Props to a road player

Drater · 2008-02-01T17:28:49+00:00

(This turned out a little longer than I thought) I recently bought a pool room -- my first adventure of this kind. It's the first time I'm not working for "the man". Given my limited experience I sometimes say/do something stupid that makes me wonder how I survived the day w/o being punched. To itemize every stupid thing I've said or done, or to continue to share every episode would necessitate a separate forum. Instead, I'll share what I did the other day. In reality, it's much less about me and more about the guy I pissed off. There's a lot of action here and we get "road players" coming through on a fairly regular basis. The most current road player stopped by on Monday. He showed up just a little after opening and stayed for a good 5 or 6 hours. We chatted for awhile, I let him know I own the place and could find local action for him. He struck me as a nice guy so I told him I'd play him a bit after I finished up the day's paperwork and crap. Now, I'm not a great pool player. Really, I'm pretty terrible, and the few on here that know me will likely agree. But I love to play and I don't mind taking a shot at the road players. It's always fun and I have knocked off one or two for a few hundred. We decide on a race to 7 for $200 on a bar box. We have 8 8' tables and 9 9' tables here, and even tho I bought the place back in August, I've played a grand total of 1 game on the 8' tables. I'm not feeling confident that I've got the best of it, but that's why they call it gambling. The score jumps quickly to 2-0 his favor and he says, "I'll tell ya what I'll do. I'll pull back both games and we can play for $500". I laugh and suggest he pull 'em back and we play for $25 instead. He laughs and I continue with the beating. It's now 4-0 to him and he says again, "I'll tell ya what I'll do. I'll let you buy out for $100 and I'll just tip it to your bartender." I was a little put off by this remark because it seemed to come out of the blue. We had some friendly sh*t-talking going on, but nothing (I thought) that would suggest I was ready to get out. I say, "Naw, we made a game, let's finish it. And if you win, you can just tip my bartender $200." He laughs and we continue. Now the score is 6-4 to him and he plays the 7 and scratches. At this point I'm happy to have another shot and a chance to get the score 6-5, so I mumble to myself, "YES!". I was just excited but this utterance pissed him off. He starts saying it's uncool for me to be pulling against him, how karma is a b*tch, blah blah blah. So I take BIH, play the 8 and miss the 9. He's complaining while I'm shooting and at this point I'd rather just lose the $200 than deal with the aggravation. So he wins the set and says, "What kind of weight do you need? Let's play for $1000!" I say, "Man, I don't need the attitude. Here's your two-hundred, I'm done." Pack up my stick and head to the bar. I'm chatting w/ some other customers when I turn around and notice this guy is on his way out and that he's not stopping to pay his pool time ($3.50). I chase him down and get him to pay it. Which, for what it's worth, he does w/o complaint. Here's where my stupidity comes in... he's now gone and I walk back to the bar and my bartender whispers to me, "Hey, that guy just tipped me $200". WHAT!?!?! Yeah, this guy really did give my bartender the $200 and told her to take care of his tab and to keep the change. So here I am being a nit over three dollars and fifty cents when he just gave away $200. :( That's a gesture I didn't actually expect. Typically road players run tabs their credit cards can't handle, they walk out w/o paying, and try to rob everyone on the pool table. This guy takes 100% of his winnings, after our little spat on the table, and gives it away to a chick that served him a soda. He came back in last night and we straightened out our little disagreement and I personally thanked him for taking such good care of my bartender. Whatever his reasons, that was a very generous thing to do and I just wanted to give him props for it. It gives me hope that pool still has a few good guys in the game. edit: fix type-o