When did you start playing?

gpeezy

gpeezy

for sale!
Myself, I can remember going in someone's basement when I was really little,I'm talking 4 maybe 5 and playing a little of a chair with just the shaft of whoever it was cue.After that I had a neighbor that bought one of those mini-pool table for thier kids and I got to play on it a good bit.then i had a break for it except maybe a game once every three years until I was 16 years old and a local store had a table in it where I would play the owner hours on end.That was also were I won my first tournament and played my first ring game.I was just thinking back and realized i have had this game in my head for sometime now and was wondering about the rest of you.It should make for a pretty good discussion.
 
i started in 2003. i was 20 and had just gotten to iwakuni japan. every year the on base dealership puts up 800 bucks for a free tournament held on newyears day. i got there just intime to see thr tournament and i decided i was going to practice and try to win it the before i left. played all i could for a year straight and came in 2nd.
 
I started playing in 1957. My dad took me to the club he belonged to and I would have free sodas and watch a handful of people in this quite, not very busy place playing cards and pool. It was in the basement of a hall.

I loved to go. All the guys playing would pat me on the head and give me nickels or dimes. Sometimes even a quarter!

The table was an old 5x10 Brunswick with 6 legs and leather dropped pockets. They would always ask me to play. After a while, when I could make a ball or two, they got a kick out of it. From the time I heard the balls clicking together I was hooked. :)

Of course I still can't make many balls .... :)
 
I can remember my mom taking me to visit my dad at the poolroom. I always knew among his friends he was respected for his pool game and has played since he was very young.

When I was 7 he bought me a toy table/balls/cues. I played on that in the basement - but not learning anything....just slamming balls around.

When I was around 10 I would go with him on Friday nights to a small pool room near our house in Nashville (1988). He would get me a table (4x8 goldcrown) to practice on, and he would play with other people. It is funny thinking back...I was more concerned with hitting balls ( and I couldn't much more than see over the table ) than watching him play. I remember really being fascinated with the stop shot. Firing a ball in the hole, and stopping the ball.

Oh, and around that same time (it was when the very first BATMAN movie came out) we went to some event and met Steve Mizerak. I'll *never* forget playing pool against the MIZ (and he let me use his cue...it was one game of 8 ball..LOL).

Once I turned around 13 or 14 I would go with my dad every Saturday morning to another place near our house and we would play races to 11 in 9 ball. I didn't win or come close to winning for years......but I never practiced. Just did my best when he played. He wouldn't teach me anything either. He would just answer any questions I might have.

I was 16 before I decided to actually learn to play pool. I went by myself to another pool room, and some guy asked me to play $1 (yes, one dollar) a game 9 ball. He beat me 10 games in a row.....and I was MAD. From there, I was hooked.
 
I had two grade school buddies that had cheapo pool tables in their basements... so I'm guessin' that I was ~12 years old when I started. That was 46 years ago. :rolleyes:

By the time I was ~16, we started going to the local pool halls in western Chicago suburbia on a regular basis... usually after school let out... my favorite was the Swank Club in Glen Ellyn and ocassionally, Lord and Lady in Wheaton. Bought my first cue in 1966 from Swank... a plain Viking with wool wrap... still have it. ;)
 
I am too old to remember?

I was seven at the community center, after fencing class, we would put down the foils and go upstairs to the room with three brunswick tables and bang balls around (summer of 1967).

Later, it was in the bowling alley or in my brother’s best friends basement game room. When I was older, it was in the game room at my Dad's yacht club (1976-1977).

Didn't get hooked till sometime in 1982........ Where's bugs? Oh he's in the garage bangin’ some balls around on his table....... :p or across the street in the kids garage given lessons….. ;)
 

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Wow. how time flies...Early 90's I was 15ish, couldnt drive, new pool hall opened up, EVERYONE went crazy. The good old days when a Honda Accord could pack 7 people :D - all destined to the pool hall...Played till about 21ish then started my real career...

wish I never stopped and incredible to still see some of the same players at the top of their game almost 10 years later...
 
Here's my standard answer:
__________________________________________________________

I think I was 9 or 10. {ed. that would be 1976 or 1977} I went with my Dad to pick up my sister at the Masonic Temple. She was waiting at the Temple in a rec. room playing 8-ball on this 9' table. I'd never really played before but was fascinated by the click of the balls. Neither my sister nor her friend had a clue as to what they were doing, but occassionally, one of them would catch a ball just right. The ball would hit the leather pocket with that wonderful *thwap* sound.

My sister let my father and I play a bit before we went home. For a guy who never plays, my dad has some obvious natural talent. My father only knew one game: rotation. So that was the first game that I knew as far as rules go.


In that first magical rack, I couldn't make a straight shot to save my life.
I was able to make all of two balls: a bank on the 5, and a kick on the 13. {ed. I don't know about the coincidence that both these balls are orange} My father apparently feeling no need to praise his young son on these
accomplishments rewarded me with "lucky shot" on each.


And such was the spark that lit my burning desire. I never wanted to hear
him tell me "lucky shot" again. Gee, dad. Thanks.


Regards,


Fred Agnir
 
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I started January 16, 2007. and I am still learning:) Age 52
Charlie

Paranoia is nothing but 100% awareness........
 
Charlie D said:
I started January 16, 2007. and I am still learning:) Age 52
Charlie

Paranoia is nothing but 100% awareness........
Click to expand...

You're never too old to learn. I'm still learning too.
 
I started playing at just 4 years old, on a toy tables 2x4, untill I was 5, when I started going with my dad to the pool hall, but he never taught me anything about the basics, I had taught myself, as I remembered from an early age, how the professional snooker players would stand, etc, on TV and i just emulated that, but only to a small extent, and everything else I learned, just stuck in my mind :)

I first watched 9ball, and that was the World Team Pool Championships, in 89/90??, and it was Team USA VS Team Phillippines, I remember that they were using Murray tables with gold cloth and Centennial balls and it was shown by ESPN, but broadcast on a UK satelite channel, Screensport, and I think that the USA team was made up of, Lou Butera, Earl Stricland, Buddy Hall, Jimmy Rempe and Allen Hopkins, and I vaguely remember that Efren and Buste were in the Phillippines team :)

From the first time I watched 9ball being played, I was hooked on Amwerican Pool, to the point that on the next day, I called the local billiard supply store and asked them to send me out a copy of the rules for 9ball, which they did free of charge and I started playing 9ball from then, and then other games like Straight Pool, Rotation and a few others :)

And so after all this time, here I am today, 22 years later, and still happily shooting pool and like a big kid in a HUGE candy store :) lol

Willie
 
My first memory was playing on a table in a carport somewhere near Eugene, Oregon at my aunt and uncle's 25th wedding anniversary. We played pea pool as I remember. I was hooked. I had a few opportunities while I still lived at home to play here and there. I remember a few hours on a really crappy table at a church (no one to play with so hours of practice on my own), then a new recreation center that they built behind my house around 1969. After I left home, I spent many hours at the local pool halls here and there. There was a fairly long hiatus from around 1983 or so until a little over three years ago where I would only play a couple of times a year or so. At last I decided that I had always enjoyed a good game of pool and that I deserved my own table (plus I had gotten beat a couple of times by so-so players and never wanted to have that happen again), so I bought a table and have been in seventh heaven ever since.
 
> I was an enthusiastic recreational player before I started playing seriously,thanks to carpal tunnel. I was going to a local community college to take Spanish and a few other courses and get fluent in Music Theory so I could get into a 4 year school,eventually wanting to get a job as a studio guitarist,maybe doing those guitar parts you hear in video games and ESPN highlights. Carpal tunnel came out of nowhere,and the doctors told me either put it down for a year or have surgery,and the technology of CTS surgery is light-years from where it was in 1990-91. All of a sudden,I have 50 hours a week I have to fill with some kind of activity,other than playing stuff like Scarified and Far Beyond The Sun. Tommy D.
 
1987, I was 8 years old when my family would go to Camp Sacramento. It was not roughing it by far. There were about 80 cabins, Cafeteria, and a lodge with 2 4x9 Brunswick pool tables. I would go up there every year and do nothing but play pool and fish from sun up to sun down. I'll be honest though I didn't seriously invest time into the game until about 5 years ago. Since then I play 5 times a week:D
 
56 years

ago i went to my rich cousins home in houston and saw my first pool table, and was fascinated. i'm still working on my game so sometimes in the next 56 years i'll be smoking
 
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