I don't think gambling is the way to go.
Part 1 of 2
Hi this is Fast: Andy, there will always be people who will never like trick shots. You can never get me to like one pocket. Different strokes for different folks is what I say, that is why there are so many pool games in the back of the rule book.
A billiard player who ran around in a white suit, no not Butera or John Trevolta said: "It were not best that we all think alike: Difference of opinion is what makes horse races"
We have a real education to do on the pool world. 1st they must understand we do not do trick shots, we don't trick or hustle any one; gamblers do that with their proposition shots. We are artistes, we play a new sport, it is a new game like 9 ball, and it is called Artistic. ESPN gets a hold of this and begins to bastardize it immediately like they did 9 ball. This 2 shot game of horse is not our sport. This is a TV fun thing. There is good and bad with it. The bad is those guys do not see this as a sport, they see it as something to just be used and as filler.
The good is Artistic has been finally been introduced even if it was on the wrong foot and most of the young people in the pool world have gone wild over it. That gave the opportunity for a giant nobody like Andy Segal to get on TV by accident and take on the best and damn near beat them all. He became an over night sensation and media darling. That is the miracle of TV; it can produce heroes and does. Most of you do not know this is a sport; it has an organization called the IAPA. They have a tour and take 3 shots to make 40 which are divided up into separate disciplines. This has never been seen on TV, some day you may see their world championship being played and then get a better understanding of what they are really doing, and it is not 2 shot horse. For those of you in the Northeast this is coming in March, a tour stop is up for Hartford, Ct and at the Allen Hopkins Expo in Phil, Pa, come see Andy perform in both events along with the top players coming in from all over the world.
Coming is the new Big Kahuna Fantasy tour, were the magnificent 16 take on the hardest and toughest shots of all time, pools ultimate rumble and test of skill.
For you guys who say you don't like trick shots, you have not seen anything yet, we are going to blow your socks off and many of you then may change your mind.
I agree with everything Andy said except on the Gambling. Gambling is legal in every state of the union now but one. Casinos are everywhere. We as a country are now on a gambling binge never seen before in our history. Trying to stamp out gambling is like trying to stamp out ladies of the night, it cannot be done. It is a major part of pool, always has been, always will be. It is not going away so I say use it and sell it.
If you go into the pool forum,
www.billiards-pool.net, open the Christian pool forum, there is a thread on that now, do you gamble. You can read my position on that and others, or feel free to join in on it. That is a question for every pool player who is a Christian and goes to church to resolve by himself.
Some of us are very strict and live in worlds of black or white, some of us live in worlds of gray. I came up in and live in now a very religious strict family. I am obviously the black sheep. I am the only one who gambles, or drinks a little. I do get on the crap table when I am in Vegas. I do not hide this nor will I be a hypocrite trying to sell you I am this saint and then becoming something else behind your back. I do not consider my self a gambler. I only gamble when I get to Vegas, I don't gamble on sports or pool or anything else. When I entertain and present my show, I have a very strong anti smoking, anti drug and anti gambling message for those who will listen to it.
Doing something under moderation and under strict guidelines and controls is one thing; just running amuck with no controls is the highway to hell. An example would be a family man who is in Vegas and budgets $50 to $100 a day to play black jack. When he loses it and he will, he quits and takes his family out to a show or dinner. I don’t have a problem with that guy. The other extreme is Chevy Chase in the movie Vegas vacation where he blows the family fortune on the tables; his daughter becomes a Ho and his son a Hi roller.
Very funny yes, but the streets out there are lined with losers who just did the same thing. My good friend Mike Massey calls Vegas, Sodom and Gomorrah and he is probably right on that.
Mike was like me, once, long ago, he was a gambler and a roadie, but he saw the destruction involved and the wasted lives it produced. He stopped, found the Lord and became the wonderful guy everyone today loves and admires. None of us in the Artistic world at the top gambles on our games or hustles people; we are entertainers and teachers of the game. I have not played for real money since 1973 when I hung that up.
All of us in Artistic are trying to be role models for all pool players to look up to and follow our examples and our conduct of play and our sportsmanship. When Mike presented to me at the 2000 BCA world artistic championship the new sportsmanship plaque and award, I cherish that today equal to any thing I have ever won or accomplished in the past. Being a true sportsman is what all of the Artistic players are about.
We have our place in the pool world, just as the gambler has his place. We have our rules and codes of conduct, so does he? It is two entirely different people and worlds. I say let artistic and its new sport take the high road, let the 9 ball gamblers and their ring games take the low road.
Since 9 ball is stuck with that image and Hollywood has so firmly entrenched it on the world, they need to realize that their goody too shoes approach and sell isn’t getting bought by any of the media or corporate sponsors. That sell has been failing now since 1973. Their only chance to get out of the rut they are in is to sell what they have, gambling. It worked for Poker, it will work for pool.
If Andy has gone to Johnston City year after year in the early 60's and watched these guys do nothing but gamble for weeks at a time, he might have a better understanding of this. That is how pool got on TV prime time for the first time, the wild world of sports, Jim McKay, Luther Lassiter Playing Boston Shorty at one pocket. Billiards Digest ran that picture on their cover and there I was sitting in the stands right behind Luther, I was there. TV came to view and to telecast gambling and the top 100 gamblers in the country. Why did we not understand that, it was right in front of us all that time? No, they tried to push gamblers playing as penguins in ball rooms and they looked silly in those costumes, like Fatty used to say, putting a real pool player in a tux is like putting whipped cream on a hot dog, Willie Mosss kone E, dare is a real penguin.
That was the greatest pool event of all time, bar none. Since pool and 9 ball is now branded with the sleaze ball image for life, they may as well accept this sentence and go out and sell what they do have, sleaze, 9 ballers playing a ring game for a million bucks, sleaze sells, gambling sells, if it does not, then were did Vegas come from. Church people did not finance the construction of these billion dollar hotels and casinos, gamblers did, and losers did.
Who in the world would want to watch a bunch of sleazy back room criminal types play poker, you wonder did they empty the jails to get the field up. Would you want your daughter going out with one of those bums, I don't think so. Put a million dollars riding on the line and now that format is a Hugh success. They have me watching it, which is not hard to do since Binions is where I hang out when I am in Vegas, you don’t find me out on the strip.
There is a message there and that message is, if it worked for Poker, it would as well for Pool, who has a mil to loan me, I'll put it on TV and prove it to you. If somebody did, it would just make pool more popular than ever and even the Artistic guys pushing this perfect image would still benefit from the gamblers success. The pie would get bigger; all would then eat a bigger piece. The two biggest surges in pool and its success that opened thousands of rooms and made many men millionaires who ran those rooms were gambling and the glorification of that.
That was two movies, about a low life pool hustler, who did nothing but lose and use, abuse and abandon every one who tried to help him. Sarah wrote on her mirror with lip stick his life and world was evil, twisted and perverted. Most of the movie goers missed that message Tevis gave you. The cons name was Fast Eddy Felson.
That is the lesson.
There is a place for the Artistic guys, who are all very religious, all with very squeaky clean backgrounds, all impeccably dressed in their tuxes and presenting pool as a true gentlemen’s game played by true gentlemen. Thank God for them and their arrival on the scene. They present a new sport and real family entertainment. You can take your entire family in to see their show. You would not take your family in the see the high stakes 9 ball ring game.
