Russ Chewning said:
As I said in my PM, I think a lot of us would like to hear some more war stories.. How about the one where you follow through a whole stack in One Pocket to beat Jimmy Fusco? How you beat so-and-so? Doesn't matter if ya got weight or not.. Give us some more gritty details of what it was like as a road warrior!
Russ
Russ,
That shot (and match) got a write up in Shots, Moves and Stategies. I think I explain it there. When the cue ball is frozen to an object ball, there is a way to judge the direction the cue ball will take when shooting thru the object ball.
If you imagine a straight line thru the cue ball and frozen ball, then imagine a straight line thru the cue ball and the other object ball you want to hit. So now you have two straight lines, both beginning at the cue ball. If you bisect this angle between these two lines, that is your aiming point. Shoot straight thru that point and you will hit the second object ball in the face.
On the shot in question, I aimed slightly high to hit the top of the second object ball. And it worked beautifully, so well that the ball banked across the table into my pocket. I did want to hit the top of the ball to move it toward my hole, so it was not completely lucky. After contact the cue ball rolled a few inches past the stack and left me another open shot. From there I ran out the rack, and Jimmy got weaker, allowing me to upset him.
Jimmy was a better player than me and a few weeks later in L.A. he gave me 8-7 and beat me. So he got his revenge.
For me being a road warrior was a lot of fun, mixed in with some excitement. I was young and dumb and just wanted to play pool every day.
In Dayton, where I grew up, the games became scarce after I started to beat all the guys who used to rob me. So after sitting on my ass for the better part of a year, I headed West at age 22. Dayton was never to be my home again.
I stopped in every town along the way that was big enough to have a poolroom. I would look in the phone book (at a phone booth) and find the poolrooms and write them down. I would usually start with the one with the biggest ad. I would go in and walk straight to the counter most of the time, and tell the house man I was looking for a game. It never took long to get in action that way.
More often than not, I would be playing the best player in the room from the get go. It's what I wanted anyway, to be tested. Back then, a standard game for a road player was $5 or $10 9-Ball, or a set for $50. One pocket games started at $10, and $20 was a good bet. Back then, (in the 60's), if you won $100, it was a good score. $50 a day and you were living good.
I must have played 500 guys over the course of the next five years. Only a few beat me. Wade Crane (aka Billy Johnson), Larry Lisciotti, Peter Gunn and Mexican Mario I remember for getting my cash. I used to say I had a record like the Gobetrotters, because sometimes I won every day for months at a time. Of course, I ducked all the top players who I already knew.
Almost everyone I played back then was even. I couldn't give a spot to someone unknown to me and I couldn't ask for one either. When someone asked me for a spot, I had a whole lecture I would deliver about being a man and playing even. Sometimes it worked too. I would play nearly any game someone wanted to play. If a guy said let's play some Eight Ball, I would say how much. I figured that if I played better than a guy, I could beat him at any game. And I usually did.
Probably 75% of my action was 9-Ball back then. Maybe 20% One Pocket and the last 5% other games. I did play Three Cushion, Snooker and even 14.1 for money a few times. After I played a game for a while, I would get the hang of it, and then it was all over. I had played all these games in Ohio so I was not unfamiliar with any of them. My mentor as a kid was Jake Spitler, a great all around player from yesteryear. He made me practice all the different cue games. One day it was Three Cushion all day and one day it was Snooker etc.
Being on the road was a great learning experience for me, the best education I ever got. More often than not, after beating a guy, someone who was watching would steer me to my next game. When the games ran out in a town, I would move on. It took me three months to reach California, and I arrived early in December. It was 70 degrees and sunny, and I knew it was freezing in Dayton. It felt like I had arrived in paradise.
And it seemed like that in pool too. In the 60's, there weren't as many good players as today. And the bar pool action was going hot and heavy. Bar tables were still kind of a new phenomenon. Everyone was playing and they weren't very good. I could go in a bar and put my quarter on the table, and get into a game quick. The standard bet was $1 a game Eight Ball. Sounds like nothing now, but I can remember many nights holding the table for hours, and walking out with my pockets stuffed with cash.
When you start to win, everyone wants to be the guy who beats you. Sometimes there would be a dozen quarters lined up on the rail, with people waiting to play me. I loved it and just kept on winning. Every once in a while, someone had a chance to beat me, but they ususally dogged it. Too much pressure.
So that's how my life looked until I bought my first poolroom at age 27. I had been back and forth across the USA a couple of times and all over the Northwest and Southwest playing. I had a pretty good idea of what made a successful poolroom, after seeing so many of them. I had about 15K (a big bankroll at the time) and I wanted to own a poolroom, because life on the road was already wearing me down.
So I settled down in Bakersfield, CA, bought a poolroom, got married and made babies. But the urge to play was still there, and my spot became a stop on every road man's itinerary. I must have played another hundred guys in my six years in Bakersfield. And I beat a few big guns too. Cole, Keith, Waterdog, Bakersfield Bobby and Billy Ray made contributions to my favorite charity. And many more whose names you wouldn't recognize. I even beat the great Lou Butera in a 9-Ball exhibition match (he blistered me in 14.1 tho).
My road days were over tho, and my only traveling after that was to an occasional tournament.
