My first pool tournaments

My first pool tournament entry was born out of frustration.  I was in a bar league in Chicago, where you play for a bar's team and the winning team in the league gets a trophy.  We were in the playoffs - cannot remember if it was the finals or not - and my match was pivotal.  I remember getting to the 8-ball (all of the leagues were 8-ball leagues then; since then I have seen some that are a mix of 8-ball and 9-ball), so all I needed was to make the last shot to win the game.  I remember it being a thin cut shot...and I ended up missing the 8-ball entirely with the cue ball.  That gave my opponent ball-in-hand (meaning that he could put the cue ball anywhere on the table for his next shot), and he ran out and won the game.

I was disgusted with myself - I had let down my team, and even though someone else on our team (at least) must have lost that night too, my loss was the most visible and came when we needed the win to advance.

I had recently moved from downtown Chicago (where the bar league was based) to out near O'Hare Airport (Northwest of the city center), and really the bar league play was my last link to my life in the Gold Coast area of Chicago (just north of the Loop).  Maybe it was the fact that I was "done" with my downtown life (I had moved out to the airport area because my job was no longer downtown; I was now a consultant who often worked north and west of the city, and even the reverse commute was a real pain, especially in the evenings), but when I saw an ad somewhere for a 9-ball tournament the night after I lost the 8-ball match, I decided to give it a try.  New pool hall, new area of town, nobody knew me...what was the worst that could happen?  I play badly, and decide that 9-ball is not for me.


LEE STREET BILLIARDS

Lee Street Billiards was an interesting place.  Unlike every other place that I had shot pool, it was not a bar.  As such, it attracted a mostly under-21 crowd.  At the age of 25, I did not feel out of place when I first walked in the night of the tournament, but in the ensuing weeks I realized that I was often the oldest player in the room.  I did not mind the lack of alcohol, though (unlike a lot of my over-21 peers, I guess), and the folks who played there and ran the place were all very friendly.

Unfortunately, though, you do not have to be over 21 to smoke...and these were the days before smoking was banned in many public places.  It took a long time for my love of pool to succumb to my dislike of second-hand smoke, but from the start I really hated that aspect of going to a pool hall.  Even when I would go to a mostly-empty pool hall, I would still find the lingering stench of cigarette smoke in the air.

I never really understood the connection between smoking and pool, anyway.  You cannot actively do both at the same time, unless you wanted to get ash on the table, so what ends up happening is that everyone else breathes in the smoke from one player's cigarette while it rests on the edge of the table or on a nearby surface.  The smoker does not even actively smoke during most of the life of the cigarette, if he/she is serious at all about pool.


Those first few weeks
Somehow, even though my bar league career ended in disappointment, the regular practice must have done me some good.  I actually won the entire tournament that first night at Lee Street.  I have no idea how my interest in pool would have fared had I not done well, but I somehow played well enough to keep winning my matches, and at the end of the night I had won first place!  I did not feel like a favorite in any of the matches - I just assumed that those who were used to shooting 9-ball regularly were better players than I was - but I just kept plugging away.

A couple of months later, I found out that while I was feeling like an interloper in the 9-ball world, the regulars at Lee Street were viewing me as the new gunslinger in town...the one that no one wants to see coming.

The week after that first tournament, I decided to see if I could defend my title, not really thinking that I could do it.  Luck was with me again, though, and once again I came in first place.  Inside I was laughing - if they only knew what I really shot like.  I kept thinking that someday my life as the Wizard would be revealed as a sham once someone dared to look behind the curtain.

Life got even weirder when I won the tournament the third week as well.  This was ridiculous.  I was not even practicing much in the interim...I just went and warmed up for an hour or so before the tournament, and then played my matches.  Admittedly, these were mostly teenagers...but still.  Three tournament wins in a row?

The fourth week I was exhausted from work, and I should never have gone to the pool hall, but I felt that it was expected of me (I am not sure who else expected it of me, but I DID have a bit of celebrity at that point).  That week, I lost in the first round.  That was when I realized the difference between what *I* thought of my play and what the *others* thought about it.  To me, a loss in the first round that night was about right - I was really tired, and I was not making the shots I needed to make.  Because of the previous three weeks, though, the people in the tournament reacted as if a mighty champion had somehow been toppled.  I was human?  Really?  

It is true that once people figure out that you can be beaten, they somehow have an easier time of it than they did before.  I still played in the tournament most weeks, but it was several months before I won it again, and it was a tough climb back to the top.