Why did you START playing?

Island Drive

Island Drive

Otto/Dads College Roommate/Cleveland Browns
Silver Member
Most of us here on the forum either enjoy, love or are addicted to the game, but your originating interest was stirred How? For me it was a combination of my first 'easy' score, not much mind you but to me at the time it was a good feeling, plus I could escape from all the BS at home when growing up. Now as I have aged reigniting that interest seems to be my most difficult task, how about you?
 
I'd always thought pool was 'cool' but none of my friends ever played or wanted to.

So when I turned 21 and a friend dragged me to a bar that had two pool tables I rushed right up and started playing. I had a pretty good natural stroke, and was drawing/following the ball within a week. The more I learned about the game the more my eyes widened (and still do!) -- english, throw, jumping, masses, 3-rail kicks, combinations, banks.... I was hooked.

Edit: To me it was never the promise of hustling or money. Really it was a constant and ongoing fascination and love of the game itself. Though gambling has provided a rush, it's never been a primary concern of mine.

And now three years later I haven't looked back. Still practicing, still struggling but enjoying every minute of it.
 
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It was something to do at the Boys Club of America in Miami, Florida, think it was about 1954, or 1955 I was first introduced in to the game of Pool. I play for and won lots of kids lunch money...
 
The chalk. The talcom powder. The table. The balls. The cuesticks. When I was a kid and saw my dad playing with his friends all the stuff above intriuged me. Especially the chalk. I loved it...and still do:)
 
i played my first game when i was 14 my brother used to go and play after work with a co worker and he got to stay out an hour later than me so naturally i wanted to go play aswell but the two things that really got me into playin were the first time i won money (beat a friend for $80) and about a year after i started my aunt and uncle opened up a hall, and i started vacuuming and cleaning tables after closing for playing time.
 
When I was about 5, my grandparents who watched me during the day started taking me to the bar with them. Grandpa would give me a handful of quarters and send me to the pool table while he and grandma bellied up to the bar. :p So after a little while, grandpa (who played) saw that I had a knack for it and started teaching me stuff. Mom found out and freaked that her 5 year old was in the local bars...... so dear old dad started taking me with him instead (he played too).
By the time I was 10, I was playing adults in the bars and beating most of them while dear old dad placed bets on me..... :D Wasnt until I was about 12 that I actually got to go to a real pool hall and play the "big" tables. I spent the next 10 years or so getting my speed up playing in several different towns around where I grew up. Played pretty well for a while..... then it happened. I met my future wife through a mutual friend while I was living in Detroit, so naturally :rolleyes: I moved several thousand miles away to Alaska and have spent the last 10 years or so screwing around on bar tables in a po dunk little town in BFE.
I keep telling myself, one of these days...... Ill start getting back into it hot and heavy and work on getting my game back, but until I get out of this godforsaken town.......... its not likely. :(
Chuck
 
I started playing when I was probably around the age of 7 or 8 I went to my fathers house and at the time he was playing with some friends. They let me try and that one day left an impression on me. I seemed to have a natural knack for the game because as I remember after just a little instructions I started making balls. After that day I didn't play again until I was 11 or 12 at summer camp. Played some more during my high school days. Then no more that I remeber until 2000. At the time I had taken up competative Bass Fishing. I needed something to do during the off season. I've been playing ever since.

P.S. I stopped fishing.

BLACK CAT
 
When I was bowling juniors at the local bowling alley, someone stole my ball, shoes and stuff. I lost my faith in the game and started playing pool since that was the only game in the bowling alley that I never really played till then. Since then I haven't set the cue down for more than 2 weeks in a row, that was 17 years ago.
 
Going Deer hunting with the ol' man(step ol' man that is) we would play 25 a rack on the barboxes. Of course I was way to young to pay and i always lost, except when I made my first 8 ball break(luck, didn't even know I won) I think I am down a couple of grand with all the double or nothings. Maybe I should find him and see if he wants a rematch.......LOL. I WHOOP HIM....! But in reality I fell in love with the beauty of the game when I realize all of it's diversity, especially when I learned what english was....still learning LOL
 
Just didn't want to be left out...

I referred to it briefly in WONDERBOYS...I was one of three boys who were around thirteen years old, and as the older boys in our group came of age of around sixteen, they began to go downtown to the New State pool room.

We younger boys just didn't want to be left out and kept on trying to get into the hall but kept getting kicked out by the owner. He finally got sick of that and let us all stay.

A year later the other boys were gone somewhere else and I stayed...and the rest, as they say, is history.
 
I started playing with a friend, just something to do. Then I went off to college and it became a bigger thing to do because there was a 9ft table where I lived. Then when I came back home there was a nice pool hall where there was always action, and since then I've been hooked. Quit for five years because the hall closed down and I quit drinking so had no place to play. Went back to college and started up again and haven't quit yet.

The friend I started playing with died in a car accident my first year in college, found some old photo's of him today. Sad deal all the way around.
 
When I was a kid my grandma and grandpa always had a pool table in the basement. So every get together would end up at the pool table. It became very much a part of who won and who lost. Bragging rights to the next get together. Thats how I got hooked on the game. So I guess when they pry the cue from my cold dead hands that will be the day I no longer play.
 
I started playing at the Local Boys Club playing a game called any ball. object was you could hit any ball in any pocket with out using the cueball. that is where and how i developed my beginning stroke and bridge. We progressed to playing 8 ball. And then they did it. They open up an upscale pool room. (upscale for that time period...early 60's) and i watched other people play and learned alot from just watching. then the owner would give me free time for helping clean the tables and ash trays and away i went playing pool. My 1st 50 point game of 14.1 was exciting for me cuz i ran 14 balls right off the bat. the high run of my life at that time. If memory serves me right. i still lost the game but that little run gave me alot of confidence and i was hooked...........................mike
 
I was on a road trip with my girlfriend (probably 15 years ago). She stopped at a bookstore in San Jose, CA and I thought I would buy a book to read while she was driving. I had played pool a few times but really had no understanding of the game or how difficult it is.

I remember being torn between two pool books. One with lots of pictures and one with some trick shots in it. I bought the one with the trick shots which happened to be Robert Byrne's Advanced Techniques in Pool and Billiards.

Had I bought the other book I may have never picked up a cue again. Instead I bought Robert Byrne's book and got hooked. The book opened up the whole world of pool to me as a beginner. I ended up buying many other pool books and have to say this is by far the best one I had bought at the time.

I can honestly say Robert Byrne's book is the reason I started playing pool and I have him to blame for the thousands of hours and dollars I've spent trying to master it.
 
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I was a junior in college, and my friend's brother played quite a bit. I started hanging out in the student union poolroom, and it was quite a fun distraction from studying. It was also much better than going to class...
 
Pool has intrigued me since i was a little kid, the table the sticks everything.
But i rarely played it when i was younger, did not start playing until i was almost twenty, and it took me only a day or so to buy my first stick.
 
ATH said:
Pool has intrigued me since i was a little kid, the table the sticks everything.
But i rarely played it when i was younger, did not start playing until i was almost twenty, and it took me only a day or so to buy my first stick.
Click to expand...

I don't know, I was just a kid when that big asteroid fell. Then you couldn't go around poking the dinosaurs anymore, they'd just lay there not reacting at all, that wasn't any fun. So we had to do something with the sticks and we started pushing rocks around, then dug some holes ...

Seriously folks, I first shot pool in the house that Daniel Webster built. I was about 14 or 15 and the owner of the local roller skating rink (who also lived in the DW house) had a pool (swimming) party for us rink rats. He had a pool table, I immediately fell in love, still don't know why it fascinates me so. I generally like games and competition so that probably has something to do with it. I played it whenever I could after that, but that wasn't often out in the sticks. I finally got serious about 6 years ago. It's weird, pool is the only think I'm getting better at in my declining (or is that "reclining") years. ;)
 
It was the sound of balls clicking together. This amazing sound filtered out of a below street level entrance to a poolhall in the middle of a block in my home town. My mom worked at a Montgomery Wards store on the corner of this block. It was a tanilizing mystery. What was going on down there? You couldn't see in and it was 'way' to scary to venture down those steps and actually go in the place. I thought I would be immediately arrested or something...LOL Anyway, it was that sound that made me sit on the sidewalk and listen to the sounds that would come out of that mystery entrance...later, when my garbonzo beans had grown some I ventured in this place and it changed my life for better or for worse they say...LOL.
To this day the sound of pool balls makes my juices flow.
 
intriged at age 7 and interested at 11 & hooked at 14

When I was 7 we visited a holiday camp that had snooker room I watched my father play an uncle and was fascinated but they would not let me play even a shot.
Then at 11 I was given a 2 ft table for Xmas and played on it all the time the cues did not even have tips on them and were tiny.
At 14 I got a job in a bar that had a pool room upstairs and after hours we would play. I only worked so I could play after hours. I was terrible at the game but when I was 15 I cleared my first 8 ball game off the break. To be honest it was sheer luck but I did not know that then and was in love with the game. It was not for several years that I ran my next rack.
My father who was not a bad snooker player in his time taught me some fundementals to do with stance and holding the cue at about 16.
I am now nearly 43 and have been playing pool constantly since then and now play to a good standard. I have never really stopped playing for long and it still rules my social scene. I have a pool room in my house with a 9ft gold crown IV in it and could not be happier with it. I have my first child a boy 19 months old and I cannot wait until he is old enough to hit balls, I hope he will enjoy the game as much as myself but if not so long as he is happy that is the main thing.
regards
SJ
 
Playing

A few months before I was 12, my Dad brought home a 6 foot table (all we had room for in the basement). Played around on it, but did not start taking it serious till I was 14, and had a restricted driver's license. My big brother, Knute, six years older became good, won the Snooker Championship of Kansas University, and got to play Mosconi in an exhibition match. He gave me my first cue (a 3 piece with adjustable weights ..lol) for a Xmas present when I was sophmore in High School. I played quite a few sports growing up, but always seemed to excel at individual sports, and I was little growing up.
Because of that, I always thought I had to be better, smarter, and faster in sports than my competitors. Math always was one of my best subjects, and I just kind of went together with Pool, became fascinated with it, I loved the Challenge and the Possibilities of it.
 
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