The Strange Realities Of Hustling Pool For A Living

Russ rotated between five pool halls and fourteen bars in the area around his college. He rotated regularly, and tried to put a couple weeks between each hustle at an individual location. It didn't make him rich, but he estimates it was about as profitable as a "good part-time job."

But it was also unpredictable: "Some weeks I only broke even, and there were some rough patches in there where I lost money. A few times, players caught on [more on that in a sec] and I was thrown out of a church hall for doing it."

See, the whole "lose several games and then escalate" scam only works if your opponent keeps doubling down: "Sometimes players cashed out early. They didn't want a round three, and walked away with $40."

But what Russ really hated was losing money thanks to blind, dumb chance.

"There was this pool hall near the fairgrounds. Big, empty, hunting-club-looking place. My state doesn't allow smoking inside places, but they allowed it, regardless. It was great. Two guys in their 20s were playing, and they were only doing so-so. I think I was complaining loudly about my cue not working tonight, and we got to talking, and we played. I lost the first two, and then on the third I was going to come back big. I allowed them to break, and I thought I could sink them as soon as they missed. They didn't. They got solids on the break by getting three of them in the pockets, and the rest they got from a series of flukes. They weren't hustling me by the way they played, but it felt like it. When they got the 8 ball in, they said 'Jesus fucking Christ. How'd we do that?!'"

We're not 100 percent sure why Russ is so certain they weren't hustling him, considering it sounds like they were actually following his exact strategy to a T.

The stakes were always very real to him, thanks to something terrible he saw as a little kid, hanging at the pool hall with his grandpa: "My parents didn't do daycare, and my grandpa often watched me before and after preschool. So we would watch old-timers play 9-ball at this pool hall. My grandpa would occasionally point out who was a 'shark' in a whisper. Well, one day this happened, it was a 60-year-old taking on another 60-year-old. They did what I did, play two games badly to win at the third. But this guy shot them expertly, one after another. The 60-year-old being hustled put down his cue (another warning sign) and put his hands into his pockets. When the hustler finished, he said 'now, I believe you owe me-' and was stopped right there, when the guy who got hustled smacked him in the head with a wood block, like the type you whittle. 'You fucking shark-' was the last I heard, because my grandpa was running me out of there. We never went to that pool hall again."

And yes, Russ did get caught: "I was caught five times, four of which happened in my freshman year, because I was still really bad at it. Three times they figured it out, but graciously said 'Ok, you got me,' or something like that. One immediately called his girlfriend and said. 'Guess what! Somebody hustled me at pool! Like it's the '60s!'"

Those were the easy ones. They didn't all go that well:

"One happened at a church hall. It was a charity pool tournament. Half of the money went to the winner, and the other half went to, I forget, so let's just say The United Way. It was a single elimination tourney, but before going up, I'd be talking about 'Not being on my A-Game,' or say that my arm was still really stiff from being in a cast. I made it to the semi-finals and I made the same arm excuse. Unfortunately I was playing against a doctor, and he glanced at my arm, and said, 'Your arm was never broken.' I said it was, but he asked how long was it in the cast for. I didn't know, so I said some length of time, and what I said was wrong. He told the judges, who informed me that they put me against non-pool players because of my supposed arm problems. I'd rather forget the rest of what happened, but it ended with me being escorted out of a church basement by an ex-cop who was also in the tournament, and I was told to never come back."

Russ also had the whole Woody Harrelson Kingpin experience:

"I took two players on the football team for $200. I got greedy and hustled two in a row at the same bar, and when the second player was paying me, the first came around and said, 'Still on the winning streak?' The football player I just beat looked at him and said, 'He said he just got here from a kegger.' Then he looked at me and said 'You trying to cheat me?' He grabbed a cue and swung it at me. The third time he swung, it hit. Getting hit with a pool cue, especially by a football player, is like getting hit by a pipe. It really hurts. Those cues are not as flimsy as they look. I thought he broke my ribs.

"He only hit me once when some other players restrained him. Me and my friend ran out while everyone was looking at the football players being restrained by each other. We stopped for five minutes at a Starbucks to make sure he didn't follow us, then straight to the campus clinic. Nothing was broken, but I learned to rotate places after each win after that."

"It even happened to people I know who could barely play pool. They'd ask for a friendly match, and they'd be told no, because they thought they would be asked to bet or get hustled."

Between 2007 and 2014, the number of pool players, casual or otherwise, dipped in the U.S. -- from 51 million to 35 million. A big part of that was movies making it look like pool hustlers were everywhere, so people avoided pool halls.

"I have noticed less people at the halls. I went back to my campus last year, and I visited a few old haunts. Hardly anyone was there, and some of the pool halls were closed. Some people were really scared of betting or being hustled, even though very few people did it."

But not everyone who watched The Fresh Prince walked away with a deep aversion to playing pool with strangers. Some people decided that getting hustled looked fucking awesome, which is how Russ learned ...

"I was a little suspicious the first time it happened. A couple came up to me, and asked to play me. This was never how it worked, and I was afraid they'd hustle me. But I played the two games, but each time they raised the amount, it felt forced. Like it was scripted. I did my thing and got all the balls into the pockets to what, to them, seemed like really good shots. Then I got my extra $40 or $50 for the night. But then they called someone and said 'We just got hustled!' Like they were excited. They must have noticed me looking at them, so the girlfriend explained, 'We heard about someone who looked like you, hustling someone at the bar down the road last week, and when we saw you, we couldn't pass it up.' The boyfriend covered the phone; 'We always wanted this to happen.' It still confused me. Why would they want this? Pool isn't the most popular sport to begin with, and most people think this is like stylized robbery. But there's a mystique behind it. It's something you only see on TV, and seeing it in front of you can be cool. I only did this because it was fun for me and I didn't want a sucky college job. To them, this was like some amazing character come to life."

Those weirdos weren't a one-off. It happened nine other times.

"A few times, they told me up front and paid $20. Other times they played along. Most of the time it was couple, but a few single people did it too, because they wanted to be hustled."

Pool hall experts even note that this is entertainment to many people -- seeing cool pool shots, and hearing pool stories. With pool sharks being a dying breed, people who encounter them are more and more likely to view them as a wacky time capsule rather than an annoyance or a threat.

"There's a pool hall near my college I liked, and it's where I saw the most amazing shot I've ever seen. A hustler I knew of was there. He was on his last game with someone, and I sat down to watch. He saw me, and without looking back down to the balls, he nodded at me, and fired. Four balls, all solids, went into four different holes, almost at the exact same time. I think he did that to psych me out ... but I was blown away. After he finished up, he left without a word to me. That's what it was like. Like ships passing in the night."

But the rivalries aren't always friendly. Russ knows of at least one loss he suffered that was definitely at the hands of another hustler:

"I had just tried to get someone to bet on a game, but he had chickened out. This was during my freshman year. A person who introduced himself as living in the area came by. He was dressed very casually, just like anyone who went to college there. He told me he overheard what I said, and said he wanted to play me. He didn't seem like a hustler, so we went at it."

Remember that "not seeming like a hustler" is the entire strategy of hustling. You live by the hustle, you die by the hustle.

"I did my thing, and I lost the two first games. He was good, but he had missed some good opportunities, so I had him marked down as an average 'just for fun' player. He asked if he could break, and I let him. I figured after one slip up, I could mop up the rest of the balls. Turns out, he was hustling me by pretending to be a regular player. He knew what I was trying to do earlier. He expertly broke and proceeded to down every single shot. And it wasn't like a movie. He didn't leave me with sage advice, or tell me 'You'll be here someday, kid.' No, he said 'Gimme my money,' and he walked out. I was really disappointed he didn't do something like that, but it's not like the movies."

Because in the movies, Christopher Walken makes trick shots on the first take.

Evan V. Symon is an interviewer, writer and interview finder for the Person Experience team at Cracked. Have an awesome job/experience you'd like to see here? Hit us up at tips@cracked.com today!

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