You have to be a paid subscriber to their op-ed section to read it, so I'm flagrantly cutting/pasting it here. Sue me!
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Filling All the Pockets, Except His Own
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By DAN BARRY
Published: March 1, 2006
THE best and nicest pool player in New York City shoots the break. The white cue ball rockets into a triangle of 15 numbered balls, clattering and scattering stripes and solids to the ends of their green felt domain. Three balls hurl themselves into pockets, as if to hide.
Tony Robles, already chalking up for his next shot, studies the crazed molecular pattern left by his explosive break. He is plotting a dozen shots ahead — he plans to clear the table — but the 13-ball seems to be having a private chat with the 8, 3, and 4, and may not cooperate.
"I'm thinking of what I have to do to get rid of that ball as soon as possible," he says.
He chooses his next victim: the 1-ball, yellow with fear. In his hands, the cue stick becomes less a sliver of maple and more a baton, a dissecting tool, an extension of himself. With his stick he can make the cue ball do just about anything but talk. A graceful, slicing gesture, a kiss of a cue's tip, and the 1-ball says good night.
The Amsterdam Billiards and Bar on the Upper West Side offers a soft chorus of clacks and thwocks, as players of lesser ability send balls skittering across tables. But Mr. Robles, 39, is so focused he hears only the long-ago words of an old man in a smoky poolroom in Brooklyn.
The man — Cusy, they called him — had a droopy eye, but he could still shoot some mean pool. Seeing the young Tony Robles trying to emulate his father at the pool table, Cusy presented the boy with a book about pool and then a riddle about pool: What is the difference between a very good player and a great player?
The answer: A very good player will practice a shot until he gets it right, but a great player will practice until he never gets it wrong.
Mr. Robles shares these words as if they were Scripture. He then predicts that he will sink the 6 and bank the cue ball off three cushions so that he can attack the 7, the 14, or the 8. He predicts correctly.
OTHER than three months at a pizzeria and two weeks as a security guard, Mr. Robles has always been a pool player. After graduating from high school, he would practice every day but Sunday in his father's poolroom in Bushwick, shooting after his tired dad turned off the lights — just to hear ball hitting pocket.
The encouraging sound sealed his unusual career choice, he says. That, and the desire to make a cue ball dance.
When he was 20, a sponsor sent him south to learn to play under pressure. An unassuming child of Puerto Rican parents, he would clear his throat and challenge strangers in Fayetteville, N.C., and Mobile, Ala., to games of 9-ball for $200. He usually won, and never got beat up.
This was not hustling, he emphasizes. He would not play the first game holding the cue stick backward. He would tell people he was pretty good, and proceed to demonstrate just how good pretty good could be.
Truth is, Mr. Robles defies whatever hoary stereotype still exists about pool players. He does not gamble, smoke or drink — "I've never had a whole can of beer in my life" — and has twice been named Sportsman of the Year by his colleagues. He might even be too nice for his nickname, "The Silent Assassin."
He routinely ranks among the very best in the game, won a major 9-ball championship two years ago, and once sank 268 consecutive balls during a match in Manhattan. He vividly remembers the 269th shot, an easy two-ball combination. "I hit the 10-ball there, instead of there," he says, pointing to a margin of error the width of his pinkie.
But mastery of the massé shot doesn't translate beyond the poolroom's doors, where the angles aren't so clear-cut. Mr. Robles, who has a 9-year-old son, almost quit the game a few months ago because of the extremely low pay. The money earned for the time invested added up to: Pool wasn't worth it.
Just as he was planning to give it all up for college, he learned that a new organization, the International Pool Tour, was promising professional players a lot of money — a lot of money — to participate in its tournaments. Zeal for the game returned to him like a back-spinning cue ball. Now he practices several hours a day, the words of a droopy-eyed man fresh again in his mind.
He clears the table, including the cheeky 13-ball, nicely. What comes next is understood: Rack 'em.
E-mail: dabarry@nytimes.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Roger
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Filling All the Pockets, Except His Own
*
E-Mail This
* Printer-Friendly
* Reprints
* Save Article
By DAN BARRY
Published: March 1, 2006
THE best and nicest pool player in New York City shoots the break. The white cue ball rockets into a triangle of 15 numbered balls, clattering and scattering stripes and solids to the ends of their green felt domain. Three balls hurl themselves into pockets, as if to hide.
Tony Robles, already chalking up for his next shot, studies the crazed molecular pattern left by his explosive break. He is plotting a dozen shots ahead — he plans to clear the table — but the 13-ball seems to be having a private chat with the 8, 3, and 4, and may not cooperate.
"I'm thinking of what I have to do to get rid of that ball as soon as possible," he says.
He chooses his next victim: the 1-ball, yellow with fear. In his hands, the cue stick becomes less a sliver of maple and more a baton, a dissecting tool, an extension of himself. With his stick he can make the cue ball do just about anything but talk. A graceful, slicing gesture, a kiss of a cue's tip, and the 1-ball says good night.
The Amsterdam Billiards and Bar on the Upper West Side offers a soft chorus of clacks and thwocks, as players of lesser ability send balls skittering across tables. But Mr. Robles, 39, is so focused he hears only the long-ago words of an old man in a smoky poolroom in Brooklyn.
The man — Cusy, they called him — had a droopy eye, but he could still shoot some mean pool. Seeing the young Tony Robles trying to emulate his father at the pool table, Cusy presented the boy with a book about pool and then a riddle about pool: What is the difference between a very good player and a great player?
The answer: A very good player will practice a shot until he gets it right, but a great player will practice until he never gets it wrong.
Mr. Robles shares these words as if they were Scripture. He then predicts that he will sink the 6 and bank the cue ball off three cushions so that he can attack the 7, the 14, or the 8. He predicts correctly.
OTHER than three months at a pizzeria and two weeks as a security guard, Mr. Robles has always been a pool player. After graduating from high school, he would practice every day but Sunday in his father's poolroom in Bushwick, shooting after his tired dad turned off the lights — just to hear ball hitting pocket.
The encouraging sound sealed his unusual career choice, he says. That, and the desire to make a cue ball dance.
When he was 20, a sponsor sent him south to learn to play under pressure. An unassuming child of Puerto Rican parents, he would clear his throat and challenge strangers in Fayetteville, N.C., and Mobile, Ala., to games of 9-ball for $200. He usually won, and never got beat up.
This was not hustling, he emphasizes. He would not play the first game holding the cue stick backward. He would tell people he was pretty good, and proceed to demonstrate just how good pretty good could be.
Truth is, Mr. Robles defies whatever hoary stereotype still exists about pool players. He does not gamble, smoke or drink — "I've never had a whole can of beer in my life" — and has twice been named Sportsman of the Year by his colleagues. He might even be too nice for his nickname, "The Silent Assassin."
He routinely ranks among the very best in the game, won a major 9-ball championship two years ago, and once sank 268 consecutive balls during a match in Manhattan. He vividly remembers the 269th shot, an easy two-ball combination. "I hit the 10-ball there, instead of there," he says, pointing to a margin of error the width of his pinkie.
But mastery of the massé shot doesn't translate beyond the poolroom's doors, where the angles aren't so clear-cut. Mr. Robles, who has a 9-year-old son, almost quit the game a few months ago because of the extremely low pay. The money earned for the time invested added up to: Pool wasn't worth it.
Just as he was planning to give it all up for college, he learned that a new organization, the International Pool Tour, was promising professional players a lot of money — a lot of money — to participate in its tournaments. Zeal for the game returned to him like a back-spinning cue ball. Now he practices several hours a day, the words of a droopy-eyed man fresh again in his mind.
He clears the table, including the cheeky 13-ball, nicely. What comes next is understood: Rack 'em.
E-mail: dabarry@nytimes.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Roger
Ok, consider yourself sued. 
