Rickw said:
Two guys walk into a pool room, Player A goes up to the counter and says, "I play a pretty good game of pool and I'd like to challenge your best player for some money." Player B walks in, goes to the counter and sits there nursing a cup of coffee and clocks everyone in the room. He spots someone he knows he can beat and then talks the guy into a money game feeling pretty confident that he's going to win some cash. Which guy would you rather be? I would rather be Player A not Player B. That's just me though, that's just my way of thinking and I'm not trying to impose it on you I'm just trying to say that if the first scenario was the norm, I think pool would be elevated a notch or two.
And I don't think it makes a damn bit of difference. They're just two different ways of drumming up business. It still always boils down to the individual who was approached...not the one that did the approaching. You said "He spots someone he knows he can beat and then TALKS the guy into a money game".
You can't talk anyone into something that they didn't want to be talked into to begin with!!
If you feel that strongly about it, you should start a national campaign or lobby against every law enforcement agency in the country. They use those SAME acts of subterfuge to entrap individuals every single day. Is it immoral for a pool player to do that, yet totally moral, honest, and legal for law enforcement to do even worse?
Case in point: A guy approaches me dressed either in a suit and tie, or plain golf clothes and says he has a couple of deals for me to make money. I can either buy some drugs from him dirt cheap for my personal use, or sell it and make a hell of a profit based on the going rate. Or, if I can score some drugs at a reasonable price, he'll buy everything that I can muster up. And let's say he's REALLY persuasive in trying to "talk" me into it. Let me tell you what's going to happen, I don't care what he has to say and offer, I'm going to tell him to hit the road and go f*#k himself! Yet, that same DEA agent or narc can go right around the corner and ask someone else and get a hit. Whose fault is it...the agent or the mark?
Case #2: A guy works about 3/4 of a mile from his home in the city. Rather than pay parking fees he walks back and forth to work but has to go through about a block and a half of regular street hookers soliciting business. Mixed in with them are some absolutely knock out chicks with 5 miles of leg, beautiful faces, perfect bodies, and short skirts just covering their ass cheeks that happen to be undercover police women. If he loves his wife, his kids, and the life that he has going for him, it might be a hell of a temptation and a fantasy but he WON'T be TALKED INTO IT come hell or high water. Who will? The guy that WANTS to get some action. If he gets the cuffs slapped on him, who is the immoral one...he or the cops? According to the legal system...he.
In you example I don't think Player A or Player B should be condemned or condoned. They're just doing it one way or another, it still boils down to the person accepting, rejecting, or totally ignoring all of it.
Now, I agree that senior citizens being taken advantage of by telemarketing swindlers are a different story. They may have lost some mental acuity and are vulnerable and those making the calls should be nailed to the wall. But if a person is hanging out in a pool room, I don't think that applies. We're not talking about a senior geriatric club for the infirm.