The Joe Rogan Experience - #2034 - Jeremy Jones

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Jeremy Jones is a professional pool player. He was the 1998 US Open One Pocket champion, the 2003 US Open 9 Ball champion, and has represented Team USA in the Mosconi Cup on seven occasions. 

the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day jeremy jones what's happening baby not much not much trying to run out yeah man uh playing you is very humbling experience i should tell everybody jeremy jones professional pool player um the team captain of the moscone, which is the most prestigious international team tournament in all the world of pool. But what I really enjoyed about talking with you for the last couple of days is you're just you're a very smart guy, very interesting guy. There's a lot of, you know, like a lot of interest in all kinds of different things. You're a very fascinating guy. That's why you're so good at commentary yeah i guess so maybe just growing up watching all that stuff and uh i think my parents you know they they had pretty vast interest even though maybe

didn't afford it all the time to be able to you know kind of go with it but yeah number five or six kids you learn a lot of stuff well it's just always been fascinating to me the people that are really good at pool are some of the fucking smartest people i've ever met in my life there's just they just got that bug they got that bug to chase this one thing geometry and pockets and balls and collisions and they got that bug to chase it but some of the best players that i've talked to they're some of the smartest people i've ever met. Oh, absolutely. I mean, that just tells you about the game, right? How much there is to it. And, yeah, I mean, it's just, it grabs you.

And, you know, if you're paying attention to what goes on, it's like hardly ever the same thing. Yeah. You know, you don't realize how much control you have. I thought pool was kind of like a game you played waiting on a bowling alley lane, you know, prior to playing it. Right. I didn't know you could play it well. I didn't know you could play it for a living you know there's movies out

there and stuff but i mean it just didn't seem real when you what how old were you when you first started playing uh really playing 17. i was 17 years old yeah i started late i started really late i was 25 i think somewhere around 24 24 25 yeah yeah yeah i uh i worked two jobs and one of them uh we'd you know have a few beers on the weekends at a pizza restaurant play poker with our money our tip money and one of the guys would go to the game room and play pool and he uh took me down there one day and kind of hustled me a little bit you know we kind of knew each other like that and uh the only thing i wanted to do was be able to beat him, Joe. That's like, that's what I wanted to do.

Yeah. And that's, so I quit one of the jobs. I quit the pizza restaurant, went and got a job at the game room so I could play for free. And, you know, kind of the rest is history from there. Wow. It's a game that just sucks you in. I remember I used to go and play with my friend John, and we would go to this place, Executive Billiards in White Plains.

And when we got there, you know, it was an interesting time because there was a lot of gambling going on in that place. And the guy, the owner was a wild man. The owner of the pool hall was this really eccentric musician. Yeah, his name was Guy Azzariti, but he would use the name Guy Hamilton when he performed. He was this musician, like a piano player, like really good musician. And he had some money from, you know, his career as a piano player, and he was really in a pool. He loved the culture of it. And so he was the owner of this joint

and we were all just hanging out with him, having fun and I would go there and it'd be filled with people gambling. And I was like, this place is wild. And then I was watching like really good players play when I was, you know, just starting out, didn't know what I was doing. And I was like, that looks so different

than anybody else I've ever seen play pool like the way they hit the ball so soft and they're in such control and you're watching the ball spin off the cushions you get perfect the next ball and everybody's like shaking their head wow i'm like that that got me hooked yeah that's what got me yeah i think the culture of it is a big big part of it i mean just being able to gamble and not take it personal. Right. You know, like you hate the casino when you go lose, right? Right.

I mean, they're like cussing the casino. They're cheating. They're doing this, right? But, I mean, where I was at, we could gamble, and then we could hang out. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then we're on teams the next day, and we're not on, you know. Yeah.

So that, to me, was pretty fascinating overall, you know. There's a culture that encourages more gambling. And the best way to encourage more gambling is not have fisticuffs every time somebody loses. Some guys just get too personal. It's a natural feeling. The guy just beat you. You're angry at him. But really, you should be angry at yourself.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's just that's what you're both trying to do. It's an agreement. You figure it out. Yeah, I mean, you beat a guy, you don't bust his chops too often right you let him cool off and then it all is good but uh everybody goes back to like mccready's character in the color of money which is apparently from what everybody tells me from those days really mccready was probably like wilder than that no i think i've sweated it 100 really oh yeah yeah yeah i uh i uh was in with a player playing keith and i think they

played something like four days or five days with like an eight hour break or 10 hour break in in the middle wow you know and if you say that stay there and sweat that kind of pool with those guys you see stuff that you're just not gonna see you know what i mean they get a little rum dumb they get a little agitated then they're hugging you know an hour like oh yeah it's crazy yeah but but keith would definitely uh talk a little bit you know he liked a little banner those are the craziest legendary sessions when guys just gambled for three straight days in a row and people think it's bullshit but that was that's part of the thing about pool and gambling is nobody wants to quit oh no no you're trying i mean if you don't quit

when you're up and if you're down and you still got some fight left in you this guy might get tired or money you know you might you know i've seen him go through three or four steak horses in a night yeah you know but i mean i think you and i were talking about earlier so much different these days when i went to the pool room i was was fully rested like 10, 12 hours because I knew I'm there to beat four or five guys. I'm going to be there 20, 30 hours. Wow. Yeah. I mean, you know, that's what you want.

You want to put the parlay on them. You know, like you want to take a, you know, somewhat small bankroll and try to run it through somebody. That's a fascinating way to live your life. It really is i've always i mean that if out of all of the things if you talk about like american folklore just like american culture all the poetic characters the the professional pool player is one of the most interesting because it is the least guaranteed job that has ever existed yeah there's lots of sayings i think it's the you know hard way to make it easy living easy living is one of them right but but i mean you know if

i was lucky i was around some of the old school ones as well and the charisma is true you know like if you see genuine charisma i mean it's a real thing yeah and that's what the old guys had that the other young guys have it too but it's just a little different. Well, everyone seems, it's interesting because it seems like pool is just like every other thing in that the guys today are as good, if not better, than anybody that's ever existed. Oh, absolutely. And there's more of them. That's the problem. There's so many of them.

Yeah, exactly. I'm so impressed. Yeah, there are so many of them. Yeah, exactly. I'm so impressed. I mean, Europe, Asia, guys from Taiwan, guys from China, guys from Japan, guys from Spain. It's like, whoa. Killers. Most global sport there is, I think.

It's amazing how much talent there is out there. I'm just so impressed with how what the level is now because if you like no disrespect to anybody who played back in the day but if you go back and you watch a tournament from like the 80s versus you watch how these guys are playing now it's it's almost like it's a completely different game yeah i mean different style rather yeah i think the equipment allows for that too yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. And the training.

I mean, these guys, you know, you had Federer-Gorst. I'm sure you all talked about his regimen, right? He's my perfect example. He's almost playing like a totally different style of pool. Like his style of pool is like, it's so perfect. Like his position, the way he stands with his body, how rigid it is. It's like people that don't understand that are just seeing a guy just make something look easy. But people that do understand, it's like that's like a work of art.

Like look what he's doing. Oh, absolutely. It's like artwork. Yeah. He's kind of like, you know, back in the day you'd kind of, you know, I used to say to a lot of guys that go on the road, hey, if they don't beat me in the first couple hours, we're all right. You know what I mean? Because I get better and better and better. And he kind of doesn't even look for that.

You know, he doesn't even want a gear. He just has this steady gear. You know what I mean? It's just like he's not looking for that rhythm, even though it's there, I guess, a little bit. But he's just a different machine, you know? Well, he's so well trained in terms of his fundamentals. And it's all so repeatable. And I think that that exists in martial arts.

It exists in archery, and it really exists in pool. If you have really good fundamentals, like that's why a lot of those snooker guys really excel when they try to learn pool. They're fundamentals. Their stroke fundamentals are so perfect. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they learn some things as they come over. They hate when you say snooker, though, right? Don't they give you a hard time? Snooker. Snook Yeah, yeah. I mean, they learn some things as they come over. They hate when you say snooker, though, right? Don't they give you a hard time?

Snooker. Snooker, yeah. Or the, you know, I still don't know why a bank is called a double in snooker. Just a one-rail bank is called a double. So, I mean, there's a few of them that I'm not really sure about. But, you know. That's an interesting game, too. Oh, it's a great game, yeah.

that's that's an interesting game too oh it's a great game yeah i mean i think you know i think nine balls a little better looking for today's people i you know what i mean like snooker has done really well and it's got a great following and it should but i don't know there's nothing like breaking and running yeah the different balls you know you know you feel a little more aggression i think yeah you know which in sports you usually want to feel that aggression, right? And if you fuck up and leave the nine in front of the hole, it's an easy victory for your opponent. There's something beautiful about luck, the luck aspect in nine ball. Balls bounce all over the place.

And when you're down and then all of a sudden, boom, the guy shits a nine ball in, you're like, God damn it. And you can change it around. You know what I mean? You turn things around. It's such an exciting game, and it never stops being exciting. When it's played at a good level, it just never stops being exciting. It's like it's one of the most engaging physical games

that I've ever participated in. Yeah, and you would think for a non-contact sport, the adrenaline gets way up there. I know. I mean, it's pretty intense. They've done heart rate monitors on guys, right? Oh, yeah. What's like the highest anybody got jacked oh my god you know a guy you know a couple years ago max everly was trying to make the team

so we traveled to to Moscow actually to play the Russian team and we put him on there I think it was Garmin that was the sponsor or whatever. I mean, some guys were 130, 125. Max was like 180, 175. I mean, it was unreal. Oh, my God. Yeah, and he couldn't play position at all. It was just one of those things, but he knocked in every shot. Wow.

I mean, I was super proud of him, yeah. Fundamentals. Yeah, fundamentals. Max has picture-perfect fundamentals. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Real straight stroke, stroke you know been around a long time and uh it was it was a pretty fun experience for max i was happy to see it so when you were a kid and so you start off um working in this game room and you learn how to play pool

then like how how long before you're just all in with pool like all day long oh it didn't take long at all and and uh i was kind of lucky, uh, a little unlucky, but lucky at the same time where my parents actually split up for like 12, 13 months. Right. So during this time I live with my mom and there's no chance I would have ever been a pool player if they didn't split up for that little period of time. Right. So my dad just wouldn't have allowed it. And so they got back together and then I'm graduating high school, getting out of school. So it wasn't really up to him, but I was pretty much first road trip right out of high school. Wow.

Yeah. So what did you do, and how did you do it? Okay, the road trip? Yes. Okay, so me and my high school buddy, Doug Donovan, we played a lot of pool together. We decided we were going to do this. His was more of an experiment kind of thing. He was going on to UT and doing his thing.

We went to New Orleans first. We were going to go visit my grandparents in Florida. I knew Florida was a good spot. We went to Florida. We went to New Orleans first, Mississippi second, Alabama third. We hit all these spots. Back in the day, now I didn't know this as of yet because it was my first road trip, but on a normal road trip, because no cell phones, right?

You go to Waffle House when you drive in. You get you some food. You go get the Yellow Pages. You literally go to where it says Billiards in the Yellow Pages. You just start going to the pay phone and calling. And normally the bartender or whoever answers will divulge a little more information than they probably should. You know, like if the player's new, oh, yeah, she's telling me, yeah, Joe's a good player,

and he likes to gamble nine ball, this guy likes to play one pocket, you know. So you get a lot of information over the phone. And then you just go to those pool rooms and, And you know start trying to get down wow and how good of a player were you fresh out of high school? Well you know a year, and I was real lucky I had some really good players just kind of like come to the pool room and played me pool and do things with me and Show me things and and I was a pretty good athlete anyway, so I kind of picked up things quick But I played good enough to beat them on the way to Florida, Joe. But they were way too smart, and we were way too dumb to stop at the same pool rooms on the way back

because they got us on the way. But they kind of knew how we played, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got us on a few gaff games, you know. So we kind of went empty on the way home pretty much. Explain a gaff game to the uninitiated. So a gaff game is kind of like, you know, three card, right? The shell game, any of those games, you know, you're going to lose.

And even if you're going to pick the right one, they start the, you know, the song and dance again. That's how the shell game goes, right? So it's basically a game that you're just not going to win at. Give me an example. It sounds good, kind of like, oh, like this might sound good to you, but you know better now. Eight ball, taking balls off.

That kind of thing. Or say we're playing nine ball, right? And I might say to you, Joe, all you got to do is drive a ball to the rail, but I get break ball in hand playing nine ball. You understand? Right. So, I mean if i'm basically playing the ghost meaning right right i'm gonna try and run out every time but until you start to see it happening you're not gonna believe it you might go for that you ain't even got a pocket of ball you just got to drive one to a rail right you know there's tons of them so that's an interesting game to play with someone who can't play because that would

get them thinking i I can do that. Or naive pool rooms. Like if there's not any pool rooms with a good player that just really ain't running out, I mean, that just sounds like the world. You know what I mean? That just sounds, all right, yeah, go ahead. Exactly. I can drive one to a rail, that's for sure.

But the thing is, like practicing with you today, probably not. Especially if it's a bucket, it's a large pocketed table. You've run out like a champion, man. It's amazing. And I know you're not like playing professionally as much anymore, but damn, that was really impressive.

Yeah, I've been here a few days, got to play a little pool here in Austin already, so that's good. Shout out to Skinny Bob's. Yeah, Skinny Bob's. That's a great spot. Yeah, the 50th going on, the longest running tournament tournament in the country i went there last year to sweat it i might try to make it there this year too it's uh it's fun man it's what it's i love watching

high level pool it's just uh just and especially it's one of those things that i always said it's like an art form that only the people that do it appreciate yeah and when you when you really get into it, you see different strikers. You know what I mean? The strokes are different. You know what I mean? A little bit. You know, the position's a little different at times, different things, different breakers, different ways to win.

You know what I mean? So it's attractive in that manner, I think. Yeah. No, it's just an interesting thing that there's different approaches. You know, some guys have, like, thick shafts. Some guys have little tiny shafts. body types yeah right we're talking about kachi and you know unfortunately what happened to him recently but this guy looks like you know like built like gronk almost not quite as muscle as a big dude yeah huge and then you got what little ko who's one of your favorites

that you said i love the cobra 90 pounds soaking wet maybe? Yeah, Ko Ping Chung and Ko Ping Yi are two of my favorite guys to watch because the way they play is so smooth. It's just so controlled. It seems like he's never hitting the ball at different speeds. He's just hitting it at different places on the ball unless it's a very soft shot. Everything is just like this beautiful controlled stroke. Yeah, everything looks medium, right?

Everything looks like right in the middle. I forget what match I was watching recently, but he broke around the first five racks and it was just like exquisite. Oh, yeah. Little one? The little one? No, that was the big one. Oh, Copini.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a third, you know. But they're both assassins, right? There's a third one, you know. I heard. Yeah. I haven't seen that guy play. Yeah, he's got a lot of talent. He's way tall compared to the other two oh really so it's almost like

when i watch him he's still kind of getting his coordination as a tall man because he's pretty young you know so yeah but he's got a lot of game as well there's something about you know watching these guys from the time that they're really young like some guys get so good so quick like wu cha ching you know that dude who won the world championships at what 16 years old yeah the nine ball and then later in the year the eight ball as well insane oh yeah 16 oh yeah i was there when he won the nine ball he was like fearless well he manhandled the whole tournament yeah at 16 it was like you could see after like the third or fourth round a little different complexion on his opponents compared to everyone Else's opponents. Yeah, he was an interesting guy too because he played with a heavy Southwest, right?

Yeah, that well the Chinese Taipei former Taiwanese, right? That's a big common cue for them is the Southwest Maybe more on Southwest and Chinese Taipei than anywhere in the world That's what's interesting too is that everybody has like a different philosophy on whether a cue should be heavy or a cue should be light. But to the people that don't know what the fuck we're talking about, what's so fascinating about it is you're trying to apply a certain amount of pressure to this thing that you're holding in your hand that you drive into a cue ball to get the proper amount of revolutions. And you're doing it across a whole table. So it's like a nine-foot canvas. And when the ball goes three rails and comes all the way back,

it's perfect for position on the next ball. It's one of the most beautiful things in life. Oh, yeah. People don't realize the cue ball curves all over the place. You know what a masse is, right? But like every shot it curves. So how much knowledge did you have when you were out there hustling when you were 17? Did you know how to make a good game? Did you just wing it just for experience? No, I mean, you know, Baytown where I'm from, east side of Houston.

So, you know, I stayed in Baytown, that area, for the first six, eight months I played. And then I, because everyone said, don't go to Houston, you know, I stayed in Baytown, that area, for the first six, eight months I played. And then I – because everyone said don't go to Houston, you know, too many great players. And so I started going there, but I started learning real quick. Like, you know, you're trying to hang on to your bankroll, you learn a little quicker. And so I was a little savvy for a year player, probably, a little more than most. But, yeah, I was pretty naive. And so you were telling me, we were talking about earlier, that there's parts of the country that are not good to go to for gambling.

Back in the day, at least. Back in the day. But the South is overwhelmingly good to go to for gambling. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's just like tournaments with Calcuttas or auctions. You know, a good auction in New York, if they even have one, might be like $5,000 in there. You know, where Buffalo's I think

they had I don't know 320,000 or something like that in May and that's in New Orleans get in trouble with the IRS because of this conversation well no it's legal in Louisiana so they don't take anything out of them out of the purse or anything so there's there's no money you know what I mean so for people that don't know what a Calcutta is, so if Jeremy was in a tournament, you could actually buy him in the tournament and you're gambling against all the other people that are picking different players. Yeah, they auction everyone off on a side pot.

Yeah, so everybody gets auctioned. Yeah, exactly, yeah. And if there's a lot of gamblers, it can get pretty high and it gets fun. Yeah, like at your country club tournament, like your club tournament or whatever, they usually do a Calcutter for each team. Oh, do they do that too?

Yeah, yeah, they do that in golf a lot. Yeah, so when you were first just trying to go out and get games, you're just calling people in the yellow pages, showing up at places, and how do you know your speed in comparison to like, are you just guessing? Because this is like your first experience is like traveling yeah yeah yeah yeah um yeah i mean you know you hear about things right you get information from people as you as you go on you get start to know people you've you know you meet this guy in this area that guy in that area so you keep in touch and if something serious going on that you know

send you a page on the old pager and you know you make a call and you make a decision if you're going to drive across now that was a few years into it but at first it was kind of like i did some dumb shit you know like went in with like a a mechanic shirt on you know like all green stuff well you know i you know color of money didn't get me going right for a pool that was a little bit before but i did watch it right you know so i kind of felt like you can be a hustler yeah yeah but immediately went away from that a lot better just to go in and say hey we like to play you know and they usually get one of their better players and you're hitting every little town yeah you know what i mean so you're

betting on yourself a little more often and it's easy to tell pretty quickly unless you catch one of them smart guys that know how to stall you know they're hustling you you know what i mean right so that's happened did you encounter a lot of those a lot of attempts you know but normally the hustler would come up asking for a big spot you know the the smart hustler was the one that could come in and start playing even and then figure it out from there you know it's just a little easier to get down you know and i knew a lot of those guys that you know were there to win now when you would go to a new pool room would you try to make a friend and make maybe give them a gapper if you steered you in the right direction yeah that was kind of touchy i mean you might you quick learning quick you know quickly that if it's a steer the same guy

that's going to give you information is probably talking to someone else too right you know kind of thing yeah you know so you know best off to be able to evaluate a room uh pretty quickly and and it's amazing from coast to coast how common people are in the pool room and when you were doing this did you realize like how wild it is to be a young free man just traveling the country gambling on pool did you realize like how wild that is absolutely i got reminded of it a lot of times just because you get stuck in situations and you so you get to know people and they kind of remind you of it you know we're in chattanooga one time we were stuck for like two weeks because it was the blizzard of 91 i don't know if you remember it was freaking crazy people lit died

in the mountains because of it and all that but so we're stuck in the and we're basically walking to the pool room sliding to the pool room whatever every day so you kind of think about it and then you that my friend that was with me he finally had to end his road trip to go back and go to school so that reminds me of what i'm doing a little bit right you know that i'm out there just kind of going from place to place single just playing all the pool i can and and you know it was great yeah pretty special yeah it's romantic yeah it's like it really is i mean how many movies are there about pool hustlers or or that type of person who's just living this i mean it's that's what was so attractive to it to me it was not just watching people that played really well

it was the culture it was a culture of people that just weren't gonna fit in with nine to five it was not an option yeah these guys were wild people and they there were a lot of them were gambling addicts and a lot of them were really fucking smart guys and they were really good pool players oh yeah and they just couldn't deal with regular world they had to get to a pool let's get to a fucking pool or any pool players around here and they didn't give a fuck about anybody wasn't a pool player yeah they're they're comfortable, you know what I mean? Yes, and they were just around these people, and every day would be the same kind of conversations. Like, this guy could get the eight,

and it was always like, you don't have heart, you ain't gambling. Well, that was New York, right? Oh, my God, New York was so much talk with so little real high gambling that I saw. But I saw a few, I told you about Waterdog when he played this guy, George the Greek. That was one of the craziest things I've ever few, I told you about Waterdog when he played this guy, George the Greek.

That was one of the craziest things I've ever seen. I've talked about it before. So in brevity, he would do heroin in the bathroom, come out, sit on a chair for 20 minutes, just like gone,

and then couldn't miss. It was wild. Yeah. On a, what you would call like a gaff table. It was a very tight table and the shims were all fucked up. It wasn't perfect.

Right. Like if you, if you hit the point on the way in weird shit could happen you could hit the ball well and not go yeah it was but he was firing him in like it was a swimming pool oh yeah he was firing him in it was sound like earl right there his stroke was so pure it was so pure it was so wild to watch he was just running out he's i think he met he might have run like 75 and out or something like that. Like something crazy. Yeah, which is like 300 on a regular table. We'd just watch him do it. It was like watching him just run ball after ball.

Why George couldn't do shit. He beat him a couple times like that with different games too. I think they played some one pocket too. George loved one pocket. But he would gamble high. He would be the one guy that would gamble thousands of dollars and then there was this one dude named international sal and international sal made his money uh from american express card scam way back in the day they would get the carbons and then they would make duplicate cards and buy a bunch of and then

then sell it and he was uh he would go to the pool hall and they would bring him bags of cash just bags of cash and he was just there all day gambling losing yeah well he was probably one of the few gamblers there i mean i love new york i love the guys around new york but it is more of like a lot of shit talking really and uh not as much action maybe it's interesting that that's the case because you would think of new york but it is more of like a lot of shit talking really and uh not as much action maybe it's interesting that that's the case because you would think of new york you would think of like wild people crazy they're out there on the streets they're gambling you know like yeah it's almost like they've been doing it longer though like they're smart you know what i'm saying like i mean they want to win i mean they want the edge and you know that's another part of it that's

always awesome you know when you're in there trying to match up everyone's trying to get a little edge yeah it's just almost like human instinct to try and get a little edge you know did you read running the table the kid delicious book no i haven't read it completely yeah it's a really good book he was a great guy the guy who wrote it what is his name john wertheim i believe uh fucking just did a beautiful job like painting that romantic that's a painting that romantic story of them doing the same thing like traveling the road and playing pool and i know there was all this talk about turning that into a movie and i think it would have been a great movie i think if the right person got a hold of it it really understood what you were talking about yeah danny used to talk about it yeah possibly becoming a movie so i know they were trying to do something with it but then they died

you know so i don't know you know what they would i don't know i mean you would have to get someone to play him that looked like him i don't know if anyone could ever act like him no he was awesome no like incredible one time we're in toledo at the glass city open and sports illustrated was following him and me and him are playing like the third round the winners and i got him like 10 to 6 racing 11 and he comes back and beats me but the shot he made to to win at hill hill out of the pocket right like you know how you set the ball up in the middle of the table and you know you put the cue ball in the corner and you try to follow it in sometimes. Mm-hmm.

Or you try to draw. I mean, and he stabbed his ball in. But he gave the Sports Illustrated photographers the Hulk. And he'd be, ah! I mean, it was great. Right in Sports Illustrated, too. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah, I love that guy. He was incredible. Yeah, there's a few really good books on pool playing off the rails another one yeah really good book on pool and and uh tony anagoni yeah tony um but that that just romantic vision of this person doing like the craziest kind of way to make a living you're making a living off of your skills and you're just gambling random people in pool halls and the people there are looking out for people like you because they know people like you come into town yeah but they kind of like it too yeah you know what i mean like

i mean it's you know more like you know we call it complimentary action these days you know when you become kind of a name people want to play you and you know they play you you know, we call it complimentary action these days, you know, when you become kind of a name, people want to play you. And, you know, they play you, you know, like Shane, he goes to these places, he'll play 50 a set. There was a guy. He'll make like 10,000 playing 50 a set. There was a guy who was really good who was from, I believe he was from Montreal. Paul. Portier.

Yes, Paul Portier. Paul Portier came through Executive Billions and robbed a bunch of people. Really? Yeah, that was fun to watch. Wow. That was fun to watch. Because he wasn't a big gambler, per se. You know what I mean?

Oh, yeah. He was so good, though. He was stealing with some of these guys. He's a really good teacher up there now. I think that's what he mainly does. Teach his pool. Yeah, he shot my friend Johnny's nuts in. It was beautiful to watch, though. I mean, the guy just, watching someone who's just like, just elegantly moving that ball

around the table from perfect position. He was kind of an elegant kind of guy anyways. Yeah. He was always cleaned up. Yeah, real nice, real clean. Yeah, it seemed like, you know, Jackie Gleason. There he is. There he is, his beautiful mustache.

Hell of a player. Yeah, he actually lived in texas for quite some time oh did he really yeah he lived in the dallas area so he was the first pro that i ever saw that came through executive oh wow the first like real legitimate pro and that was uh you know early on i was just learning pool just learning pool yeah well he was pretty solid fundamentally and stuff you know like kind of critique that so be a good one to watch but he was pretty solid fundamentally and stuff, you know, like kind of critique that. So, he'd be a good one to watch. But he was kind of like just a nine-ball player. So, not to pick on Paul, of course, but when you're on the road.

You got to play everything, huh? You learn you got to play. Yeah. I mean, you know, you're going to come into some areas where they just don't play nine-ball. How many times have you gone to a place that they only play bank pool? Well, I'll tell you one place i was in cleveland so i was on the road with it which is right next to kentucky well this is north ohio's north oh yeah cincinnati yeah okay i'm trying to figure

kentucky's supposed to be the bank place well yeah well i'll get back to that when i was going to talk about it but yeah i went through like uh like all over Kentucky, a lot of small towns. Now, I wouldn't say that's the only thing they would play, but that's the only thing they would play me without knowing me. Oh, okay. So like Mount Sterling. I don't know how old this pool table was, right? These pool balls were so old. They were like snooker ball size.

They were worn out? Oh out oh my god it was unbelievable how they're like bb's i mean these balls right no this guy has been racking the balls for 60 years getting a quarter in this boob 60 years for the gamblers they're playing like i'm playing like 300 a game these guys play two three four hundred he gets a quarter a rack for 60 years you ever get a raise did he ask for a raise i don't know i was only there like two days so i don't know yeah can i get a dollar but no he was happy as hell wow i mean he looked you know just one of the nicest guys in there just like being there yeah yeah but one time i was in cleveland and i was on the road with a friend of mine who's black guy right so he's gonna to take me to these spots where the

black guys play mainly you know like in that area so i'll walk in this pool room in cleveland called carnegie billiards and the whole area is more more black area right so we walk in the pool room and there's a sign says no nine ball nine ball out, no recreational pool out. So they had eight nine-foots and a beer table. And you couldn't take your date in there. It was all action. Yeah, so the guy, he's like, you're young. No recreational play. Yeah, no recreational play.

Holy shit. You know, you'll see those no gambling signs. That's a no, no gambling sign. Yeah, exactly right exactly right i love that oh no it was awesome so the guy that ran the joint was called shorty and uh he was one of the younger guys in the place he's probably 35 you know and i'm this is 1994 so i'm 23 so he says you're kind of young he says i know you want to play nine ball he said i'm gonna let one set for 500 you know he just, almost first thing he says to me.

So, because he knows the guy I'm with. So, we're there for action, you know. And so, I beat him a set of nine ball. It's the only nine ball I played. But I stayed there two weeks playing those guys. And all they play is one pocket, banks, or billiards. That's it. Wow.

Yeah. Three cushion billiards? Three cushion billiards, yeah. Wow. Yeah, there were a couple of really great players in there that, I mean, they kind of played giving some handicaps in the Three Cushion, but it was mainly one pocket and banks. That's a wild game, Three Cushion Billiards. It's one that just, for whatever reason, it's really hard to find.

It never took off for some strange reason in America. Or it did at one point in time. It was very popular, right? Yeah, it was popular, but it was more like exhibition and the tournaments just didn't pay that much. It's almost like the old school players back in the day, they didn't make their money off the tournaments. They made their money winning some tournaments

and then getting sponsored and traveling the country for Brunswick doing these exhibitions, like Moscone and Karis and all those kind of guys right so but now it's starting to take off a little bit because korea is so huge in korea again really yeah big money they're playing for really i mean you know not like golf money but i mean 100 000 for first 150 000 yeah big money yeah no kidding and who's putting these events on a couple korean companies over there because it's always been big in kore right? It just kind of got rekindled again. So now all around the world, really, they're having bigger tournaments.

That's awesome. They're playing for 30s and 40s. That's good for first, you know, 16 players. Yeah, well, I love that there's so many events now, you know, because I watch so many of them on YouTube. Like if you enjoy watching pool, I used to have a box of Accustats VHS tapes. They're like this, like a washing machine box filled with Pat Fleming's tapes. And I got rid of all of them now because you just fucking get everything on YouTube.

Yeah, absolutely. Everything's on YouTube. Well, I asked this question. You might know. Is there any more streamed sport in the world than pool? It's streamed constantly. I mean, but so many different ones as well. So many different ones, right.

All these different pool rooms like Oscars pool room, Hard Times in Sacramento just streamed that tournament. I was saying I was watching Tyler Styler and Shane play. Yeah, let alone great players. I mean, the next level down, other tournaments. I mean, it's amazing to me. I don't know of other sports. I don't watch them like that i mean i'm a sports guy but maybe maybe what you're into some

type of mma or some type of martial arts or something maybe that's streamed a lot they don't really stream that that often i mean there's only like big events that stream there's ufc there's bellator there's uh i guess you could probably get PFL on some sort of streaming device too, right? It has to be, right? And then one championship, I think you get that streaming too. But I feel like there's so many multiple pool events that are happening simultaneously. Oh, platform after platform. Really, I mean, there's a ton.

I mean, there's no more I don't think that I've ever heard of or seen. I think it's the internet. I think the internet sort of rekindled it in some people. And I also think it got a boost during the pandemic because people started playing again. Oh yeah. Yeah. I was talking to you about pool table sales and whatnot during, during the pandemic, it was through the roof. And, uh, and along with that, I mean, you're going to just get a percentage that like it you know and once they start liking it they're going to watch it so no people right gets really good now it's it's actually a legitimate career path but when you were doing it you're just a wild person you're just out there doing wild person things well yeah it kind of made steps for me i mean i kind of like i said i never knew you could

make a living or play good pool and then it kind of all right for me. I mean, I kind of, like I said, I never knew you could make a living or play good pool. And then it kind of, all right, I can make a pool. I'm actually making, you know, cash money, you know, pretty good overall for the year. And then I started playing some smaller. I never really had a clue of playing professionally still. It kind of crept up on me. When did that happen? Well, 1995 and 6, Johnny Archer kind of just told me,

he said, hey, you need to start playing the next level. He said, you're a good enough player. It's where you should be. It just depends on if that's what you want to do. And so I still gambled afterwards, kind of slowed down a little more of the gambling, started to go to tournaments, traveling all over the world and country playing tournaments. But I started to realize i really like the tournaments that's a different pressure

only knowing you can't you know just flip the coin again yeah you know so especially because the first year i think i played seven tournaments and i might have won one match really and i could beat most of the guys i was losing to now the first draw was hard because I wasn't a seated player. So I was Efren, you know, Luat, you know, Johnny, you know, Kim Davenport, all those guys. But on the loser's side, I lose matches to guys I'm supposed to beat a lot of times, but I was a different nervous. So I was really intrigued on getting through that.

You know, like getting to where that wasn't a problem, whether I won or not. It's a different nervousness than gambling? Oh, 100%. Yeah. Gambling, I don't recall ever starting off nervous. I only want to take that back. Now, if I only had a couple of barrels and I was on the road, you know what I mean? And that's happened several times where, you know, let's just imagine now.

This is a true story, even smaller probably. But let's just say I had 100 bucks. And that sounds crazy to be 1,000 miles away, and he gets $100. And a guy's trying to say, come on, I'll play you some 100-game one-pocket, right? And I'm trying to get him to play for 50 so I can have two barrels, you know, and he's just insisting we play for 100. So now I'll start off a little nervous knowing I got one barrel, and if I quit after one game, it looks real bad as far as the action. Yeah. You know?

But I've had to do that a few times because percentages say I'm supposed to beat this guy, you know, and pump up. Oh. Yeah. Percentages say. Yeah. But, I mean, you know, that's the difference. But, I mean, overall gambling, I played races to five for 5,000. I played the biggest set I ever played was like 38 Gs.

But I wasn't nervous at all. Really? No. I mean, I knew the person I was playing. We probably had history of playing before. You know what I mean? I knew what to expect. You know, generally it was one pocket more.

Just wasn't as much big nine ball back in the day, you know, unlike today. But, yeah, the tournament's totally different. And, like, you go up the scale, like, Moscone Cup is off the charts. That's why it's so impressive watching someone just break and run five racks in a row in a tournament. Oh, yeah. It's just perfect precision. It's because you know the control that's involved

and all of those little fine movements. Oh, yeah. But that's the thing though when they heat up a little bit you know what i'm saying they start to forget about a little bit more they start to play better but even the fillers and fetters and all them you know and they'll tell you but they're nervous i mean you can see it out there you know like you know they're nervous but they're battling through it yeah i can imagine can imagine. Poor Max at 180 beats per second. He was pissed, too.

180 beats per minute is so much. That's like a full-on sprint. No, it was way up there. And there was somebody, I can't remember, maybe it was Shane, that was like 90 or 85, like way, way down there. It shuts that hearing aid off. I know. It's strong, huh? That's such a great thing to be able to do to shut the's strong huh that's such a great thing to be

able to do to shut the world out it's not a great thing to be deaf obviously but yeah to have that with pool you know it's almost like it's he's like it's like do you know what a sensory deprivation tank is i'll show you one we have one out here okay you lay in salt water and you float and the water is the same temperature as your skin you close the door total silence total darkness and in the absence of sensory input your brain becomes like supercharged you can think about things better you see everything more clearly and you start to almost achieve like a psychedelic state while you're doing this and the benefit of not having sensory input is the

other senses for whatever your your mind rather is more free it has less resources that are hogging up it's you know it's yeah it makes sense energy i i imagine that's what's going on with him he shuts that hearing aid off and he can probably just completely concentrate on the game. Well, that and the one I thought about with him, because he's always been talked about with practice so much, right? His regimen was so long, right? Yeah. But, I mean, to be able to shut him off when you're practicing

and be in a poor room, you know what I mean? Like really get involved in yourself. That's the big deal with most guys that practice, even the ones that want to get bothered a lot, you know what I mean? Distractions and whatnot. Probably also just his situation when people he was there people just left him alone they kind of knew it i was hanging out with max everly and uh we were at this pool hall in las vegas that this italian guy owned this guy had the best food of any pool hall I've ever been to in my life. I mean, legit Italian food.

It was sensational. He had lasagna and linguine with clams and garlic bread. This in Vegas? Yeah. This guy was from Italy, and he would bring over food from Italy. He was like a chef in Italy. He'd bring over his food from Italy, like imported mortadella and all this. It was insane that the food was so good.

But anyway, this is while Shane insane that the food was so good. But anyway, this is while Shane was still on top of the world. This is when he was doing the tar matches and all those things. And we're playing, it's like a Friday night before a UFC, and Shane is practicing by himself for like five hours. Just five hours,

stroking in balls and getting perfect position and setting things up again and setting things up again for five hours byking in balls and getting perfect position and setting things up again and setting things up again for five hours by himself didn't talk to anybody just firing balls in well that's the amazing thing too you ever see him just sit on the back rail with the cue ball and set up the long shot hitting it 100 miles an hour well try doing that for like three or four hours straight yeah hitting the ball that hard you know swinging that i mean you'll be wore out i mean he'll be he'll win the hot seat at the u.s open and be the first guy practicing not even play till the next day you know be there eight hours

nine hours getting ready next day he wakes up does the same thing eight or nine hours before he's got to play the big final wow oh no he's sick he's a sicko for sure but i mean it shows though it shows yeah i mean under you know i don't know if there's anyone better in the tough shot ever i mean i know filler's awesome and everything but the true tough shot i mean under the biggest pressure maybe shane's the best well he's certainly in the argument is the greatest of all time i mean you got a handful of people efren and so many different people we were talking about boostamante when he was in his prime but the thing about all those guys like like when you go back to like the the early days of

tournament play and efren reyes and the Filipino invasion, that was all gambling. It was all gambling. Oh, 100%. Which is one of the most exciting parts of the game of pool is this illegal aspect of it. I mean, it's not illegal everywhere, but in a lot of places it is. Well, as soon as someone bets on the side, it becomes illegal, I think, is how it works. Oh, well, then it's illegal every single goddamn time. Yeah, right, right, someone bets on the side in texas yeah that's that's a form of racketeering or something yeah something like that yeah yeah but efron you know you couldn't even make a bet

with your friends like what if you and i were playing no me and you are supposed to be able to play and we could bet a million okay and it wouldn't be a problem jamie couldn't bet on us i think that's something that's yeah or if there's someone taking a percentage of some sort that seems kind of like the poker y'all got the legal poker around here right i do not know i don't play poker yeah well they got the legal poker rooms but they charge like pool time you know like by the hour so they don't take any money out of the pot you know interesting yeah so it's legal now that makes sense yeah that's not a bad compromise but i feel like not being able to bet on your friend is un-american we're definitely not texting that's for sure you

know what i'm saying like if you're gambling with somebody and you're playing this someone i'm like i got money on jeremy if i and if i say that that's illegal if like you were just making an agreement i think so yeah i. That sounds so crazy. I'm pretty sure. That sounds so crazy. It happened once in Houston, like, right before I started. Actually, a couple times, but once in Houston at a pool room that I frequented, like a year or two before I really started going there right when I was young.

They didn't take the guys that were playing. They took the guys that were all betting on the side. Oh, my God. Yeah, is that crazy yeah meanwhile how many people are out there getting robbed for real rob yeah right how many people could you get arrested instead of like finding people who are gambling the wrong way yeah they're all there's a lot of those right yeah it's just it's such a like and you know like i said the those two books are great at like depicting romantic aspect of it, playing off the rail and running the table.

But to have actually lived that life, when did you come off that life? When did you stop traveling constantly? Like town to town kind of thing? Yeah, probably around 98, 99 99 i really jumped up in the rankings uh started being able to get like real sponsors paychecks uh stuff like that from sponsors um but i still didn't quit gambling i still played plenty of people it was just kind of like it wasn't spent a lot of time traveling you know like waiting around like you might go somewhere if you know it's a good spot you know like somebody sent you there hey they're gambling you know but it might take a little time

get to know you and whatnot before they're comfortable you might stay a week two weeks three weeks at a place was there the fear that you entering into professional tournaments would knock your gambling uh because people would know that you by this time people everyone knew i mean you know it didn't take long before a a few trips I went by my middle name. Yeah, because there were magazines that, you know, you could see what's going on around the country. Right. You just might not get a picture or a video of it or whatever. So you start to hear names, you know.

So, like, first time I went to California, I did that, actually. And, you know, it worked out nice. What did you do? Did you just use a different name? Well, it's a funny story, and I think he can laugh about it now. But, you know, Marcus Schamadez, right, from Sweden. So there was a guy that was staking him and a lot of other great players, and he was big action, the guy was.

And I knew Marcus was out there, and so I'm in hard times. I think I told you about this the other day with Keith Keith but the only two people in the hard times that knew me all right uh was Keith and Jose Parika all right so everyone else didn't know who I was so Marcus Shumata is standing next to two other guys that I know play but won't play kind of thing. So I go up and I ask those two guys. I was like, you know, when do y'all want to play some, you know, 50, $100 sets of nine ball, you know? Knowing Marcus is going to just jump right on me. You know what I mean?

Like he's right next to him. So long story short, that happened. But I introduced myself as Tyler, my middle name, you know, like I just did, you know. So we start playing. He beats me a set for 100 playing even. I quit. He offers me the eight. Beats me a set for 200.

I quit. Now he offers me the seven. So now his stakehorse starts coming over near me because Marcus is just stealing this little 400 or 500. It ain't got nothing to do with the stakehorse. You know what I mean? This is like pocket money. So now his stakeholders comes over, and he's kind of interested in the game.

He says, he'll give you the $700,000, but you got to bet everything you got. I got like $25,000 or $30,000 on me. You wouldn't know it, but I do. So I can't pull out $25,000 or $30,000. They're going to know something's up. So me and my buddy, we just talked for a second. So we end up pulling out like $4,,500 so we play for a little bit and uh now we're playing seven ahead we were playing a race of seven for the 100 and 200 right so now he thinks he's stealing

because i mean the way i played in the other two sets you know what i'm saying so he just comes out like gangbusters. He's got me like four games down. I'm talking to my buddy. I'm like, man, this is sick. We're going to get beat in this spot right here. I'm getting the seven, you know? So finally I get a shot, and I start to run out.

Now I'm starting to run out. And so his stakehorse sits there, and he says, man, ain't this something? You know what I mean? He says, we thought we were stealing. It looks real bad now. So I beat him that set. So now at hard times, you've been there, right, in L.A.? Yeah, Bellflower.

Yeah, so they got the player side, right, with the tight tables, and they got the looser tables. Well, he had me on the looser tables thinking, you know, I'm just a sucker, you know. So he says, the stakehorse says, double the bet, and we'll give you the eight on the tight tables, right? So this is, like is really good for me. Now I'm getting a spot on even a tougher table. So I beat him that set.

But during that second set, a friend of mine had built me a cue and sent it out to the guy that ran the tournaments in L.A., right? So I'm going by Tyler, and this guy walks up, and he says real loud, he says, are you Jeremyeremy jones oh no he says if you are i got a cue for you you know and i was like no i ain't jerry because i'm in the middle of this 13 uh nine thousand dollar set playing you know so i said no i ain't jeremy jones you know and i just sent him on his way and then the next day when i came in mark knew who i was and you know everyone spilled the beans kind of thing i had to go tell the guy all right that's my cue and everything so was he mad at you no no not at all he understood it's kind of like a funny story

around there now i think but marcus was mad at me for a little while yeah that's why i was asking oh yeah because he was european you know and it was just kind of like you know if someone got me like that you know i'm gonna it's gonna sting but it's gonna be more like all right touche kind of thing you know what i'm saying later on you know we're gonna laugh about it and stuff but it took it's almost like if you first beat effron he walks by you but he don't say much to you for about a month or two really oh yeah he's gotta let that wear off a little bit but it took Marcus probably about a decade before it was bad yeah so when when he beat you the first two sets even were you were you hustling a little well I might not have put forth my best effort but he played real good you know what I mean he was just all right let me pick

up this but were you purposely trying to set something up well I thought I you know I'm definitely not trying to win for 200 you know what i mean like his steakhorse who now is actually after that trip became a real good friend of mine you know at that time he was known you could beat him out of you know 40 and 50 you know a thousand right so you're not going to start off doing anything like that for 200 or so so when you first start playing you play good but you're not really bearing down. Right, right. So you're showing him that you can play a little, but you might miss some shots.

Plus, I wanted to see him play. Right. You know, I heard the name. Right. I kind of wanted to really see, because eventually, to beat him out of the real money, it's going to be playing even. Right. You know what I mean? Because he's another great player.

So that eventually was going to happen, but Marcus ended up having to leave the country for his visa got shortened up or something like that. He actually ended up leaving the next day. But I stuck around for about a month. In these other countries, is there a lot of gambling going on? Obviously in the Philippines there is. But is there a lot of gambling going on in these other countries where all these players are emerging?

Some of Asia, for sure. Southeast Asia especially, I think. You know, Thailand, like you said, Philippines, Indonesia. Europe here and there, not a whole lot. Not a whole lot at all. And I think it's more the stakehorse kind of situation. It's just not the mentality. You know, there's not a stakehorse.

You know, people aren't just thinking, oh, let me go put somebody else in action for thousands of dollars and give them half. It's just not your everyday thing. One of the fun parts of American pool culture, the steak horses. Oh, absolutely. They're some of the biggest characters. Yes, wild, crazy people with tons of money. Yeah, and how they got it.

Yeah, and they're interested in gambling on pool. Yeah, I've been paid and buried money quite a few times. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it stinks. It stinks, usually. Oh, yeah. Not nice.

Wow. The whole car stunk. Really? Oh, yeah, real bad. Do you think there's like bodies next to the money? I don't think so. Why did it smell? Just mildew and shit?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I'm talking about, yeah yeah i think this has been there a long time 30 30 years yeah there was a guy one time we were in south carolina it was another place that uh i frequented in the summers especially because we gambled at golf but um this guy frank and he was a great great guy and he was the come in and overalls didn't know he had a penny but he staked a lot of players and he did a great great guy and he was the coming in overalls didn't know he had a penny but he staked a lot of players and he did a lot for the pool community so he comes in one morning because we'd all meet at the pool room about 10 a.m and we'd all make a golf game then we go out to the golf course Gamow Golf come back to the pool room and make pool games right it was it was awesome I mean the whole summer was like this so this Frank comes in one morning, and he looked real upset.

And he never looked upset. Always happy. Even if he lost, he was happy. And so I said, Frank, what's wrong? Are you okay? He said, I come out my back door, and I saw one of my bushes dug up today. So one of his sons that was kind know a little detached at times from the family for one reason or another he let us stay there and he said he knew it right it was a thirty

thousand dollar bush oh yeah yeah yeah and so he took it like a grain of salt he was more disappointed it was kind of like a disappointed father kind of thing more than upset he had plenty of money you know yeah so but it's amazing what people do with their money yeah that's a that's a hunter biden type move probably got it buried a little better you need something yeah but i mean digging that money up for a need oh yeah yeah yeah yeah that's uh it's just the the kind of people that would go to these places and look forward to matching these guys together. Like that was always the – it's a famous story that's in the Running the Table book about Chicago Billiards. Did you ever go to that place?

Sure. It was in Connecticut? I don't think so. Chicago Billiards was owned by this one eccentric millionaire who would encourage gambling. And if no gambling was going on, he would put money up for guys to play. He just wanted action constantly. They had dorms there. They had beds in the back. People would sleep there.

Guys would come in, stay for days. Oh, yeah. Well, that's just like poker games houston had a big underground poker scene and the same thing with pool rooms if you have a guy that owns the poker room that's action that's the best games yeah i mean they're putting the money back in play and the same thing with the pool room the pool room owners involved yeah i mean you know he's gonna have players around he's gonna have options usually and that's some of the best spots for action i remember i was watching this guy play and he just got off the phone and uh he said uh my wife just told me if i don't come home now i'm getting a divorce and he goes rack the balls

i've heard that in so many words before it was but he said it out loud he was rack the balls yeah he's like we're gonna keep playing oh yeah it looks like. He just racked the balls. Yeah. He was like, we're going to keep playing. Oh, yeah. Because I'm getting divorced. Not the first time she's told him that, probably. I mean, it's just too addictive. Those places are too addictive. I couldn't wait to get back to them. When I'd go on the road and I'd do stand-up,

I couldn't wait to come back, get to the pool room. What's going on? Oh, yeah. Who's playing who? What's happening? Yeah. There were a lot of truck drivers that played, got to play all over in different places. But the one thing about pool, even if you don't run the game, it's hard to leave totally the game.

I mean, it's good to hit the ball well. It feels good. You know what I mean? It's just like golf, they say, when you hit it well. It feels good, right? Have you ever considered writing down some of your road stories? Oh, yeah. Like Danny DiLiberto has a book out.

Yeah, there's a good friend of mine, Harley Bryan. I think I was telling you a little bit about him the other day, but he's like a legend guy. And I tell him all the time, I'm like, I mean, this is like the best book ever if you just tell your stories. He was raised on a riverboat. Like Porky's. You know what I mean? His dad owned two of them in Jacksonville. The only two.

Just the stuff he was raised around. He was a great pool player around Jimmy Karras and Moscone and all those guys. He's actually 84 now. I think. It would be good to put the pool stories down. There's a lot of them. That's one of my favorite expressions is a riverboat gambler. Oh, yeah.

Those type of people. Oh, he's one of them riverboat gamblers. Wild people. People around the water. I mean, I don't know what it is. I mean, I'm from there, too, Baytown, like right on it. What do you think it is? It's a very carefree kind of, you know, once you don't bathe for a week kind of figure out you

ain't got to that often again i mean i don't know i don't know what the mentality is but but why why is gambling so prevalent in the south that's what's fascinating to me like why is it so a part of the culture i mean and even in things that are illegal like rooster fighting and shit like oh yeah gambling is is so pervasive. Yeah. You would know more about the North than I would, but maybe the faster paced. I mean, we always just said it's kind of like California, a little bit the same. They're real smart, and they play well, and they're not just going to take much of a beating.

And the thing is, even if you play well the difference a lot of people like i used to get accused for being wanting you know the best of the game which who doesn't right right but people would mistake that also for someone who could play well under pressure you understand you know if you play well under pressure it looks like you got the best of the game you know most people can't so even if you beat them playing really well so it's hard to make another game off of how you just played because you played really well like that's hard to do all the time playing well you know that right right right so you guys try to match up for hours oh give up come back give up come back oh yeah and then finally oh my god they're racking the balls they're racking the balls yeah but you

know i go to senior centers right sometimes play pool with some of the older guys or i have a lesson there or something like that they talk a little shit without any gambling so you know what i mean so and some of it goes way back like it's pretty nasty stuff oh really well i mean kind of i mean you know they don't know me from adam talking about something real personal from 25 years ago. That's hilarious. Yeah, it's pretty funny. So I think the barking in general, being somewhere you're allowed to bark a little bit. Yeah.

You know? Well, it was always, it's just a part of the fun of it all. It's like wild things are happening. Oh, yeah, absolutely. People are accusing people or sharking them. Well, the swings, too, the ups and downs. You know, like, I mean, you know you just broke so-and-so. He's dead broke.

He was borrowing money yesterday, and, you know, you spent two days out of the pool room, and he's won $10,000. You know what I mean? So you keep track of everyone. Yeah. Especially if you're in a place locally that you live at that has action. You always want to know what's going on a little bit. And for people that don't understand the allure of this,

you're constantly engaged in some kind of competition. It's constant happening. Oh, yeah. And it's endless. Yeah, it's endless. Yeah, it ain't. Basketball, what are you going to do? Are you going to go shoot free throws maybe or maybe play one?

I mean, this is endless, the pool games and the handicaps, the partners. There's no season. Yeah. Y'all two could play me yeah you know we could rotate i mean it's just all kinds so yeah when you have you ever sat down and try to like like write out some of these stories not really the stories no i've written some stuff for teaching uh because i do a lot of that right and uh uh it helps to write it down yeah for sure um but no not the stories probably should you definitely should yeah i think i'd

want to know somebody though like really trust putting it in someone else's hands right you know someone's going to come across with an author yeah give it the right climate whatever that is you know i'm not sure what that is yet but maybe we could just record some of your stories just record some of your stories and make youtube videos that might actually be even better than a book well some of them are pretty crazy give me a crazy one what's the craziest one oh uh oh there i can't tell you probably maybe the craziest i'll tell you later on the craziest ones on there. But let's see. So one time I was in a tournament in Mississippi. To get on with this, I won the tournament.

Tough tournament. Johnny Archer, all the great players, and his bar table. So I won like 8,000. So by the time I won the tournament, I think I was about 25,000 losers in the casino. Okay? Like, terrible trip. I mean, I wasn't even trying you remember tony ellen yes so he was 20 minutes late to get a steak dinner at the horseshoe cost me about 12 000 i went down there said let me just let me just pitch 300 you

know and they just pounded me right so i got the tournament money after one and it was 8 000 went straight to the cage and cashed it. Went straight to the blackjack. Yeah, I had it about 10 minutes. So the $8,000 was gone. And so this guy that was playing there, his name was Frank Seals, and he was a legendary steakhorse. He used to take CJ when he was a kid and a lot of players throughout the years.

And he said, hey, if you're ever bored, you want to come up to Morristown, Tennessee, I got a kid and I'll let you play if you still want to play. I like the way you gamble is what he said. He watched me play blackjack. Blow all my money, right? Yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah, I told him, I said, you ain't dealing me no blackjack up there.

If I go up there. So, anyways, I go up there. So, he's got this guy, Mark Owens was his name. Good player. And real high gear. Maybe not the most steady player, but real high gear. So we're playing. We start off playing races to nine or ten or something for a thousand.

So long story short, I got him 10,000 loser. Okay. And it's because we raised it and whatnot. And so now the whole town, this is a small town. Okay. Just up in the northeast corner of Tennessee. So the whole town starts coming in and this is their hero. So my buddy starts taking bets on the side, you know.

So now we, I got him 10,000 loser. And he says, we want to play a set for 10,000. This is what Frank says, the stake horse. He says, but we need to call eight. You know what the call is, of course, right? So I said, okay, yeah. So we're going to race to 15. So we're betting about 10,000 on the side.

So we're playing a set for like 20 all right because my buddy's got a list of bets this long with all the town people you know what i mean yeah so it's nine to eight mean instead of playing safe on the eight i try to jack up off the end rail and stab it in and draw my ball you know what i mean and i bobble it he makes it he breaks and runs five racks he's up 14 to 9 so now he breaks going to 15 and the 4-9 is wired over the spot he makes an incredible shot on the one he's got the three down the rail and he's just got a cupcake on the 4-9 so i turned my buddy and i said man we ain't got but like 8 000 left you know because we're winner we start off a thousand a set i said we can't lower the bet. You can't do that. Then they know you're short. You know what I'm saying?

So I'm like, what are we going to do? We'll get more money tomorrow, whatever, right? So the pool table's here, right? He's shooting at this corner. Now, Frank is the only guy sitting right here on a stool chair, right, like a little school chair. Everyone else is way back over here besides me and my buddies over here, right, all the people watching.

So he knocks a three in, Mark does, and he comes down. He was kind of one of those guys that would fire the nine in. You know what I'm saying? You've seen him. He rifles this 4-9. He could have just tapped it, and it would have rolled right in the corner. This ball went down and swirled around in the pocket jumped almost all the way back out to the spot that's how far it went oh my

god yeah all the money's on the light right so frank he knows about pool and the ball's aimed directly at frank so as soon as he hits it he knows it's in so frank starts to get up and get the money i said oh frank i said the nine's on the table you know frank's like 75 years old he's got glasses so i said the nine's on the table he says oh i'm sorry you know like he didn't realize it didn't go in well it did go in it just came back out yeah never pocketed another ball the whole set i played safe on that first shot i broke around played safe broke around beat him 15 14 broke a ran, played safe, broke a ran, beat him 15-14. Wow.

Yeah. So now the kid, he quits, and he's literally crying out on the stairs. Okay? So Frank says, come back the next day. We'll play you some more. So we come back the next day. We start out playing like for 3,500 races to 11. So I beat him three sets.

So he says, hey, he's going to take a break. He said, I'll play some more in a minute. I'm like, sweet, man. This is good. Good action. You know? So Frank's sitting in this chair right here and the kid's practicing a little bit and he hits a ball in that same pocket. It jumps the pocket, hits Frank dead in the eye, right? And his glasses and blood's going everywhere. I meanesus christ oh yeah yeah it was ironically crazy right so we end up having to quit and we never end up playing again so the same pocket that kind of saved me the day before right kind of got them the next day and we end up never playing yeah funny story what kind of shitty table is that it was a gold crown but it had uh replacement pockets you know the big black ones that go in they're kind

of bulky they kind of move around a little bit shitty job yeah yeah it's old school pool hall but oh man yeah that frankie was something else so that he i'm playing right and he pulls up his overall and uh i see a gunshot wound in his leg. I said, dang, Frank, you got shot? He said, yeah, my wife shot me about 10 years ago. I said, man, you mean your ex-wife, don't you? He says, no. He says, I'm still with her, right? I said, damn.

About three months later, she killed him. After I played it. Yeah, same lady that shot him 10 months before. Oh, my God. She shot him dead months before. Oh, my God. She shot him dead? Dead. Dead. I think she did six months in a mental place, and then she's out.

Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. Six months? Six months, that was it, yeah. That's it? She shot him twice? Oh, no, I think it was like— Did he not tell about more? I think it was like five of them in the—

Oh, when she killed him? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh. Yeah. Mary, I was telling you about that buried money. Yeah. Frank gave me some of that buried money. Did he?

I think he was kind of like a numbers guy. You know how they run the lottery out in the country on their own and stuff? Yeah, I think he did stuff like that. My grandma was involved with that. Yeah, that's a big thing in the Northeast. The numbers. Yeah. Yeah, that's another thing.

People look forward to that kind of gambling. I just don't like restrictions on gambling, and I know people have problems with it. I really do. And I've met a lot of people that are, like, degenerate gamblers, and it's horrible to see. Oh, yeah. They get so addicted.

They're so fucked up. But it's still fun, and especially with pool. It's really fun. I mean, you're gambling on a game of skill. You know? Yeah. Well, I've rarely seen where someone got their life messed up, really. I mean, don't get me wrong.

You might not have the best relationship with your lady, you know, if you're gone all the time for days at a time, right? But as far as, like, financially, really, I've seen it in another kind of gambling whatnot you've seen that i'm sure oh yeah yeah i've seen it in all kinds of sports gambling in particular yeah did you ever see that movie uh uncut gems yeah adam's yeah what a great movie what a great movie i like him in serious roles a lot i've never saw him in one before that but that one is so good it's you get so much anxiety

watching that you're like don't do it yeah what are you doing yeah what do you do but we know guys like that oh absolutely 100 yeah 100 those are real guys oh 100 and it's uh it's amazing because usually they get a hold of a big number and it still doesn't matter no you know like i mean it used to be like all right right, they got to hold a 30. How long are they going to hold on 30? They got to hold a 60. They won't get a choose. Yeah, but, I mean, same guys,

I'm seeing them get a hold of 500s and 600s and still going and losing it all. Yeah. Quickly. Yeah. Month, three weeks. Yep. Well, I mean, I went broke tons of times.

I mean, I'd tell between the legs coming back home, but, I mean, I'd leave with like times. I mean, I'd tail between the legs coming back home. But, I mean, I'd leave with like $3,000, $4,000. And normally odds are the value I was going to come back pumped up. Sometimes I came back broke. But it wasn't like, you know, like that. I was watching Dana White gamble in Vegas. He was playing blackjack. And when I got there, he was down $600,000.

Oh, yeah. And we wound up winning it all back and plus 600. oh yeah but like like the guy we were talking about earlier with the ipt yeah he used to like that real high dollar background 20 30 a thousand a hand for it yes goes fast oh boy it does that's just so crazy but i guess when you just have like fucking shit tons of money and that's that's the only way you can get excited like it has to be dangerous i don't know i think there's got to be a hypnotism i mean they obviously aren't gonna go broke right right so i mean maybe i will hope not yeah i mean, it could happen if you just get really wacky and keep going. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, you could get yourself stressed out about it, I guess. But, I mean, you know. I mean, it hasn't happened to the people that I know, but it could. If I had a billion dollars, though, I think if I liked playing blackjack, maybe a thousand hands is just going to be just as satisfying. Just maybe be pool player. I don't know. I don't know, Jeremy.

Maybe my mentality. I don't know. I don't know, Jeremy. Maybe my mentality. I don't know. I don't know, Jeremy. Because I used to play a lot higher than 1,000 a hand. A couple of whiskeys. When I didn't. Yeah, oh, 100%. Yeah, a couple of whiskeys,

and you might be betting 150,000 a hand. Yeah, maybe. Let's go. I will raise my bet if I get 100%. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's pool room mentality. Yeah. Only way to win, really.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just the art of that, though, is what was always fun to watch. The art of, like, making the game and guys going in knowing that they were eventually probably going to play even. Like, bro, I need the eight. I need the fucking eight. I need the breaks. I need this.

I need that. And it's just banter back and forth and everybody circling around watching this drama play drama play out yeah and you're trying to figure out who to bet on yeah you know because i you know you can't just sit on the sidelines waiting for the nut game yeah you won't get any action it's like a poker guy they know he's got aces of kings if he moves all in kind of like thing right and there's also an understanding amongst guys who gamble with each other on a regular basis that it's i'm losing money to you you're losing money to me we're all good yeah absolutely yeah this is a little going this way a little going that way there's very rarely were bad feelings after guys would lose money gambling

i mean some guys get pissed off at themselves or some guys but yeah i mean areas were different i think you know and maybe you noticed it more but But like Houston, where I was from, it was just gambling was gambling. Personal is personal. I just I mean, it was the most cut and dry I'd ever been around. And it was cut and dry sort of in the culture, like as you were coming up. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That way. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas like Dallas, we are always called it more nitty, you know, like. But, you know, it just was more nitty. It wasn't necessarily nitty you know like but you know it just was more nitty it wasn't necessarily nitty it was just more nitty you know more nitty than houston than houston was someone who's like very

that you're very conservative in your gambling yeah trying to fire one barrel at you yeah if you lose you're out of there yeah exactly where'd that term come from? Nitty? Yeah. You got me. That's an old term. Old, old. Old term. And it's used, not just pool. I mean, I've heard it outside of pool. Well, you know, Houston's been around on the map for the game. That's where Cesar Morales went, right?

That was Efron's name. Yeah. And he passed as a Hispanic guy from San Antonio. Yeah. That funny story, if you ever heard, Red Walling, the guy that owned Reds. So I guess Efron was in the semifinal of the tournament, still under the name of Cesar Morales. And he went up to Red Walling and he says,

Mr. Walling, I've got to ask you a question, or I've got to tell you something. My real name isn't Cesar Morales. Am I going to get forfeited out of the tournament and not get my money? Before he got to winning the tournament and not get my money? You know, he won before he got to win in the tournament. He wanted to fess up, you know. And so Red Walling said, yeah, just tell us your real name now. So we'll make sure you get paid, you know. Pretty crazy.

And that was only like 10 miles from where I was from, but it was before my time. So how did those guys know in the Philippines that there was so much gambling going on in Texas back then? And how did they know they could take this kid from the Philippines who turns out to be one of the greatest players, if not the greatest that's ever lived, and then just rob everybody? Well, Philippines are everywhere. Filipino people are everywhere. I mean, if you go to a tournament, it could be just, I mean, you just pick a place out of the blue. If there's a Filipino champion there, there's going to be groves of them showing up to watch.

So they kind of keep control of it. Plus, there was one of the original guys that was a top player, him and his brother, Rudy Pasquale and J.R. Pasquale. They came before Efren and all them, and they lived in Houston. So they kind of brought them there for the Reds tournaments and all the action yeah so kind of like we said information right yeah so they knew Efren in the Philippines or so Efren had already had a name so if he had tried to come over as Efren Reyes people would already have heard about him absolutely 100 percent yeah yeah and and the thing is then then, at that point, there were only a couple of them that you heard about from outside of America.

So Efron was one of them for sure. It wouldn't get lost. What is the highest stakes match you've ever seen played? Probably in New Orleans, there's a billionaire, Carl Baum. I think he took on like $220,000 worth of action. He's not a good player, but he's not a bad player. He's kind of a guy, and he comes down to a few tournaments, and he plays real expensive on the bar table. He plays nine ball, plays another weak player,

or he plays a good player getting a huge spot. And how much is he gambling? Oh, I mean's he's playing like six or seven games ahead or maybe a race to nine for you know in the middle might be like 80 or 100 but he'll bet another 100 on the side and well when he comes everyone bets against him just because the you know you're looking at the odds right right yeah you're looking at and that's another thing in the pool room you might get a game, but you know the guy's short. Right, right, right. So you've got to wait.

You know what I mean? Right, right, right. You want to get the most out of that game if you do win. You've got to wait until he's plump with cash. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. It's like all knowing when to pull the trigger, when not to, knowing where a person's at.

Yeah, when it's all prime. Knowing if they scored recently. Yeah, how they're playing. Tony Allen used to be the best because, you know, people bet on matches and stuff at the tournaments, you know, and he was just so in tune with all the players, you know, some of them their personal lives, you know, and, like, that makes a huge difference on them.

Because pool's so mental. Oh, yeah, your girlfriend breaks up with you. Yeah. Kicked out of your apartment. Yeah. Now you might play like shit. Or if, like, a couple things don't go your way to start with, Tony, your girlfriend breaks up with you. Yeah. Kicked out of your apartment. Yeah. Now you might play like shit. Or if, like, a couple things don't go your way to start with, Tony would say that if he doesn't get it his way at the beginning,

he's going to fold. He's just in that mood right now. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So, like, there's just so many different aspects. Yeah. So is the biggest games that you've seen played really from people that aren't the best players?

Have you seen – what is, like, the most high stakes between like two elite players because i know there's there's some legendary stories about you know guys like bustamante and johnny archer locking horns and johnny runs the whole set yeah and bustamante ups the bet yeah it says flip the coin yeah double the bet and beat him yeah i was uh I played on that table that was in Toledo, Ohio. How many? 13 and out, 13 racks and out. Johnny broke and ran 13 racks in a row. Yeah.

I would never play with another cue ever for a second in life. Yeah. That cue is an extension of his soul. You're right. To run 13 racks is so bananas. Yeah. And to do it, how much were they gambling? I think it was like $10,000.

Back then, the thing is, these days, of course, everything has gone up in money. But there's more being bet now. I would say like when Dennis and Shane played a few years ago. Here it is. That was a huge one. It says, one time we were in Toledo and Archer was playing Bustamante. I raced the third team for $2,000. $2,000.

13 consecutive racks in a row. Yeah. Johnny was a bad hombre for money. Oh, my God. He was awesome in the tournament. He was awesome in everything. Yeah, I just rarely ever saw him get beat for money. I mean, he would give guys that were, like, really good players the last four,

you know what I mean, on tight tail. Oh, no, I got this, Jeremy. No problem. You know, never saw him practice by the way so you know the guy like johnny like with all this new technology with like carbon fiber cues and the like does a guy like that still play with a wood shaft i think so i haven't seen him play in quite some time he it's been probably four or five years that i've seen since he's really been in a big competitive tournament now he did play the U.S. Open a couple years ago um won a match or two but didn't didn't do that well so I don't think he's playing a ton so yeah last I saw him play yeah you know I think

he opened a pool room there in uh North Georgia so doing a lot of that but this this technology thing like we were talking about this today, that there's these new carbon fiber shafts, and they're very consistent, and all these people play with them. But some players still prefer the feedback that they get from wood, and that's part of the enjoyment of the game, is like feeling that feedback in your hand. Yeah, I think so.

I mean, you definitely get a lot of feel. You know, you don't want something that's like a two-by-four, right? I mean, you know, that's why, you know, players, they break in. Like, they get a new cue. They break in the shaft. The oil's off your hands. You know, just a number of things you like. I think one of the things about the carbon fiber, which I like, I like it,

but you get a lot out of it but sometimes you know if you get a little hairy the mist can be a little uglier really yeah just because it does put a little more spin on the ball you know it's just just a higher a little higher spin rate overall so i mean you know if you get a little you know like say you desail the ball it could be real ugly you know Or if you really over hit it. But my point was that Johnny played perfect with a wooden shaft. How would you convince that guy to even try carbon fiber? Well, if he could just do it a little easier. Is that what it is?

Yeah. Is it easier? It moves a little easier. Yeah, you could swing a little more subtly. I hate to say soft or anything like that, but just a little less on it overall. Or let's say you're putting a tip and a half of left English. Maybe you only got to go a tip or a half a tip. So a little comfort level, comfort overall.

It just makes the ball react differently. Yeah, and I don't know exactly all the technology behind it other than you can build them how you want exactly right wood there's still a little variable i think yeah but the thing that bums me out is that part of pool is the custom cue makers there's all these guys that are making these beautiful functional pieces of art oh absolutely absolutely you. You know, with the carbon fiber, I guess most of the companies and really with the playability, it's gone to more performance than it is. Even though they are, you know, they make attractive cues and all that. But you wouldn't say it's the time and effort like some of your handcrafted cues.

Right. It's just about winning. Yeah. It's not about showing up with a bell bush. Yeah. In the color of money. It's a great scene. Oh, I love it. with a bell bush. Yeah, yeah. In the color of money. That's a great scene. Oh, I love it.

I've made a post about my new cue the other day referring to that. Do you know the video game Doom was named from that scene? Yeah, a bunch of people made that comment on the post. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, that is amazing. I didn't know that, actually. Yeah, John Carmack told me that. Yeah, and then I think how the phones listen to you.

I was watching some clip, and I think you mentioned that on one of your podcasts, I think. Yeah, they wanted to be doomed for the video game industry. Yeah, that's crazy. And it's such a great name for a crazy video game. No, it is, but where they— That they got it from Tom Cruise and the Color of Money. Yeah, exactly. Doom didn't come up from something else.

It came up from there. Did you ever get into video games? You know, we had an Atari. Played it for a few days after Christmas. Weren't allowed inside very much. Oh, really? Six of us. Oh, no, no, no, no.

Get the fuck out of the house. Exactly, yeah. Drink out of the water hose. Oh, yeah. Oh, 100%. I bet you got an amazing immune system. It's really good. I've been lucky my whole life knock on wood hose drinking joey diaz always talks about that and we swam in the bay which was just right across the street joey diaz always like i drank puddle water

yeah yeah we weren't allowed there too often until later in the evening and my mom wasn't no neat freak or anything it was just pandemonium i think and plus we had tons of shit to do we had the park we had our guys you know yeah go like i said go in the bay go play ball yeah sounds like an idyllic childhood sounds great yeah my neighborhood was cool it was a little lower class but it was cool it was an old one like i said on the water i mean there were fights every day. But, you know, we all knew each other, you know. But my point is it's like the video game thing gets people too, and it got me as well for a while. I was completely addicted to playing online Quake.

Yeah. I played like these 3D shooters. I'd jump on these. Anytime you want, like it would be 2 o'clock in the morning, you could log on and you find some server somewhere and there's some guy waiting to play. And get in and then you just chase after each other in these maps and you hear footsteps and rockets coming at you oh yeah it's uh but i bought a lot of that stuff for the kids have you oh yeah but what it doesn't do though it's like it doesn't

clear your mind the way pool does when you're pool, I think it's a lot like archery in that it's so difficult to do to have precision and move the ball. Occasionally when you do it right and you're cleaning your mind, it's so satisfying. Whereas video games are just exciting. When it's over, you're cracked out. When I would end, I'd be like, oh, Jesus Christ. Your adrenaline is all fucked up. You're going to go home yeah this is too much it's too crazy yeah we talk about a 12 year old it's like oh he's been on there too long you know we can tell the difference for sure get him some moisture and some some vitamins 100 well that game room i got a job in it had like

probably 80 video games and then it had you know we didn't have a nine-foot table. We had four by eights and then a snooker table and like some foosball. A couple of them I liked, like Robotron, but like actual gaming, no, I never got into it. I was always either playing baseball or tennis or, you know, something. Yeah. Besides, so. You're probably lucky. But now people are making money doing that, too.

Oh, 100%. People used to say kids are wasting their lives, and now they're making shit tons of money playing video games. Yeah, well, I think he's one guy I know here for a long time from the pool. He's worked for EA for like 20 years. He's like a developer, you know, tests their games. All he does is pretty much give them feedback, I think. Those guys who develop those games, those guys work hard. Those guys work hard. guys work hard those are long hours like

when they're putting together like it's crunch time and they're getting to the end of a video game they basically like live in their studios and offices well i believe it i know a guy back he was a year ahead of me graduated valedictorian of my high school and he was moving to japan and to asia to get into gaming like developing gaming he knew a long time ago that the addiction was going to go crazy for gaming you know like like it was going to be kind of like oh i can stay at home and do something else here again that entertains me right you know yeah it's um i mean for kids it's so captivating it's so difficult for them to put them down because they're so good now and the graphics are so insane.

It's like it's so much more exciting. And for a lot of kids, they don't want to be outside. Maybe they get picked on. Maybe someone fucks with them at school. They just can't wait to live in that world. Well, I think the parents, too, to be fair. I see parents that don't mind the kids being upstairs, you know, doing their own thing, self-included at times.

You know, I catch myself, hey, he's been up there too long. You know, that kind of thing, you know. And again, I guess it wasn't that long ago you were playing those games. So, you know, even guys our age can get addicted to those things, right? Oh, yeah. We set up a local area network at our old studio, and I had to quit cold turkey. I was like, this is too much. local area network at our old studio and i had a quick cold turkey i was like this is too much jamie and me and our friend jeff would be going at it like constantly bring people in and play

them it was fun it's too fun though too crazy just too addictive yeah i have a friend in st louis he has places all over st louis and other towns just for gaming people can come in 24 7 they pay a membership a bunch of couches set up a bunch of gaming set up oh so they just come in 24-7. They pay a membership. Bunch of couches set up. Bunch of gaming set up. Oh, so they just come in and just log on to a game. Yeah. Yeah. They pay it monthly for it.

Makes sense, especially if you can't afford great equipment. Yeah, and I think it's social, too. I think it's fairly social. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's probably a great place to buy weed, too. Maybe. I would imagine. They have the automated pool rooms now around the country, you know, where there's no one working.

Automated pool rooms? Oh, yeah. There's several throughout the country now where you just, you know, they got 10 tables or whatever. They got vending machines and whatnot. You just have your card that lets you in. It has cameras and all that. You have to be there with a member if you're not, you know what I kind of like you just pay a monthly fee yeah oh so you log in with your card and however many hours you play does it charge you by the hour well a lot of them have like a

you can buy the membership plus so many hours a month at a discounted charge you understand you know what i mean where you get a little break or you can just pay the hourly, I think. So like your credit cards on file or something. That's kind of a bummer because like the house man at a pool hall, there's always been some interesting humans. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

How can you get rid of the house man? Yeah, but I mean, you know, for big places like Miami has one, Des Moines has one, Seattle has one that's kind of part-time, meaning half the week they're kind of regular, and then the other half of the week they're kind of automated on the slower days. I mean, I guess it's better than not being open.

Well, they can go 24-7 also. A lot of them are 24-7 where people can, you know, kind of like a gym. They can kind of go at their own leisure. So you have a car to get in. Yeah. So it's a club. Yeah, basically. Oh, that's, well, that makes sense.

Yeah, it's better. I mean, they have, you know, a lot of people carry some bigger products out of there and whatnot, sell you some stuff, you know, make an appointment for this. Maybe like Tony Robles, you know him? Sure. Yeah, he's part of one in Miami. Oh, yeah? And he coaches a lot out of there and stuff.

Oh. Yeah, that's all right. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. So how often are you on the road doing commentary now? Probably 15 weeks a year, probably, or so. But I do some remotely from home as well. But the bigger events, I travel.

Do you ever play when you go to these places? Occasionally, but not in the tournament, of course. I'm just working, right? But do you ever match up? I actually played a guy in London a couple months ago. Yeah? Yeah. And I think I surprised him a little bit.

He was a good player, you know, this guy. Right, but he thought you were done? Yeah, I think he thought he was gonna win you know he had beaten darren appleton last year gambling you know so that tells you he's a good player you know yeah i mean i think he was an underdog playing darren but he did beat him and uh so and he's kind of a crazy guy like known to do some super crazy stuff like probably stuff i can't say on here you know know. You know, like you can just imagine, just crazy. Debauchery.

Yeah, exactly. And he was like perfect gentleman with me, no problems ever, just nice guy. Took his beating easily. He wants to play again, actually, so we'll see. Oh, wow. Yeah. Now, a guy like that, when he wants to play again, is he trying to get a spot? No. Too proud, this guy. Really guy really yeah but that's good though i mean he's like i think he's very very wealthy man you know kind of like uh family stuff but uh but i don't i can't can't

remember him ever asking for a spot from any good player oh wow yeah well that's where he gets his juice right well he tries to beat you with the bet you You know, like he went on, I'll play SVB, not 2,000 a set, 2,000 a game. You know, pounds a game. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, he didn't try that with me as much, but I beat him, you know, like three sets. We were betting that much, 1,000, right? Hurt a couple sets, 1,000.

But then he went to like, let's play 3,000 a game. You know, I'm like yeah yeah i mean yeah we're gonna put up like 60 000 let's go you know i mean but i mean like you know let's not do it and just play like two games i don't want to do that right so better off to just play sets know where you're at how many different pros this guy matched up with several i mean i think he's played darren a few times he plays all the english guys over there um i think he actually has played shane before really yeah i think of course shane beat him but um but yeah he tries to play as many as he can he plays a lot of local guys over in england is that common that guys match up like that in england no this is the guy that kind of creates the action oh really yeah most of the action that

happens uh with the good players is through this guy you know but now you know what english eight ball is right yes okay so that's hit the scene again so now they're they're playing uh you might have saw the video on it but they're playing like huge sets hundred thousand pound sets of english eight ball gambling really yeah huge sets, yeah. And English 8-ball, it's just like different colored balls. They don't have numbers, right? Right, and then it's basically like 8-ball. There's maybe a couple little bitty rules that are different,

but the pockets are different. Remember like the Chinese 8-ball we were talking about? So they're rounded pockets like a snooker table, but the balls are smaller also. So it's all fairly comparable. So the balls are smaller than pool balls? Yeah. How much smaller?

I think they're like snooker ball size. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, wow. Because the pockets are rounded. And what's the size of the table? Three and a half by seven. Oh, interesting.

There it is right there. Yeah, that's kind of like what jason shaw started playing on for the most part or played a lot of darren he was a world champion at this game and do these guys use pool cues oh wow look how small it is in comparison that's interesting they use like snooker cues you know the ash wood you know now what is the benefit of that because like this is i've always wanted to ask someone like you these questions. Why would they play with a cue that's really, really stiff? Well, that little ball deflects, and the felt they play on kind of promotes deflection a little easier as well.

That thicker nap felt, you know you've seen the snooker felt, right? Yeah. It's kind of like directional felt. You can actually wave your hand, and the felt's so thick it'll change directions. You know what I mean? It's much slower. Yeah. Well, they've gotten it to where it's actually much faster now than it ever was.

But not as fast as Simone is. No, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. Much slower than what American pool players play. And the lighter balls don't go as far. Like three cushion? Mm-hmm. That's why they use the big balls, because they go five, six, seven rails with the cue ball, right?

Right. Yeah, so it goes a long ways. But, yeah, the stiffer. But to me, it's kind of weird because they don't put much side spin on the ball. Right. You know, unless they have a cupcake that's laid up in the hole or they're real close to it, they aren't putting side spin on the ball. Has anybody tried to develop a carbon fiber snooker cue? Oh, yeah.

There's a guy, Q-Tech actually did, and there's a guy that qualified for the tour using it. Oh. Yeah, he's one of Q-Tech players. The weird thing is how every cue reacts. It's like you're getting feedback from every different one that's slightly different and how it makes the ball react. Yeah, it's like tips and everything else.

When you're on the road, do these players ever match up with each other? Oh, yeah. Is that common? Yeah, Vegas is a real good one. You know, we're there for two – like the one I saw you at, I met you at, right? Yeah. What was that, March, I think it was. Yeah.

That one there, we're there for two weeks. And the Europeans and the Asians, they all like to gamble. It's just not something that happens a lot where they're from. But when they get over here, yeah, they make a lot of games. And they're all getting introduced to one pocket. They all like one pocket. And one thing about one pocket compared to nine ball is it's just a little easier to make a game. There's more room to match up.

So, like, say, for instance, me and you are going to play each other, nine ball. Most likely, I'm going to give you a game that I can't win at or I'm going to give you a game that you can't win at, like the handicap. You know what I'm saying? It's hard to make a game unless you get two guys that are real close to each other and level. But one pocket, for some reason, the spot shows up. So you can make it a game where I go to 10 balls,

you go to five or six or something. And it actually, in time, you'll start to see it's pretty fair if the game's right. Where you can see a big ups and downs, tosses and turns. It's just not as exciting to watch. No, no. I mean, you've got to get into it. It's not as fast, right? But most people to get into it they love it there's no doubt about that oh i get it i mean it's a very intricate game but as far as like getting people

to tune into it you don't have a chance in hell oh no chance zero chance no chance. Zero chance. No chance. Even though in the pool world, which is pretty vast, you know that, it's the biggest watched streams. Really? Yeah, like the head-up matches. You know, there might be a nine ball that comes along every now and again. But for the most part, because the one pocket people spend, you know, they got money. Those are the gamblers, you know what I mean?

Yeah. It's weird that that's the big gambling game. Yeah. Well, that's the only reason is, again, can take you can match levels yeah yeah there's so many ways to match up you know i mean i played games you know i played a guy in st louis one time 55 to 8 or 9 i think it was wow So I had to spot my first, whatever, 40 balls, 42 balls or something like that. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now that's a little extreme. That's a crazy spot.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, you got to bet a little higher because the games don't go very fast, right? Right. But you know what backgammon is, of course, right? Mm-hmm. And you know how they play with the cube? Yes. Okay, so we played one pocket big money with the cube.

So say me and you are playing the cubes neutral. Well, say you break the balls and say we're playing for 100 a point on the cube, right? And you break the balls and break bad and sell out a shot or scratch or whatever, right? Okay. Well, I can take the cube and offer it to you and you either got to take the cube and now we're playing for 200 because the cube always doubles, right, like backgammon, or you got to pay off that game for 100, and we start a new one. Whoa.

You see? Like the backgammon, right? Now, this is the advantage. If I offer to you the cube, and you accept it, now you're in control of the cube. So if you turn things around later in the game to where it's your advantage, you're the only one that can offer the cube back.

So now you offer it back to me, and I say, I either got to pay off the $200 that we're playing for now, or now it's worth $400. You see? But now I'm in control of the cube because I accepted it. That's a great way to play. Ooh, that's exciting. Oh, yeah, and you can do that almost any game.

You can do it on the golf course like your guy hits, right? Mm-hmm. And before you hit, say he hits it in a rough, I can say, all right, we're playing for 100 a hole. I'm offering you the cube. You want to take the cube and play for 200 this hole before you see me hit or you want to pay off the 100? Wow.

Call that hammering. What's it called? Hammering. Hammering. have you done this a couple times back jamie's a golf junkie well backgammon's the most uh popular place the cube's kind of known for you know what i mean in gambling because it's a it's a numbers game so you read your numbers right your position you say i like my position i'm gonna say offer you the cube great way to gamble by the way especially if you're there for a while like you're playing you say I like my position I'm going to say offer you the cube.

Great way to gamble by the way. Especially if you're there for a while. Like you're playing a guy all the time. That's interesting. Yeah. But you can't do that

with nine ball really. But you could do it with one pocket because the one pocket it's a vast game it might take an hour. Right. You know.

Yeah that makes sense. Yeah. But still nine ball is the most fun thing to watch. Well especially these days it's off the charts. thing to watch. Well, especially these days. It's off the charts. I have too much ADD for one pocket. You know how many times I've heard that before?

Yeah, from all people that were telling you the truth. And then they end up becoming great one pocket players. Are you talking about like pro nine ball players? It may be the diagnosis for your ADD. I don't have that kind of time. No? I barely have time to play a few hours a week. Yeah.

Which is frustrating because like right when I get warmed up, then I got to stop. Yeah. I got to go somewhere because we were talking about this.

It's so nuts like what's required to play really good pool, but it's really eight hours a day. We both kind of agreed on that, right? Oh, you know,

I used to gamble and then I'd play between, right? But when I decided to go ahead and just, I moved to Jacksonville, Florida, and then I'd play between. But when I decided to go ahead and just... I moved to Jacksonville, Florida. And I didn't know anyone. Wasn't a real gambling place.

Had some action, but I just said, all right, I'm just going to practice. I'm going to forget about the gambling. We'll see how I can do on this tour. It's 98 into 98. Once I started doing the eight hours a day, I went from like 24th to first on tour. Ended up fourth on tour for that year uh earl ended up winning the tour that year but uh but then got back to first uh another 10 or months

later a year later and hovered around the top 10 for 10 or 12 years mainly just because of that practicing i could tell the difference between me and the next guy yeah 100 and when you're practicing you're practicing with purpose right you're practicing you're not just throwing balls around you're setting things up oh yeah and and the main thing to me and this this will make you practice well is if you just put yourself in a tournament setting you know like take your time go look at your position you know what i'm saying like you don't slow play or anything just what you would normally do. Right.

Most guys want to just swing the cue a little bit, and then when they get to the tournament, all of a sudden slow down. It's a hard thing to do all of a sudden. Better off just go ahead and play speedy around the table like you've been doing. That's the same thing with fighting. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. You want to really practice the same way that you perform

you know you don't want to spar hard all the time but you you definitely don't want to try to switch up what you do in the intense competition oh absolutely i mean you know skylar woodward huge huge talent i mean i think he really could be number one player in the world yeah we were just talking about him yeah just a real keen mind. And one thing I tell him, I don't need 1,000 balls a day. You need 300 quality balls a day. You know what I mean? And that's a huge difference.

Right. I think he's doing that a little more than it's shown. Yeah, it requires so much of you. It's tough. It requires so much. You have to be a full-on addict. You know, and those are the guys who succeed in this wild game. But everyone is attracted to it.

The idea of being a good pool player is very attractive to people. Oh, yeah. Once you start to see that ball move. But, well, everyone's played it. Right. That's why. Everyone's played it. They realize, oh, yeah, we went out and had a beer and played one game over an hour and a half.

Or we had four drinks and we played one game just because it's so difficult. But it's one of those things that if a person like yourself literally made a living running around gambling, doing it, what percentage of the population has ever done that for years and years yeah very slim i'm my last regular job i was 19 a lot of people uh they most people laugh some are not that happy about that so they've been working you know pretty hard which hey it takes a lot of hard work though it's not easy well it 100 takes a lot of hard work, though. It's not easy. Well, 100% it takes a lot of hard work. But how did you transition from doing that to being able to do such good commentary? Because one of the things that I really enjoy about your commentary is you explain all the different things that's happening to the ball. You explain what could cause problems.

And then a lot of times those problems occur and go yeah you know that's a common mistake yeah how did you develop the ability to articulate all these thoughts so smoothly uh i think uh man i grew up loving commentators you know whenever i was a kid you knew all the commentators because there wasn't cable television and all the games weren't on 38 different channels and you know so you kind of learned to know that co-sale was coming on monday and frank gifford and all those guys right so those uh i really like those moments and uh and then i was always a sports guy just i've always been able to pick apart the smaller things in the games you know i was a really good baseball player believe it or not i was a really good tennis player you know look i used to be like 260 in high school playing tennis you know yeah but i

knew how to take advantage of all the smart sides of the game you know so i could pick apart you know if i did it this way he's most likely going to hit the ball back that way you know i learned all the little things that would help out a slow fat guy right right so um and i did the same in baseball just was really good at the things i could do really well and and uh i think you just learn more that way and and then pool i was super lucky joe i mean i mean i was around the buddy halls jersey reds never had a problem with nick varner or any of those guys uh helping me and then i played ephraim all the time you know so learning the game i learned it a lot and uh but as far as the speaking side i never thought twice about it too much just kind of do it you know like but it's it's that you can

articulate all the problems that can occur yeah well i mean i've been teaching the last eight years that helps a little bit um but i just always been one to be able to see the table like right after their break i can see a lot i can just visualize a lot um recognize a problem pretty easily and then i pay attention to where and understand it's probably the same thing in your your field to where the mistakes are common if you see if you see them coming you know what i'm saying like you know from one player to the next whether it be the position they played, the stroke they made, you know what I mean, tip position, it doesn't matter. They're pretty common mistakes throughout the players.

You just got to be able to recognize them. One of the things that I really love about the game is that there are these two sides of it. There is the quiet tournament play with the applause after a great run out, and then there's the pool hall, which is so different. Where people learn how to play pool and where people gamble playing pool, and then where they get really good, then all of a sudden they're doing some totally different thing. Now you're playing in this very professional tournament where you're wearing slacks and nice shoes and a golf shirt.

Oh, yeah. It's fascinating that there's just two different worlds yeah and they that's where the smarts come in you kind of learn to live in both right yeah when when you were coming up was it more colorful than it is now do you think that like because there's so many more professionals now and they're so good yeah and i think at times they're they're trained to be a little more machine like you know what i mean like oh you can't lose this focus you can't you know and where i i watch some older tapes and i see some of the guys you know i look at effron for instance man you can tell he's nervous but he's enjoying it you know he was really a sportsman

out there and i think that's the one thing we're missing a little bit of. Not the playing side of things, and of course the guys are coming. Personalities. Exactly. And the good thing is they're getting a little more in front of the camera now, so I think it's starting to come out. Yeah, but it's just like you can't fake someone being a nut. Like you can't fake a Keith McCready type character. Or even an Earl Strickland type character.

Like that's just what they are. Exactly, yeah. You can't just Earl Strickland type character like that's just what they are exactly yeah you can't just come up with lines trying to it's just them you know like you know if you ever hung out with Earl which I'm sure you have and yeah if he starts to tell you about stories how we should be playing and where we should be at it's it's some of the greatest experience you'll ever have because he's so genuine about it like he really truly believes we're supposed to be you know on the biggest stages yeah well his commentary is awesome too i love when he reviews matches he just does all by himself review it you can learn a lot from the way he moves the ball around oh yeah like that's it's very interesting just to hear the thought process behind it do you what do you have a part of the game that you like more?

Do you like the pool hall gambling part more or the tournament more? Ooh, that's hard. But, like, one of the things about pool is we've got to clean up pool and stop gambling. You hear that all the time. And my thought is always, like, no, you don't. Like, what are you doing? Oh, no.

I mean, i think society today is fine with it um you know of course you don't want like real bad bad things happening or anything like that and i haven't seen that like my career people ask me about you know a few times i was a little sketched about this or that but i mean you know for the most part i mean it's just as easy as normal normal living over overall you know you never got in a situation where you i wouldn't say that but um how many situations did you get in where they were like real well give me one that's touch and go uh well you know i think i told you you know just being safe i'd leave the pool room and and not what the people you're gambling with it was the

people that knew cash was around they weren't necessarily pool players or anything like that right and so you'd leave the pool room and you drive around 20 30 minutes if you're in a you know charleston south carolina or somewhere you know before you went back but just to make sure no one's following you yeah yeah i was real lucky you know knock on wood i was never robbed uh in any form or fashion a few times i i got warned maybe something guys were talking about things so yeah one time in la i was not to go in too deep something i'll tell you later but uh you know there was kind of like some mobster guys that were kind of uh kind of taking aim on me and a friend of mine we'd won a bunch of money around there like a hundred thousand and uh yeah they were trying to get it so we got out of there

pretty quick yeah and i was very fortunate that actually one of the guys i beat out of probably half the money is the one that told me really yeah we had become friends and whatnot and uh and uh he just came in me one day and he kind of laid it on the line a little bit for me and yeah so time to get out of dodge yeah yeah even though you know he was still wanting to have a stab at his money of course but you know we continued that later on well that's nice of him to do oh heck yeah well we like comics have favorite places to perform you know like texas was always one of my favorite places to perform before i moved here is that the case with pool too it's like there's this like hot spot areas oh absolutely

what causes these you know is it just like one great pool room and people sometimes yeah some usually the steak horses really yeah i mean even you know you have some guys like i used to always bet my own money you know like my whole life um After my first divorce, my only divorce actually, but after my divorce I kind of went on tilt a little bit. You know what I mean? Yeah, you know how it goes. Went on tilt, went on the road. I think I told you about that the other night. First time in forever I did that.

So, you know, and of late when you gamble, it's more like you play one big set for $20,000. You don't start off like we used to do at $300,000, $400,000 a game, and you try to play for a while, you know. But, yeah, steakhorses have a big part to do with it. Good pool rooms have a big part to do with it. And then something that you just kind of know, like the Derby City Classic, right? Right.

You know there's 10 days of action the whole time, 24-7. Someone needs to do a documentary about that. Yeah, they've had a few people the last few years. You know, 60 Minutes was there for a little while. Yeah, but I mean like a real documentary. I know, yeah. Like Justin and I talked about that. Like that is one of the wildest places on earth.

For how many days is it? It's like 10 days right in the middle of winter. 10 days in the middle of winter, and where are they doing it now? It's at, it's in Elizabeth. It's right outside of Louisville, right across the river in Indiana. Elizabeth Town is Indiana. It's at Caesars, the casino. And it's 10 days.

Yeah, it's 10 days. 10 days of all the pool players from all over the country and the world. Oh, yeah. Coming in and just going crazy yeah well they have the tournaments of course yeah right you got the main tournaments the three main ones then you got some smaller ones you got the all-around but then the action yeah like you know some of the big poker players come out there playing 40 50 000 a game 30 yeah yeah yeah them guys you know they like their actions that's the one wild agreement every

year that everyone's gonna go to this yeah and it's been going like 20 something years now you know since like 99 or 98 it's been going strong yeah someone's got to do a documentary on that yeah the derby city classics got a lot of memories because i think you know we've always talked about like a thing that could reignite pool. Like, The Color of Money did it in the 80s. When that movie came out, pool halls opened up all over the country. Everybody wanted to play pool. And I feel like there's something like that that could be done today that would really ignite people's excitement in pool again.

I always thought a sitcom with the right script you know like a real script it might be a good documentary yeah documentary good documentary the derby city might do it yeah well they've had some people i think alex lately you know him right he was the european coach yeah um i think he did some stuff over there last year and he did some at buffalo's trying to put something Netflix maybe. Oh, really? Someone mentioned that. But, yeah, he's interested in doing all that.

If it's done right, you know, you go to the right places and meet the right people and see the right things. Yeah. It would give people a window into something that they didn't even know existed. Yeah, well, one of those genius, you know, directors that can give it the right look. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's what I think Scorsese did real well oh yeah with the color of money the scene where tom cruise and keith mccready are talking shit to each other and playing in the pool hall that's a fucking classic scene yeah there's a bunch of them in there though yeah oh a bunch of classic

scenes but that kind of atmosphere that kind of place, that kind of place, like that's Derby City. Oh, 100%. It's Derby City for 10 days. 100%, yeah. Yeah, and some of the best players in the world. Yeah, and they're scrambling around like, I mean, because you want to get a bet, you know what I mean? There's like 50 tables in this place. This might be going on over there.

You got to scramble down here to go. Because there's guys there just to gamble, you know? Right. I mean, don't even bring their cues. They're just betting on the side. Are they just trying to find a side they like and bet their bankroll, you know? Let's get the quick double up one time. What's the legality of that?

Well, you know, for a few years it seemed like about the fifth, sixth day there would start to be some guys coming around, oh, you know, you're supposed to be gambling, da-da-da-da. But it seems like the last couple years, no one's ever gotten in trouble. It's just kind of like, all right, now we've got to not talk about it for... But we're talking about it on a podcast

that millions of people are going to hear. I know, but just in front of these guys with the suits. You can't talk about it for about, you know, maybe an hour or two before they leave. You know what I mean? Like they're just roaming around. But the last couple years, I haven't heard of any problems at all. I just love that a place like that exists.

Well, they've got to realize, okay, I can understand that they've got a casino and they'd rather you gambling in the casino. But that tournament still brings a ton of casino action for them. Oh, my God. Through the roof. For sure sure all these gambling junkies unbelievable yeah your story about losing all the money instantaneously 100 yeah yeah a lot a lot of people over there have gotten beat out of 10 you know next next day they can't play the same game because the guy went and blew the 10 in the casino i heard a story about alex paguline winning a tournament and then flipping a coin for the for the winnings and losing i don't know i watched him flip one for 10 at griffs yeah yeah he lost that one

now that's an adrenaline rush i've never bet 10 i I've bet five on a coin toss. Have you really? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Did you win? Oh, yeah. Did you keep going? No, and the guy never looked at the coin, the guy I was gambling with in Houston. What? This is the Derby City Classic. Yes.

This is it. This is a 60 Minutes piece that was just posted three days ago. Interesting. Wow. What are the odds? It's an interview with Shane Van Bowing. Oh, right. This is where Shane talks about no smoking, at that. No smoking, no gambling.

But this is in this he talks about. You know who he is, right? Who what is? The big guy that was shooting right there. Right there. No, who's that guy? That's Jean-Ribert Blonde, the poker player. Oh.

He's a one-pocket nut. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Big action guy. Yeah. There's Shane. In that, I saw an interview with him. I didn't see this,. I saw an interview with him. I didn't see this, but I saw an interview with him where they talk about how he doesn't gamble.

Yeah, well, you know, he plays those matches that are, of course, being bet on. And, you know, he makes money from that. But, I mean, he's not going to go around trying to, you know, pick on a game or anything like that. Yeah, when you're a five-time U.S. Open winner. Yeah. Good luck. Well, you know, well, I mean, you give up the wrong game now. Yeah, that's the thing.

You have to give up a crazy spot. Yeah, I'd bet on you against him, but, you know, let me make the game. Yeah, exactly, right? But he, you know, directed that energy towards trying to be the best in the world, and, you know, it's paid off pretty well for him. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, it's always to me fascinating to watch a person who rises above all, like, what are they doing different? Like what's going on? How are they doing this so much better than everybody else? And, you know, with him, it's just the obsessive practice and just this

fucking focus that he has. Yeah. That's the one that, you know, I think any of us can practice. And at times I feel like his practice could be better. And I don't mean it unfairly, meaning like get a little more out of it sometimes. Like I've seen him sit there and shoot a 900-mile-an-hour jacked-up stop shot for hours. You mean that's going to come up like once every year? Right, but when it does. I know, I know, I know. There's a lot to get back on.

But the thing that I was getting at is he's just a unique individual with the focus. Like when he gets those crazy eyes, when those eyes, the oxygen starts making them, oh, my God. I'm like, all right, we're home. We're good. Because if the ball's laid tough no one's beating them you know if both players get a tough layout no one's beating them so when you are the coach of the mosconi cup is he the guy that you're like most happy he's in the clinch yeah i mean i was talking about earlier uh last night with my buddies the ones you met uh

and uh you know the best thing for me coming to to Moscone as far as a decision is Hill-Hill. And do I got to pick Skyler or Shane to play that Hill-Hill match, you know? Pretty good decision. Yeah. It's just because, you know, you got to say Shane's probably the pick most of the time. But, I mean, Skyler's one of those that may prove you different that week. You know what I mean? It may be like a no-brainer, you know?

And the Moscone Cup is fascinating because they openly encourage cheering. Is that what you call it? It's so wild. I'm joking, yeah. Let's hear the volume on this. Oh, that was when... Yeah. That's 2018 when we won

after losing eight years in a row. So these crowds, like, how are they so much different for the Moscone Cup than everyone else? They're singing and dancing. Yeah, they're, you know... USA versus Europe. Oh, yeah, it's big, you know. I mean, all those countries, they're big and dancing. Nationalistic. Yeah. USA versus Europe. Oh, yeah. It's big.

I mean, all those countries, they're big on that. I mean, the soccer fans, I mean, they're just freaking crazy. Is that okay? They're nasty at times. But is that better? Would that make it more exciting if people cheered in between shots but didn't do it at all while the guy's down on the ball? Because it seems like they're good at that.

Well, they somewhat get almost settled, you know settled you know occasionally you still have something peep out you're settled down yeah the referee well your call the first place it was a small venue only 600 is when i started now that one had like 3 000 i think right on top of you you know what i mean right on top of you you can feel everyone's energy but your call they used to have like laser pointers the crowd did and they'd point at the nine ball while we're shooting i mean they were ruthless yeah because they had two sessions a noon and a six so they start drinking about 11 30 well by the time the six o'clock come there were fights every time i mean it was unbelievable yeah i mean but amongst friends that came together you know

what i mean like those english are but it's so much different than any other pool tournament and one of the things i was thinking was jamie and i jamie showed me that golf tournament where they play in front of a giant audience and phoenix you mean yeah yeah i'm like that's amazing yeah like that's what a great idea where everybody's cheering and screaming. Oh, yeah. And maybe that's a thing that, like, with the Moscone Cup, if you had a high-stakes game like that where people in the audience reacted like that. Oh, yeah.

Maybe that would get more people engaged. Well, I think that. But the thing with the long ones, man, they just play too long of races. A race to 100? I mean, come on, let's cut it up and do three out of five races to, what, like nine or something. You know, something that's going to keep your attraction. You mean if people want to watch it. Yeah, and, you know, the big nine-bowl tournaments now, you know, the ones I've been traveling for and working,

the fans are getting like the Moscone every time they're getting closer and closer. Really? Yeah, real smart fans, real energetic. I mean, going crazy, singing in between games. Really? Oh, yeah, it's getting better, yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

So is that encouraged? Heck yeah. We want, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you want people to be more engaged because it was always very quiet. Well, the thing is the players are loosening up a little more. So, you know, the fans are going to follow what the players do.

They want to engage with the players. So like at the Moscone, you see Jason Shaw getting them going and whatnot, and we get them going as well. And that's starting to happen a little more on the regular tour now to where the players are starting to engage with the fans more. Interesting. Well, that might be a thing that helps a lot. But it is nice to see all the streaming and Matchroom and the Predator series

and all these different things that are happening. So much pool, right? So much pool. It's all over the place. And there's some dollars out now. I mean, you know. Yeah. And even like the regional ones, right?

Like Texas Open, it's not considered a pro-pro on the calendar tournament, but you know it's pro quality, right? Yeah. The great players. But, I mean, this event has gone from 15,000 added, maybe 20 to like almost 50 now. Wow. Yeah.

I mean, everything's going up. That's great. So it's good. Yeah. It's great for the game. Heck yeah. Yeah. I'm always trying to encourage more people to play it.

I just want it to be more popular yeah well you fall serious into it pretty quick once you get down on the ball it becomes i can tell it comes pretty serious i just don't have enough time if i had more time i could play better yeah just i just and i work out too much and lifting weights is literally the enemy of pool because it just your arm is not communicating with like fine motor skills that well oh you know it's just like it stiffens everything up so it takes hours for me to get loosened up a couple times to stop a couple times like i broke on not broke but i lost when i shouldn't have i went bowling and and i didn't bowl very hardly ever so i went

bowling the night before i end up playing the next day right just like three or four games of bowling a little 16 pound ball ain't nothing to it but i couldn't draw my cue ball the next day this little right here this little muscle right here oh it wouldn't it wouldn't keep going it would like kind of swing and quit swing and quit it was unbelievable and then the same thing with darts, believe it or not. Like you play darts for like a bunch of, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it makes sense. It just messes up that little sensation you want, you know.

Yeah, I always found the worst was curls. When you did curls, you just couldn't play. No feel. Just nothing. Just numb and stupid yeah well willie hoppy apparently wouldn't even drive his car when he had to play willie hoppy i wish i would have met him the ones say he was a he was a character of course all the old guys were all had to be yeah yeah fats was like uh everyone loved him we read a statistic once that at the turn of the century

new york had something like 900 pool halls wow see that's true in 1900 i think in the 1900 new york had some absurd number of pool halls wow because well houston had a ton of them whenever i played 900 sounds nuts no you're talking about the state of new york state no i mean the city of New York. That might not be true. Yeah, because I think Houston had one of the most back in like the 90s. This was in like the 1900s. Yeah, yeah. I see what you're saying. This was like the early 1900s.

Yeah. Well, Houston was so great because it was like going on the road yourself. Everyone had, every pool room had their own little champion. Really? Yeah, their own little like pool nut guys, pool groupie kind of guys. So you could go from pool hall to pool hall and really just play your heart out. Do you miss those days? Absolutely.

Absolutely, yeah. Because I see it in your eyes when you talk about it. Your eyes twinkle. Yeah. Okay, look at this. Okay, I'm wrong. 117. That's still incredible. Why did I, look at this. Okay, I'm wrong. 117. That's still incredible.

Why did I think it was 900? Because I exaggerate everything. The game was legalized in 1904. By 1935, there was 117 pool halls in the city. That is pretty nuts, though, still. Well, it's amazing because during Prohibition that, you know. 117 pool halls in one city. Well, you know they end up taking them out, right?

And that one thing that happened during Prohibition, I think, is anything to do with any kind of gaming that promoted in some areas. I think New York was one of them. Really? Yeah, jukeboxes end up going away. That's interesting. I think pool tables end up going away until the end of Prohibition. The number of licensed pool halls has grown to 169 from 140.

Oh, in Los Angeles, where alcohol and food are permitted, the number of licensed pool halls has grown from 169 to from 140 five years ago. The city clerks. So they had 169 pool halls at what time? This was 1987. Really? Right after the color of money. Right after the color of money.

That makes sense. Yeah. Wow. That's 11, of Money. That makes sense. Yeah. Wow. That's $11,000 in the last two years. Manhattan has two pool halls to survive. Wow. Membership in the Iowa City-based Billiard Congress of America. Okay, that's what it was.

Interesting. Yeah, there's pool rooms everywhere. That's right after the movie. Oh, look. The newer movies caused a maxi resurgence in the game. Wow. Yeah, I mean, I remember watching it being fascinated. That was before I was really playing.

Going, wow. Yeah, I didn't watch it and then play. I actually was, that was 86 I think it came out. I think so. Yeah, 86. I started in 88. So I played about three or four months before I got turned on to that movie. And I was like, oh, okay.

Which Paul Newman's my favorite anyways. Yeah. My favorite actor. That was his first Oscar, you know that? Executive Billiards, where I used to play. They had a VHS player. And they played the hustler all the time. All the time.

To the point where like everybody in the pool hall could like say the words they knew it they knew every line whenever great movie is a sad story though so unbelievable it's a fucking bummer man yeah they made some bummer movies back then yeah well big parts of it would be so sad it had you know it had great highs right but i mean like when he's beating, but then you just know what's coming. And it's just from there, about the next hour of the movie, he's just like a tearjerker. Yeah. Another thing that was amazing about that movie is how good Jackie Gleason played.

Oh, yeah. Jackie Gleason could really play. Oh, yeah. The difference between watching a guy like Tom Cruise or watching a guy like Paul Newman. Tom Cruise was better than Paul Newman, but Jackie Gleason looked like a real player. Yeah, it wasn't painful to watch. No.

Not at all. No, it wasn't like lifting the cue up with every shot. There's some scenes with Newman where you gotta reshoot that. Don't do that. Don't lift the cue up as you're shooting. That's ridiculous. Yeah, when he's breaking the balls in that one scene, I think it comes up.

Well, he shot a ball with follow and lifted the cue up at the same time. Like, stay down, stay down. Yeah, great actor, though. But all his shots were kind of like trick shots. Yeah. A little more, you know. They looked okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It looked okay. It wasn't offensive, you know. No, no, no. But Jack Gleeson looked like a player. The way he would stroke the ball like wow and you could see him making break shots like you see his whole body oh yeah moving the cue ball and all that yeah well they say he was a uh a rack boy i think at one time as a kid and then just was a real character like a pool hole kind of guy so makes sense yeah yeah yeah

for sure all his all his roles he kind of played not later in his years but you know the honeymooners and whatnot seemed like the kind of guy that could fit in the pool hall pretty well yeah yeah kind of again a lot of charisma it's just interesting that that one movie which was like this massive movie where he plays a serious character and it's not funny at all like you would never even imagine that that's the same guy from the honeymooners i know you know yeah because he hardly ever smiles the entire movie in the hustler i don't know if he ever did nope he's just a no-nonsense killer yeah and what was the uh yeah he's one of my favorite actors too the guy that played his

steakhorse oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i'll think of it in a second god damn it i know it's on the tip of my tongue georgy scott that's right my brother be hot at me if i didn't remember that name yeah oh my god he was phenomenal he was great piper laurie yeah she was phenomenal the whole movie yeah it's an amazing movie it's it holds up too it's one of those movies that really holds up you go back and watch it and you go man and then the style of film they did back there was more quiet there wasn't music playing in every moment that told you how to think you know the the movie played itself out yeah well the scenes the setting yeah told you a ton about what was going on you know like in the pool hall names i guess it was the names yeah names mister yeah

exactly and yeah it didn't take a whole lot of words to get the feeling of what you know everyone was about in the movie so yeah which i thought they did pretty well at that and the color money as well yeah you know what i'm saying for the most part yeah for the most part because you could say not many had a lot of lines besides tom right you know mary elizabeth master antonio i think who was in paul new. Everyone else was just bits and pieces. But it did capture the feeling that you get from that. I wonder how many people, like, became pool hustlers after The Hustler. How many people saw that movie?

Because back then they didn't have very many movies. Oh, no. Those were two of the biggest. Yeah. I wonder how many people. That probably caused a resurgence in 63 as well. I would say so. Yeah.

A hundred percent. Yeah. I think it did pretty well overall. Oh, yeah. It was a huge movie. Did it win anything? Who gives a shit about those things? You know, like I was saying, I think the color of money is actually Paul Newman's first Oscar win.

Really? Yeah. He got nominated a few times but never actually won it. At least I checked the Hustler first, right? Yeah. Best cinematography, best art direction, best actress, best picture. Wow. Best adapted screenplay.

Wow. Won everything. Yeah. Jesus. Holy shit. Yeah. I wonder who won best actor that year besides Paul Newman. Yeah.

I think that was the thing about The Color of Money. Like they had to give it to him because he hadn't won it yet. Yeah. Maybe. He was good in it though. Oh, he's phenomenal. Yeah. He was really good.

It's a great movie. John Turturro is one of my favorites too. Yeah. By the way. So. Yeah. But I just love movies that, you know, it's not offensive. It like really does capture what it's like in in these places yeah

yeah i mean i you know let me correct that it was nominated for most of those i just said oh which ones did it win one art direction cinematography oh damn it let me just still a little bit of what we talked about yeah for the most part exactly yeah art direction cinematography were so important in that movie that that place, Ames, if that doesn't exist, someone needs to build it. I think it did, though, right? It exists? I think it did. Not anymore, but I think.

Probably they filmed in a pool hall. They wouldn't set up a new pool hall. No, I think it did. In fact, maybe it's in another book or something to do with pool, I think, and then it's quoted from that movie. What was the name of the original place? Do you know? What was it really called? McGurk's and Ames yeah two places that were defunct it says yeah they were defunct before yes and much of the action was filmed at two now defunct pool

so I guess I don't know whenever they're writing now if it was the time they're writing it or the time that they're shooting it oh it says McGurk's and Ames billiard academy is where they shot it yeah i think those are real places that's color of money or the hustler hustler yeah interesting yeah yeah i think now the one that the one that i didn't like in the color of money is whenever the the two men and a stranger kind of you remember that didn't that doesn't really happen you're trying to get someone in real trouble with something like that yeah but uh but a lot of that other stuff though yeah i mean you know kind of like i said earlier with shemot you know i wasn't like not i just kind of wanted to see him play right because i knew it wasn't going to end up for 200 even if we didn't play that was just going to be it you know what i mean

but it wasn't going to be any real action for 200. So let me just kind of evaluate him. Yeah. You can kind of see that in the color of money when he's figuring out the right way to do it, how Paul's teaching him. And he's handing over small bankrolls but then getting bigger bankrolls in return when he wins. You know what I mean?

So that kind of stuff happened a lot, actually. I love the Forrest Whitaker scene. Oh, yeah. Forrest Whitaker. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Do you think I should leave late? That was a big dig, though.

Big dig. But another good one, Forrest Whitaker. He actually looked like he had a little stroke. Yeah. Yeah? A little something. Yeah. Yeah, he could play a little.

Yeah. Yeah. There's quite a few out there that like the game. Well, didn't Mike Siegel coach them? Oh, I wouldn't doubt that. I know he coached Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise, yeah. There were a few of them around.

A guy I worked with last night. What do you got, Jamie? Yeah, you're right. I'm looking at it right now. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Larry Schwartz, the guy from Chicago. You may have heard of him. He worked on that, and it was in that movie as well.

I did commentary with him last night, as a matter of fact. Well, my big fear is that the game will somehow or another slide away. It doesn't seem like that's – I was worried about that for a while. Yeah, absolutely. But it doesn't seem like that's happening anymore. Now there's an international resurgence. Yeah, well, the amateur side, league pool, there's so many, right? And the consumer market is so good right now.

I think it's just going to go up and up. Yeah, I hope so. I think it's just going to go up and up. Yeah, I hope so. I think so too. And maybe a solid documentary in the Derby City or something. We've talked about doing stuff in here, but having challenge matches in here and streaming them. I would do commentary.

Hell yeah. So that's still on the table. Yeah, there you go. I just have to find some time. Yeah, well, you know a commentator. I do. I know the best. He's right here. As long as it's pool. Yeah baseball i could do a little baseball maybe a little golf that's

about it well pool you're the man yeah uh well thank you jeremy thanks for being here i appreciate it was a lot of fun absolutely all right let's go play some pool bye everybody Thank you.