Gambling didn't hurt me as a pool player, wagering to be picky. According to my state, gambling is betting on something you have no control over outside of a casino. They say special conditions apply and in those exact words when I read the law, "gambling in a casino is not gambling"! Interestingly they define a wager between competitors as not gambling either since the players control the outcome. Betting between competitors is legal, betting on the rail isn't nor is betting between a competitor and the rail.
Talking about my individual pool game, betting didn't do a whole lot good or bad because I took the pressure off about two years into starting serious play. Want to feel a butt puckering gamble, bet $100,000 on a loan to open a small business. Money you don't have and you will be working ten years to repay if the business fails. Betting twenty or fifty bucks on a pool table? Even in the sixties all I felt was the desire for other people's money, I never worried about losing.
I had been playing about two years when I realized I was up more than ten thousand by any estimate, one small bet at a time. It wasn't possible that I was going to risk $10,000 in one night so pool was risk free looking at it in the long term. All I was risking each night was a small bit of my profits in the ever rolling pool game I was playing.
All I ever did was put money on challenge tables or let people come to me so in my years playing nightly pool I never considered myself a hustler. It wasn't until coming to AZB that I learned that what I considered just laying a spread for a hustler to walk into was considered hustling too.
What I did face was perception. I never called myself a pool player even when I made my living at it. It was just a fill in between occupations. However, most of my male cousins of the same age saw things differently and would invariably mention at the huge family get togethers we had then, 100-200 people, that I was a pool player. Resulted in two things, being asked by one or another great aunts if I was a hustler, and having one cousin or another who had a pool or snooker table at home insisting I couldn't beat them. I stayed out of things for the most part, gently explaining to great aunts that all pool players weren't hustlers as they perceived them, and eventually going find a pool table to also gently educate those that thought they could beat me, sticking to my personal rules of no bets with friends and family, even a couple of jerks I was sorely tempted to take off!
Gambling doesn't hurt pool. The image of some lowlife hustler trying to trick children and the innocent and take their money did and does. There is far more hustling done on a golf course than was ever done on a pool table. The great Titanic Thompson often played pool or poker with someone primarily to get them on a golf course where he did his real hustling.
It isn't gambling that hurts pool today when people can stop for a cold coke and a few scratch-offs on a hot afternoon, it is people's perception of pool that hurts. Unfortunately, like many falsehoods, it seems to be something that constantly renews itself. I'll be tottering around in an old folks home and when somebody mentions I play pool somebody else will ask if I am a hustler. That unshakeable perception is what hurts pool.
Hu
Talking about my individual pool game, betting didn't do a whole lot good or bad because I took the pressure off about two years into starting serious play. Want to feel a butt puckering gamble, bet $100,000 on a loan to open a small business. Money you don't have and you will be working ten years to repay if the business fails. Betting twenty or fifty bucks on a pool table? Even in the sixties all I felt was the desire for other people's money, I never worried about losing.
I had been playing about two years when I realized I was up more than ten thousand by any estimate, one small bet at a time. It wasn't possible that I was going to risk $10,000 in one night so pool was risk free looking at it in the long term. All I was risking each night was a small bit of my profits in the ever rolling pool game I was playing.
All I ever did was put money on challenge tables or let people come to me so in my years playing nightly pool I never considered myself a hustler. It wasn't until coming to AZB that I learned that what I considered just laying a spread for a hustler to walk into was considered hustling too.
What I did face was perception. I never called myself a pool player even when I made my living at it. It was just a fill in between occupations. However, most of my male cousins of the same age saw things differently and would invariably mention at the huge family get togethers we had then, 100-200 people, that I was a pool player. Resulted in two things, being asked by one or another great aunts if I was a hustler, and having one cousin or another who had a pool or snooker table at home insisting I couldn't beat them. I stayed out of things for the most part, gently explaining to great aunts that all pool players weren't hustlers as they perceived them, and eventually going find a pool table to also gently educate those that thought they could beat me, sticking to my personal rules of no bets with friends and family, even a couple of jerks I was sorely tempted to take off!
Gambling doesn't hurt pool. The image of some lowlife hustler trying to trick children and the innocent and take their money did and does. There is far more hustling done on a golf course than was ever done on a pool table. The great Titanic Thompson often played pool or poker with someone primarily to get them on a golf course where he did his real hustling.
It isn't gambling that hurts pool today when people can stop for a cold coke and a few scratch-offs on a hot afternoon, it is people's perception of pool that hurts. Unfortunately, like many falsehoods, it seems to be something that constantly renews itself. I'll be tottering around in an old folks home and when somebody mentions I play pool somebody else will ask if I am a hustler. That unshakeable perception is what hurts pool.
Hu
ask a barber if you need a haircut
