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Before I tell you about what my pool meccas are I should explain what fascinates me about billiards and especially pocket billiards. The infinite challenge. Colliding spheres inside a constrained space randomly arranged. Basically a small galaxy that the shooter controls, or tries to. Move this planet into that one and make that one go there while the other one disappears…..do it again…..and again…….and again but differently each time. No one masters this endeavor only some get better than others. Billiards remains infinitely challenging because there is no point where you can say you are a perfect player with complete control over the game, you cannot beat all the levels, you cannot learn every possible move, you cannot even be the clear best in the world although of course some would argue with that. If you are the fastest man in the world you can run faster than anyone else and prove it easily. But if you are to be considered the world’s best pool player then it requires not only tremendous skill and consistentcy but also a huge amount of favor from the fates to allow you the right rolls at the right time. So pool to me represents first a personal challenge to improve and master it and myself as much as I can.
That said I then look around the world and to all the different ways that people play it. Pool is infininite in it variety as well with each version of the rules, each type of table, each culture’s approach adding in various levels of intricacy that are not harder or easier but are certainly requiring of different approaches to achieve any profiicent level of mastery. Because I have been fortunate enough to travel the world and see pool and billiards played in so many places I have come to appreciate this diversity and to understand why it’s fascinating to so many around the world and why that although the act of playing some form of billiards is present in nearly every culture it’s not regarded as a respected professional sport but with very few exceptions.
This leads to pockets of awesomeness in pool for lack of a better word. Places where the best players gather by choice as in a tournament or by neccesity as in fighting for rank and sponsorship through an informal ongoing battle of money matches to determine the pecking order. The fact that these places exist depsite pool being some super sport with mega-millions at stake makes them all the more special. As a fan I can travel to these places and rub shoulders with the best of the best, I can play with the best of the best and in some cases I can even have a good shot at being the best of the best. I am not an outsider looking in always separated by an invisible wall of class or a physical wall of security guards.
My first such place was Chester Truleove’s Pool and Dominoes on May Ave in Oklahoma City. I had started playing at around 12 years old and I had a little aptitude for it. Enough so that I could play for a dollar a game against the Mexican, I guess they were Mexicans, who came to Johnny’s game room on the weekend and by the end of the night I’d have 20 to 30 dollar crumpled dollar bills stuffed in my pocket. I never knew until I got home. Then one day I was sent to the grocery store with $20 and I decided to go to Johnny’s for a little bit first and I met an Indian kid who got me into a game for $5 a game. Four games later I was busted and broke and had gambled away mom’s grocery money.
One of the folks there at Johnny’s said to me afterward something like ‘you don’t want to mess with that boy, he plays up at Truelove’s place.” All I thought about after that was finding Truelove’s place and going to see it. I eventually did get there but only for a few minutes while my mom had something to do in the same shopping center where Truelove’s happened to be. I was so excited and I went in and no one stopped me or asked me what I was doing there. I just hung out right inside the door by the first table and watched a couple guys playing what I didn’t know then was one pocket. I peeked around the wall and saw a bunch of guys playing dominos and I just took it all in.
The place wasn’t really special, just a creaky old pool room but there was a sort of musty magic in the air as if it were just sort of napping and when more people were there it would come alive. Being a kid and not really being able to just go across town at will plus not having much money I never got back to Truelove’s for another four years until after I got a car. I can’t say that this place made a lasting impression but over the years I have come to know that many a great battle was waged there. A couple years ago I had the chance to go back and it was the same as back then. As I walked in I was instantly transported to back when I was 12 and my whole pool life up until that moment flashed in front of me. I had come full circle in some way and was happy about it. I got a table up front and began to hit some balls getting appreciative knowing looks from the regulars. They acknowledged that I could handle my cue ball well enough but were confident that they had plenty of folks who could handle me just fine. Like a person who finds themselves on some mystical point of power convergence and feels some spiritual connection to all things I felt like I was at a focal point of pool power in this run down but timeless battleground. I wanted to stay and test myself against the warriors but ultimately I felt it better to just be content to feel the place.
The thing is that although I was bitten by the pool bug at 12 I didn’t really become a student of the game until I was 17. I didn’t even know nine-ball was a game until then. I actually learned to play Golf on a American Snooker table before I learned the rules to 9 Ball.
So after 17 I started to get more and more into pool and become more of a fan. In the pool rooms I read the magazines from time to time but I never met or saw one of those guys. To me they were as distant as Tiger Woods is to the average golfer. So as I got more into the business ad more active as a tournament player I began to meet the famous players (famous to me) and so was able to fulfill some of those dreams.
To some folks Mecca is known but they don’t have a strong urge to go there. Big events are like that for me. The World Championship is a big event. The big league tournaments in Vegas are Meccas of pool. But for me as a younger man I was more interested in getting to the next local tournament. As I got into the business of pool my Meccas became the BCA Expo and the Super Billiards Expo. I was fortunate enough to be invited to display with Kim Steel tables at my first BCA Expo and my first Super Billiards Expo. And since then the SBE has never failed to excite and impress me. That event remains a personal mecca which I try hard to make every year.
Then comes the BCA Expo. Well I had actually been to a few expos in Germany before going to the BCA one. But the Billiard Congress of America sounded so prestigious and of course America was the pool center of the universe at the time. I remember that first show vividly, the colors the excitement, pros in every booth, Paul Huebler and his set of perfectly inlaid minature cues made to mimic his then current line. Everywhere I looked there were the people one only reads about. A very surreal and wonderful experience.Let me tell you that walking into the Super Billiards Expo for the first time was electrifying. All this pool stuff, dozens of pool tables in neat rows, all the big brands. And opening day when the crowds poured in and everyone was just in awe of all the cool stuff. Just a major positive vibe going on. As a young man, new to the business, and a diehard pool fanatic I was in heaven.
I actually got to ask Johnny Archer about playing Bustamante in their now famous match where Archer ran 13 and out in one set and Butamante offered to double the bet. It was just amazing to me to be rubbing shoulders with all these great players and industry people at 23 years old.
And the BCA has had it’s share of ups and downs since then. The show has undergone major transformations and the lustre has kind of worn off. That said, if I were 23 again and fortunate enough to be invited to go to the BCA Expo I am sure that I’d personally be just as thrilled now as I was then.
So what’s next,
The Big League Events, APA National, The BCA Internationals (Now BCAPL), the VNEA International events.
I have to say that I was a MAJOR snob about bar table leagues. Really. So when I got the invitiation to go and set up a booth at those events I kind of turned up my nose with the thought that I’d be hanging out with a bunch of people who didn’t know what real pool was. Well I was sooooo WRONG.
Who wouldn’t be impressed right off the bat walking into the venue and seeing more than a hundred pool tables set up as far as you can see? That image hit me right square in the face and I realized that I had just walked into a MAJOR production and that I was a tiny tiny tiny part of it.
But it wouldn't be for many more years before I got to be a part of it as a player. In May 2002 Team Instroke took the 7/8th place out of 792 teams in the Open division at the BCA National in Las Vegas. Being part of that event as a player on a team that did well was quite simply one of the greatest if not the greatest pool experience I ever had. The feeling of being up against strong teams from around the world doing battle in a sea of pool tables with a team was simply amazing.
From there the next pool Mecca for me was the Philippines. No one who is a true pool fan is not aware of Efren Reyes, Jose Parica, Francisco Bustamante and the legend of Filipino pool that they represent. It's been said that in the Philippines champions sprout like mushrooms and there are a hundred unknown players who are more than a match for any known professional in the world. So it was a dream of mine to go there and experience that for myself. And in 2006 I was able to do that for a weekend when I went to Manila for the 9 Ball world championships. And it truly was all that it was rumored to be.
I was walking through a mall opposite from the World Championship venue I stumbled upon a pool room. Walked in and immediately three or four guys approached me to ask if I wanted to play. I agreed to play ten ball and I managed to break and run my first rack of ten ball in the Philippines. I lost the set handily and then I said I'd play rotation if I got 20 points. They jumped at that and I won the rotation set and the gambling was over. But I had made a few friends who showed me around that weekend. We went to One Side and there was Efren, Luat, Orcullo and many foreign pros, every table in action. We went to family pool rooms on the street, we walked down side streets and on every television the World Championship was being shown live in progress and there were three or four people huddled around each set. That year one of the previously unknown monsters Roberto "Superman" Gomez lost a heartbreaker to his Lex Luthor, Daryl Peach. The nation however almost revolted and lynched the referee when Bustamante fouled and the audience and Busty all thought it wasn't a foul. Truly an amazing display of crowd involvement for pool.
The last one I want to mention that I was lucky enough to attend is the Derby City Classic. So many people have written about the DCC over the years. The timing was never right for me to go and one year I just decided to get in the car and go there. This was when it was being held in the old Executive West hotel. The Executive West was an old fashioned midwestern hotel with lots of wood work. It belongs in another era. The marriage of the Derby City Classic and this particular place was made in heaven. The Derby City Classic is truly the wonderland of pool. There is SO MUCH happening that no one can possibly experience all of it in the short nine days that it's held each year. I was taken back to when I was a kid again and standing in the doorway of Truelove's. Only this time I didn't have to go and I could wander through it all and even participate if I wanted to. The best part of it, in the hallway there was a vendor selling nuts and no one was cracking the obvious jokes. I think if it had been my stand then I would have ruined it by making a sign with the obvious pun. But truly, being able to attend the DCC was the nuts!
If you can get there, go.
Lastly, I want to talk a little bit about meccas I have yet to go to or experience. I'd like to play in the US Open One Pocket event. I'd like to spend a week with Buddy Hall and a week with Efren Reyes. And that's about it.
I hope you are able to make your pool meccas and enjoy all that pool has to offer.
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