video games etc. they are a generation younger than me. I wish I had online poker at 18, game over I’d have robbed everyone. But I was too old by then and busy making $ elsewhere. Had I been there that would have been my game.
So again people play what’s in front of them for various reasons. Pool might come around again, who knows? Hope so. Gotta go-I’ll finish later
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