What's your favorite hustle?

Don't ever confuse Hustling w/ Cheating.

Cheating is Cheating! - Period

Pool Hustling is the fine art of maximizing your monetary gains from a player (that if the tables were reversed), would be doing the same thing to you.

One of the BEST from long ago.

Cleo Vaughn from Mobile, Ala was a large gambler & pool player.

Earl Heisler was one of the BEST Hustlers in General, but specialized in Pool. Some say he was (Titanic) Ty Thompson's equal.

Now Earl is trying to take Cleo off and figures to do it right he needs to have a "Broadway Show" (a game set up just for Cleo to either watch or hear about) for Cleo to be CONvenced that he knows where he is at.

Earl has this local B player (who is always close to broke), borrow $500 from Cleo to play on. Here comes this Road Player and he matches up with this B player. They start for $20 a game and (after 9 hours and many adjustments), the Road Player loses over $3,000.
Right after the game - The B player goes up to Cleo and pays back the $500 and $50 extra for the loan.
Now Cleo is a pretty sharp guy himself and if it weren’t for the $550 PAYBACK he would have seen through this hustle/show all the way.

BOTTOM LINE - CLEO MINUS $48,000 after 3 days play.

I got about $1,500 (in rail bets) just because I was in the right place at the right time and had enough experience and common sense to KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT.

Earl came up to me (in Pensacola) a couple of weeks later and said - "I was going to let you know what was going on, but knowing you, I knew you would figure it out soon enough and do the right thing anyway". He gave me $300.

FYI - It seldom pays to RUIN someone else’s Hustle - But it sure can NOT TO.

TY & GL
 
Here's a novel idea for our sport. When we go to bars and play for cash, or play in our weekly League, why don't we just try and win every game we play, and play to the best of our ability? Apologies if this seems crazy or off the wall.
 
hobokenapa said:
Here's a novel idea for our sport. When we go to bars and play for cash, or play in our weekly League, why don't we just try and win every game we play, and play to the best of our ability? Apologies if this seems crazy or off the wall.

That sounds like sportsmanlike gambling to me which is more acceptable than hustling or cheating.
 
hobokenapa said:
Here's a novel idea for our sport. When we go to bars and play for cash, or play in our weekly League, why don't we just try and win every game we play, and play to the best of our ability? Apologies if this seems crazy or off the wall.


That might work if you gamble as a hobby. But if it's to put food on the table, and to have a place to stay, then hustling is the only way to get the maximum amount of money out of your oppenent.
 
The sweetest hustle I witnessed was this; old man walks into pool hall and gets in a game of dice with the house pro. Somewhere along their game (funny moment-house pro flashes his bank roll of 20's, old man returns volley by showing his roll of hundies) the house pro is down about a 1K and suggests playing a game of 1 pocket. The old man agrees but says he must first get a bite to eat and leaves. Of course word got around the hall and the railbirds began to gather. The somewhat cocky (my opinion) house pro was standing at the head table with cue in hand waiting for his next kill :rolleyes: for over 4 hours. I was waiting too! The old man never shows up! What a way to ice a guy, take his 1K in dice then agree to a game of 1 pocket which the house pro definately felt he had the lock.

Well, next night, old man shows up ready to play. Grabs a bunch of cues off the wall and rolls them on a table until he found one to his liking. Most railbirds are confused as he is as non-chalant as can be. After a litttle talking here and there, a bet with lotsa side action was made. No surprise to me, the game goes quite easily to the stranger. The old man made it look simple! Classic show... A little bit of talking (McCready style) and some jam up play! (I remember him using the same excuses often heard from the house pro which I thought was funny because it was regarding age and the house pro couldn't pull the "i'm too old, can't see" routine.) I figure him and his pal walked away with 4500+ for 2 nights work. Not too shabby for a small college town in CA.

Is this a hustle? I think so, the old man must have had a line on the place. He really knew how to capitilize on the "hit". He took the house pro and the owner of the establishment for a ride, while leaving tread marks on their confidence to set up another game. He played no one else and only that 1 game. The guy never came back and claimed his name was Earl and walked with a slight limp.

ghost ball
 
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