the old days

lorider

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
i ran across a thread that got me thinking about my old days.

1st let me say i am not an A level player ...never have been and never will be. but i became a pretty good bar banger who won more than he lost.

i started playing at the age of 12 when my dad got a table at the house. when i turned 16 and got my drivers liscence i became the designated driver for my dad and my uncles. they went out every weekend bar hopping and i drove. certain bars let me in and let me play on the back tables.

i got pretty good and played for a coke or a dollar or 2 mostly. most guys thought it amusing when a lil kid beat them but every now and then i ran across some that got pretty irate. my dad or uncles and even the owner were always quick to step in and difuse the situation. one owner even got to where he backed me for higher stakes.

it was always just 1 rack at a time. i never played a race and it was always even up.

when i got married i carried on the family tradition of bar hopping every weekend. i would give my wife all my paycheck except for 20.00 on fri afternoons. i would hit the bar and come home with 50.00 hundred or so the next morning. sat night the same thing.

the one thing that stayed constant is that during play every one was allways a gentleman. now sometimes after the match some people did not take kindly to losing and i cannot count the times i was called a hustler. i did occasionally come across the drunk asshat that wanted to fight over who's quarter was up but i never got involved over that shit.
i picked by battles wisely and a quarter just was not worth it. i let him go 1st hoping he won so i could get a bigger slice of his wallet. well i quit playing all together in the late 80's.

fast forward to 2002 when i became single. i started hitting bars and playing again. it was unbelievable the number of asshats i encountered trying to cheat over a 5.00 or 10.00 game.

crazy ass shit like what rules. they say bcapl.. i say ok. they scratch on the break ..i take bih in midle of table.. they say behind the line... i say ain't no behind the line in bcapl. they say i want to play behind the line .. i say yea .. sure you do after you scratched.

trying to be non chalant moving their ball off the rail with their hand while shooting at another ball.

stopping the cue ball with their stick after missing a shot... hoping i did not see it.

plain out sharking


a whole lot more i could rant about.

like i said i never encountered such crap in the old days.
 
I have not played the Bars in years

I tend these days to stick to the pool halls and not the bars so I have not seen a lot of these actions in years .

But I do remember when I did play the small beer joints back 20 years ago. It seemed every small town bar had their own set of rules for 8 ball , some written some not . some places played 8 ball live , some 8 ball dead , other around the bigger towns where leagues were getting big in the 80s tended to stick to BCA rules

The sharking you are talking about I saw more in the little dive bars where you had one or two guys who could run a few balls, but the majority couldn't put two balls together in their front pants pocket. These guys were the big fish in a very little pond. but I have seen it as you say everything from making up the rules as you go , to blatantly cheating.

When I was about 17 , I had a guy in his early 50s want to fist fight over a two dollar bet , he lost 4 dollars. Even back then in the mid 80s 4 dollars was not enough to take a ass whooping over so I told him if 4 dollars was gonna break him that bad he needed it a whole lot worse than I did
 
Times have changed. BIG time. Between the jackasses you are referring to, to the lock artists, to the bangers who say they want to learn but won't listen to basic advice.
I had a guy I was helping out, and we finished up with a set for table time. I would give him major weight where I would have to bear down. He lost a couple nights of this and won't play anymore. Times have changed for sure.
Chuck
 
You just made a case for my not playing strangers or playing in bars for money.
A$$ hats aren't confined to bars but there seems to more when fire water is involved.
I shot at the pool hall New Years Eve during the day. Drunk players by 3 pm.
People I haven't seen before leaning on other players tables.
I booked out of there around 3:30. I had enough. I'm like you. $5 isn't worth fighting for.
Welcome to 2014. :frown:
 
I'm 31 years old, so nothing in my past really qualifies as the "old days" for me. My youth was similar to the OP's, where I would go to bars with my dad for lunch or if we got rained out while working an outdoor job. Sadly, I think the generally accepted way of conducting oneself has declined... it's evident in every social transaction.
 
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