What Attracted You To The Game?

JLW said:
What ignited your interest in playing pool
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I remember being 9 years old. My dad bought a bar table to fit in the basement. All I can say is that it was very tight quarters to play in. But, those tight quarters taught me alot.

He had help from three of my other uncles to bring it down a narrow celler stairwell. The 1" single slat was the hardest to bring down without damaging it. Felt was still on it when they brought it down. Never saw such a smile on my Dads face, till then.

After putting it together, they all cracked open bottels of Iron City Beer. They started talking about WWII stories and racking the balls, while siping on thier beers.

I witnessed a lot of fun that day, that's what got me learn pool/billiards.
 
I've always loved watching the really great players move around and run the table... amazed me. It's also towards the top of my list of "Great Skills to Have" haha :D
 
My grandfather had an 8-foot table, and my cousins and I used to poke at the balls for a bit during family get-togethers. When I was about eight, my grandfather gave the table to my father, and we set it up in the basement. My father showed me how to hit straight shots and how to use ghostball for angles (which was the extent of my father's game), and I was soon pocketing balls well. But I didn't see good pool until my maternal uncle came over and started popping in bank shots like it was nothing and going three or four rails and getting great position. He learned to play in his father's bar. He showed me draw and follow and how to use the diamonds to make banks, and that gave me enough skill to keep me interested in the game.

When I was about fifteen and let pool take a backseat to adolescent pressures, my father sold the table (the plywood surface had developed a bad dip, so the table needed to go). After that, I played on nothing but 9-footers. Two years ago I hit a few balls on an 8-footer and was surprised by how much I felt like I came home. I continue to play on 9-footers, but it was interesting to see how much the 8-footer was still ingrained in me.
 
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Knocked my first balls around in an old rec center. They had about a half rack of the old mud balls, I was fascinated! A short time after this introduction the village store put in a bar box , 10 cents a game. My daily allowance was 25 cents. I loved the game and the only way I could play enough to satisfy my thirst for the game was to get better ( we played challenge the winner) as long as you continued winning you could play. In about one month at the tender aage of 12 years no one on the village could beat me, this included men and boys. After 45 years of playing I still play/practice 3 to 4 hours a day. Its been a life long love affair.
 
han said:
Circa 1989:
It was another Saturday night get-together with a group of friends.
As usual, we had no plans and we "cruised" Hollyweird blvd. Jimmy,
the oldest of the bunch took us to Hollywood billiards. The entrance,
stairway, reeked the smell of a bum. Downstairs was packed full of smoke
and people. We waited an hour to get a table, then we played til
2 am. We went often afterwards. Then i started going by myself.
It was pure love...
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I bet the smell of smoke was the best way to get rid of the stench of the bum.
 
I began to love pool when I realized that there are no teammates to let you down. You are completely responsible for your performance and you get all the credit there is to be had, good or bad. Me me me me? :D :confused: :D
 
sad, sad, sad.......

JLW said:
With all the recent discussion about how to best market pool, I thought it would be interesting to hear how all of you AZBers got into playing. Was it your parents? The YMCA (or some other youth organization)? The college bar scene? Watching on ESPN? What was it that ignited your interest in playing and following the game? I know for me it was through playing pool with my father and going with him on an almost daily basis to the poolroom.
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The reason that I started playing pool, at least at a competitive level was due to the fact of the passing of a loved one. When I was only sixteen, I fell head over heels for a girl. We were made for each other!!! We would go out and play pool and have a great time just being together. This went on for eight months. Then I got the news that my girlfriend was killed in a tragic auto accident. I was destroyed! I did not know how to cope with this. For days on end, I did not eat anything and would just throw up anything that I tried to eat. One day I was alone and seriously thinking about suicide. I ended up walking in to the pool room, mainly just to speak to the owner one last time, and I wound up playing a game of pool. After that, I honestly know that pool saved my life. I could just get down to shoot and it was like all my problems would just melt away. I wasn't very good, but it seemed like the more I played, the easier it was to forget all my problems. Whenever I was done with a session at the table, I could just think for hours on end about how I should have played this shot, and what I could have done differently on that shot, until I would start to get depressed again. Then, back to the pool room I would go. Here I am fourteen years later. I have gotten over the pain, but I never quit playing pool. It calls to me. It is part of me.

Rest in peace, Heather Lee Trivette. 1973-1992
 
I'd played on a 6ft snooker table at home when I was a kid but I had no real knowledge of english or anything that. I guess I started for real when I moved to America three years ago. I wanted to join a League purely as a way to meet people, and have fun in a new city. A year later after I won a tournament to get to the Nationals in Vegas and I made it to SL7 I realised I was actually quite good, and took it up more seriously. Even so, all my best moments are with a team. Nothing like making a shot to get the team to the next level and getting mobbed.
 
My story

I remember accidentally watching the Color of Money when I was 13 or 14 and really enjoyed the movie. I had probably played 20 games of pool in my whole life at that point. At the same time, my parents owned a camper at a resort on Kentucky Lake. We went there every weekend during the summers and they happened to have a pool table in the office/store. I would save my money all week and drop it all in that old Valley Bar Box. I got to where I was a decent player when I was 15-16. When I got my drivers license I headed down to the local pool room 5 days a week and played as much as I could. I split time between school/a part time job/high school and american leigon baseball and pool. I lived in a very small town of a 1000 people and found out real quick that the players here were not that great. Myself and a real good friend (who played and still plays a ball better than me) made some good scores in that place for 16 year olds but we wanted better things so we headed off to Paducah, Ky which was about 30 miles away. We played in Paducah several nights a week: gambling, tournaments, leagues ect... I learned the game from several top notch west kentucky players and I feel like I play pretty decent. I learned all games and play them all well. I fell in love with One Pocket and it is my game of choice...along with a lot of people in kentucky. I am 24 now and still learning the game and will continue to learn until I die. My table time has been cut since getting out of college and heading into the real world as my dad calls it, but I still play as much as I can. I devote most of my time to my wife, dog, the students I teach and the players that I coach. I am a high school social studies teacher and the head baseball coach at our school and these things are a higher priority than my pool life right now. But I miss the sounds of the balls, the smell of the smoke and money, and the feeling you get when you make a good runout or play a killer one pocket safety. I miss it so much that I am typing this instead of grading tests that my kids just took.....damn it, i guess i need to start grading again. Thanks for listening and I have enjoyed all of your stories.
 
davidhop said:
The reason that I started playing pool, at least at a competitive level was due to the fact of the passing of a loved one. When I was only sixteen, I fell head over heels for a girl. We were made for each other!!! We would go out and play pool and have a great time just being together. This went on for eight months. Then I got the news that my girlfriend was killed in a tragic auto accident. I was destroyed! I did not know how to cope with this. For days on end, I did not eat anything and would just throw up anything that I tried to eat. One day I was alone and seriously thinking about suicide. I ended up walking in to the pool room, mainly just to speak to the owner one last time, and I wound up playing a game of pool. After that, I honestly know that pool saved my life. I could just get down to shoot and it was like all my problems would just melt away. I wasn't very good, but it seemed like the more I played, the easier it was to forget all my problems. Whenever I was done with a session at the table, I could just think for hours on end about how I should have played this shot, and what I could have done differently on that shot, until I would start to get depressed again. Then, back to the pool room I would go. Here I am fourteen years later. I have gotten over the pain, but I never quit playing pool. It calls to me. It is part of me.

Rest in peace, Heather Lee Trivette. 1973-1992
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Wow...

Jeff Livingston
 
My story is kinda lame, but it's true. My parents are from the Philippines, but I was born here in America. It's difficult finding your identity growing up as a Filipino-American. I was still a kid in the mid to late 80s when Efren invaded America. Around that time, I overheard talk that arguably the best pool player in the world happens to be Filipino. This definitely peaked my interest in pool, considering the only Filipinos the world ever talked about at the time were Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos (not exactly the greatest role models). I learned more about this Efren Reyes guy, and decided to give pool a try, thinking that pool skills might run in my blood. What introduced me to pool was nothing deep or profound, but rather shallow if I think about it. Yup, it was purely an identity-thing, but heck I was just a kid.
 
Saw a AD for a $100 table in the local Penneysaver. Came with all the accessories needed to play so we loaded up the truck and moved to beverly. It was a real piece of work: 8' Harvard brand (at least made in the USA), warped MDF, ripped cloth. Well that table gave us so much enjoyment as a family we played that thing all the time. Now we all have nicknames: Chops Louie, Slammin' Mammy, Sloppy Joe, and Pool Puppy. We just sold that old POS to some college frat house for the same $100 bucks and bought a decent 9' footer with doweled registered italian slate. Oh yeah we've got the pool jones now!
 
I started playing pool because there wasn't anything else to do in the small town I lived in for awhile as a teenager. A local tavern/gathering place had some snooker tables and a few of us kids would hang out there when we had enough money (15 cents a game). None of us ever had a drop of alcohol in the place, just enjoyed playing snooker. My Mother didn't like it but if she would have known what some of the other kids were doing she would have been glad I was playing pool.
 
jsp said:
My story is kinda lame, but it's true. My parents are from the Philippines, but I was born here in America. It's difficult finding your identity growing up as a Filipino-American. I was still a kid in the mid to late 80s when Efren invaded America. Around that time, I overheard talk that arguably the best pool player in the world happens to be Filipino. This definitely peaked my interest in pool, considering the only Filipinos the world ever talked about at the time were Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos (not exactly the greatest role models). I learned more about this Efren Reyes guy, and decided to give pool a try, thinking that pool skills might run in my blood. What introduced me to pool was nothing deep or profound, but rather shallow if I think about it. Yup, it was purely an identity-thing, but heck I was just a kid.
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Not lame at all!
Not shallow at all!
Just truthful to yourself. Who cares what others think? Everyone of us a young age feels that identity crisis. You made a decision and followed thru with it. Do you think it was the wrong decision? I'll answer it for you NO!

P.S.

I always liked the reply John Cusak's character said in the movie "Say Anything." "I wanna become a professional kickboxer and date your daughter."
Because that's more along the lines of what kids really are thinking. Instead of I wanna be a ______.

I think it's great that you grabbed on to an idea and ran with it. Kuddoes
 
How did I get into playing?

No one would ever let me play pool.

My first conscious memory of the game was as a young child of five or six growing up in the Mission District of San Francisco. When visiting our neighbors, I was frequently relegated to sitting under their pool table and watching the balls fly down wooden chutes to the ball return. When I asked to play, I was told, "No Luis, you’ll rip the cloth."

Years later, at a Boy’s Club of America, it was the older kids who monopolized the tables with their endless games of eight ball. When I asked to play, I was pushed aside and told, "No, you’re too small. You’ll rip the cloth."

Even as an adolescent, when one of the neighborhood kids spent his summer vacation in his dad’s wood working shop building his own tiny six foot table in his garage, the older guys made it their exclusive domain. My attempts to partake continued in their futility -- I might as well have been asking to play pool on the Shroud of Turin -- "Nah, you might rip the cloth."

In some way, maybe it was this constant state of denial during my formative years that planted the seeds of my future obsession with pool. Needless to say, I eventually did play. And, off and on, pool has played an important role in my life.

Lou Figueroa
 
Really I first thought that pool was just another game for passtime. Didn't know anything about the game. Just that the balls needed to go into the pockets.

I started getting interested when I worked at a local pool hall. I figured I could learn as I worked from the good local players here. In '94 there was this guy that was about my age. Never saw him before, but I did recognize him as the one of the guys in this big tournament that was held at the local pool hall. I didn't really know how good he was until after the tournament. The manager and the main stick at the time wanted to gamble with him. He was in their pockets for about $600 before they knew what hit em. Rjbigfish was side betting with others that had no clue who this guy was. Rj was about the only one who knew who he was. As it turned out, he took 2nd in a tournament in S.C. that year. Losing to Archer. He also took 2nd. place here to Steve Cook.

It was Robb Saez.

Man this guy could shoot. Back then he shot fast with no fear. He has since slowed his role now as far as shooting his shots. The guy had moves then and still does now. Like I had said on another thread, the guy is gonna make it big someday. I can honestly say he is one of my best friends and he is the real reason I am hooked on this game.
 
Because

When I grew up I was little for my size. We were a competitive
family in sports, so I knew I had to be smarter and try harder
to be in the top 10%. I never could stand being 2nd best.
Once the balls got in my head, they just wouldn't go away.
It was a sport I wanted to be good at, and knew I could.
Mathematics is one of my strong suits, I have always played
number games with myself. I became fascinated with the sport.
I learned I could earn money though Pool as a teenager if I was
good enough. Girls like someone that is real good at a sport.
Jimmy Caras came to my hometown, Dodge City (yes, Dodge City)
when I was 14 for an exhibition. After that day, I was hooked for
good.
 
My Uncle......

He was a world Class pool player and hanging around him and his friends people like Basil Minikophe "sp", Balabushka, Lassiter, Palmer who made my first custom cue (a birthday gift from my uncle) when I was 16 made me love the game at a very young age (9) which I now realize is a great age to start since I did not mind the endless drills he made me repeat over and over till they were a natural part of my game ! things like proper bridging ! stroke and stance became as normal as breathing before I was able to learn incorrect and damaging bad habits that tend to limit some of the best players

I believe from my own experiences that if you get the children interested at a young age, similar to how the love of video gaming has made some of our best and brightest programmers, you will have a rising pool star at 20! and NO I am by far not a rising star ! Hell! I'm 57 now and have a above average game but not a pro level game like my uncles but if I had of stayed at it in the 70's instead of going into business :confused: ..... well who knows? :cool:
 
Mama said no way

There was a pool hall accross the street from the theatre in my little hometown of Magnolia Ark. One night after the movies I walked in and the "guys" were playing Kelly Pool on the snooker table. I sat and watched for about an hour. Somehow, I knew it was for me.
My mom showed up and walked straight over to me and told me to get out. All the "guys" were laughing so hard. and it embarrassed me to no end.
On the way home, Mom told me of a distant uncle who got shot in the back of the head playing pool there and ordered never to go in that place again.
Obviously, once told no, I had no choice to become the best I could be.
 
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