Here is I think a not uncommon progression. People can, of course, get stuck for life at any one of these levels.
stage 1.
You dabble in the game and hit with a bar cue. Perhaps it seems to come a little easier to you than it does to some of your friends. You beat a lot of your friends.
stage 2.
You buy a cue. You've heard k-mart cues are crap and you decide to splurge on a high-quality custom two-piece cue. You buy a McDermott with your favorite football team's logo on it--or you buy a cuetec. You learn to twirl your cue. Forty percent of your shots have draw on them. Another forty percent are stop shots intended to have draw. You jack up for many shots. You choose a 20 oz, because you once heard a cool guy ask for a 20 oz cue. You sometimes can hold the table in the bar for a while. You sometimes win some drinks or cheap sets with your friends. You might play in a league. You tell people you're good at pool whenever you can get away with it.
stage 3.
You've gotten more serious about the game. You play in local tournaments and run a table now and then. You feel you've outgrown your McDermott and start making payments on a Schon with fancy ivory inlays or such or some other fancy cue that's popular in your area and labels you a player to be reckoned with. You gamble cheap stuff regularly with people you know. You've learned that it's fashionable to put your own game down. You woof with your friends a lot and point out you haven't played in weeks and you need weight and so forth. You know and they know that you know that it's an act. You secretly hope they see you as a good player. You may actually become a pretty good player. You may gamble some with strangers or for some larger amounts with people you know.
stage 4.
You're a seasoned player. You may gamble regularly. You've lost the Schon or sold it. You're now into function over form. You might hit with a sneaky pete from a good cuemaker or you might hit with any butt and a predator shaft. It could be that you just want to look like you're into function over form. Or you may actually see beauty in simplicity. You're hardly fooling anybody with your sneaky pete. You don't even intend to. In fact, your sneaky pete says to people you could be very good. You could be someone hiding in the weeds. And you like that.
mike page
fargo
