That about sums it up. I would add that Gilbert essentially quit playing pool a little over 20 years ago, around the time he went to work for Omega Billiards. He deals with untold numbers of pool playing customers every day at Omega and very few of them have any clue the caliber of player they are talking to. I always find it a bit sad when a strong talent hangs up their cue early for whatever reason but in his Texas HOF acceptance speech Gilbert did say that he has recently started to miss playing after all this time and is considering playing again. Mike Hoang (owner of Omega Billiards), while introducing Gilbert at the HOF ceremony, mentioned that that the two played some the other day and Gilbert broke and ran a 6 pack on him. Pretty good for a guy that doesn't play anymore!
For anyone interested you can see Gilbert (in the jeans) playing against one of the other Texas HOF inductees from this year, Texas legend Bob Vanover (in the khakis), in the finals of a local or regional event circa 1996-ish in the video below. Gilbert is in the hot seat, true double elimination so if Bob wins the first set it goes to a second, race to 9 both sets, the video starts in the middle of game three with Bob already up 2-0 in the first set. Pretty decent match with quick play. On a side note, this was back when tables still played right, before the cloth got way, way too fast, and before the play of the rails and the cut of the pockets were butchered by Diamond (in my opinion of course).
All 51 years of the Texas Open 9 Ball champions listed by year at the bottom of the page below (except they haven't been able to add 2024 winner from a couple of days ago Vitaliy Patsura yet). As you mentioned Gilbert won it 3 times, and Bob won it 8 times with 6 of them consecutively and in one of them he broke and ran out the entire race to 9 finals set after his opponent's dry opening break to the match.
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