The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1917 - Fedor Gorst

00:00:11.000 What's up, man? 0.94

00:00:12.000 Keep this like a fist from your face.

00:00:16.000 You are the first professional pool player to ever be on this podcast.

00:00:19.000 Yeah, thank you.

00:00:20.000 Congratulations.

00:00:21.000 Thank you so much.

00:00:21.000 How old are you, man?

00:00:22.000 I'm 22. How long you been playing?

00:00:25.000 I've actually started with a different game called Russian Pyramid.

00:00:29.000 Yeah, I've seen that before.

00:00:30.000 Yeah, that's the game we play in Russia.

00:00:32.000 You know, I've played since I was about six.

00:00:36.000 That's when I had my first coach.

00:00:38.000 But I've been around the billiard balls since the very beginning.

00:00:42.000 What are you ranked in the world right now?

00:00:44.000 You're like, in my opinion, you're like top three, top four in the world.

00:00:49.000 There's currently too many different rankings.

00:00:53.000 You can't really...

00:00:54.000 Because I didn't play as many tournaments this year, like official ones, so I don't have any ranking points.

00:01:00.000 Because you're from Russia, and you couldn't play in tournaments for a while, right, during the Ukraine crisis?

00:01:07.000 Yeah, so since the end of February when the whole thing started, they banned all the Russian athletes and they only removed the ban I believe in the end of July.

00:01:23.000 You know what's crazy is they didn't ban UFC fighters.

00:01:27.000 Yeah, for example.

00:01:28.000 We have a lot of Russian UFC fighters, and they don't even get treated badly.

00:01:32.000 They don't get booed. 1.00

00:01:33.000 I mean, they get booed a little bit by some assholes. 0.99

00:01:36.000 It's different in every sport, like hockey. 0.99

00:01:38.000 You know, Ovechkin is still playing.

00:01:39.000 You know, there's a lot of great players in hockey that still play from Russia.

00:01:43.000 So in Poole, they made a decision to not have Russian players for a little while, and then they relaxed it.

00:01:49.000 Why did they relax it?

00:01:51.000 It's not your business.

00:01:56.000 You're 22. You're not involved in politics.

00:01:59.000 Well, you can understand it from, I don't know, from like the business point of view.

00:02:04.000 I guess.

00:02:06.000 But, you know, pool, in my opinion, is a small sport.

00:02:09.000 And in the end of the day, I don't know how many pool players will you ban by banning the Russian athletes.

00:02:17.000 I know, I mean, three players.

00:02:18.000 Yeah, there's only a few from Russia, right?

00:02:20.000 Yeah, that play internationally.

00:02:22.000 And you're the best.

00:02:24.000 From Russia, yeah.

00:02:25.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:02:26.000 You're one of the best in the world, period.

00:02:28.000 It's kind of crazy to be one of the best in the world at something at 22 years old, because you have so much room to grow and get better.

00:02:35.000 Oh, yeah, for sure.

00:02:36.000 I mean, that's got to be very promising for you, because at 22 years old, you're just sort of like, your body's not even fully formed yet.

00:02:44.000 Your brain's not fully formed.

00:02:46.000 They say your cerebral cortex, your frontal lobe, fully forms when you're 25. Yeah, I mean, I still have a lot of potential and I definitely will be aiming to get up there.

00:02:56.000 So how did you make the trek from Russia coming to the United States to play?

00:03:02.000 How old were you?

00:03:04.000 You mean the first time I came?

00:03:05.000 Yes.

00:03:05.000 It was 2016. My very good Russian friend and my sponsor, he brought me to Derby City Classic.

00:03:16.000 So that was my first experience.

00:03:18.000 So you were like, what, 16 or something?

00:03:20.000 16, yeah.

00:03:21.000 Wow.

00:03:22.000 Robbing people at 16. I did pretty good.

00:03:25.000 In the 9-ball division, I think I finished in round 12, which is like the last 12 players out of 500 plus.

00:03:33.000 That's pretty good for 16. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:03:36.000 And then a lot of people kind of recognized that I can play, and I got an invite for Derby City Classic Invitational Ten Ball Tournament.

00:03:45.000 And the Derby City Classic, we should tell everybody, is this enormous eight-day tournament that takes place in Kentucky.

00:03:53.000 Yeah, nonstop action.

00:03:54.000 Every year, it's like the Hustlers Convention. 0.93

00:03:57.000 Like all the great players, all the gamblers, all the people that talk shit, all the people that sell queues, everybody goes down to the Derby City. 0.97

00:04:05.000 Yeah, that's the biggest pool fest. 0.98

00:04:06.000 I still haven't been.

00:04:08.000 You should.

00:04:08.000 I know, I wanted to.

00:04:10.000 Do you know Justin Collett?

00:04:11.000 He used to run the Action Report.

00:04:13.000 I've heard, but that wasn't...

00:04:15.000 He's a good friend of mine.

00:04:16.000 At one point in time, we had actually talked about doing a documentary on the Derby City.

00:04:20.000 Because I think it's such a crazy subculture of America that most people just have no idea.

00:04:27.000 Oh yeah, that's great.

00:04:28.000 You can for sure film a movie about it.

00:04:31.000 Oh yeah, there's so many characters, there's so many oddball people.

00:04:36.000 You know, I found pool when I was, I guess I was about 23, somewhere around that, 23 or 24. I first started playing pool and I injured my knee.

00:04:47.000 I had an ACL tear in my knee so I couldn't work out.

00:04:51.000 For a while and a friend of mine who was a comedian, we started playing pool together. 0.99

00:04:55.000 We both sucked. 0.97

00:04:56.000 We were just playing pool. 0.91

00:04:57.000 But just so lucky that the place that I picked to go to was a local action spot.

00:05:04.000 And there was a lot of big gambling going on there.

00:05:07.000 Like guys would come in and play $10,000 sets of one pocket.

00:05:09.000 It was a big deal.

00:05:11.000 And so I got to see these guys, and I got to see this subculture that I wasn't aware of, and I got to see what it looks like when the game of pool is played really well, when someone's really good at it, how beautiful it is to watch,

00:05:26.000 and how exciting it is to watch.

00:05:29.000 So I was exposed to it at a very early age.

00:05:32.000 Not an early age for most people, obviously not an early age for you, but for me it was like, I had no idea that there was a world out there where people just wanted to play pool all day and gamble.

00:05:46.000 Oh yeah, there's a lot of people that do play pool every day.

00:05:49.000 All day?

00:05:50.000 Eight hours a day?

00:05:51.000 For sure.

00:05:51.000 How many hours a day do you play?

00:05:53.000 It depends on my tournament schedule.

00:05:55.000 I'm not an action player that plays all day every day.

00:06:00.000 When you say action player, you mean gambling?

00:06:02.000 Gambling, yeah.

00:06:03.000 I consider myself as a tournament professional player.

00:06:07.000 But you do gamble?

00:06:08.000 I do, yeah.

00:06:10.000 You have gambled.

00:06:11.000 I'm aware of some gambling that you take place in.

00:06:13.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:06:14.000 I've played some matches, big ones and small ones.

00:06:17.000 What's the biggest one you've ever played?

00:06:19.000 How much?

00:06:21.000 The biggest amount that I ever won was 51,000 from one guy.

00:06:27.000 It was this year.

00:06:28.000 But we played by the rack.

00:06:32.000 So we started off playing like 1,000 a rack and then we increased.

00:06:37.000 1,000 a rack?

00:06:38.000 One pocket.

00:06:39.000 Oh, okay.

00:06:40.000 Which is still a really good bet.

00:06:42.000 Yeah, that's a very good bet.

00:06:44.000 Yeah.

00:06:44.000 Yeah, and then we played all day and I kept winning and winning.

00:06:49.000 He was increasing and increasing, raising the bet.

00:06:53.000 Fifty-one thousand dollars in a day.

00:06:55.000 Yeah.

00:06:55.000 That's nice.

00:06:57.000 He must have been sick.

00:06:58.000 Oh, yeah.

00:06:59.000 Did you give him a spot?

00:07:01.000 Yeah, I had to give him a spot from the beginning and then by the end of the day the spot was even bigger.

00:07:06.000 So, let's explain one pocket, because there's a lot of people that are listening that don't know what that means.

00:07:11.000 One pocket is a game, on a pool table there's six pockets.

00:07:14.000 And in one pocket, you each have one of the corner pockets near where the balls are racked.

00:07:20.000 And the goal of the game is just for other people, not for you.

00:07:23.000 Obviously, you know how to play.

00:07:25.000 The goal is, there's 15 balls in a rack.

00:07:28.000 The goal is for you to get eight balls in your pocket.

00:07:31.000 You only have one pocket that you can shoot the balls in.

00:07:34.000 But now for a player like yourself, like if you were going to play someone like me, you'd have to give me a big spot.

00:07:39.000 It would have to be like, you know, I'd have to get like four balls and you'd have to get 11. Something like that.

00:07:45.000 Something like that.

00:07:46.000 Yeah, that's basically what it was with that guy.

00:07:49.000 We started off at, I was giving him 12 to 6, I think.

00:07:54.000 And we ended up giving, I ended up giving him 10 to 5. Which is a huge spot.

00:08:00.000 That's a huge spot.

00:08:00.000 He was on that tilt and couldn't do anything.

00:08:03.000 That's the problem once you start losing a thousand dollars a game.

00:08:07.000 Oh my god.

00:08:12.000 The world of pool and gambling is such an interesting world to me because it's something that people get very, very, very addicted to.

00:08:20.000 Oh, yeah.

00:08:21.000 There's a lot of characters in our sport.

00:08:24.000 Yes, there are.

00:08:25.000 So when you were playing the Russian Pyramid game, so you're over in Russia and you're playing this game, how were you exposed to 9-ball and 10-ball, the games they play here in America?

00:08:37.000 So what happened was I was obviously a little short and I couldn't really reach the table because the pyramid table is a little bit higher than the pool table and I think I was about eight or nine year old and my coach told me that I probably have to switch to pool if I want to play professionally.

00:08:59.000 And, you know, I have more potential.

00:09:01.000 I can travel the world.

00:09:02.000 And we decided that we have to switch, and that's when I started playing pool.

00:09:07.000 So when you say your coach, is that common in Russia that young players have coaches?

00:09:12.000 Honestly, all over the world, the game is treated differently.

00:09:17.000 Only in the U.S. it's more of, you know, some entertainment that you can just go to the bar and drink beer and have fun.

00:09:25.000 Really?

00:09:26.000 Yeah, in Russia, they treat the game as a sport, and we have practice facilities, coaches that work with kids.

00:09:34.000 Wow.

00:09:35.000 I know it's the case in other places.

00:09:37.000 Like, I know in Taiwan they do that.

00:09:39.000 Yeah, China.

00:09:41.000 Germany, I mean Poland, Netherlands.

00:09:45.000 Kopinyi, I heard they have a day where all they do is jump. 0.63

00:09:50.000 They just practice jump shots all day.

00:09:52.000 The whole game is jump shots.

00:09:53.000 I believe that.

00:09:54.000 I did that too.

00:09:55.000 Do you do that too?

00:09:56.000 I mean, I've practiced a lot.

00:09:59.000 I've jumped a lot of balls before when I was a kid.

00:10:02.000 I just had fun jumping balls around them.

00:10:05.000 I'm fascinated by Russian methods for sport because so many elite combat sports athletes come out of Russia.

00:10:12.000 So many great wrestlers, so many great mixed martial arts fighters, great kickboxers.

00:10:17.000 And I had Jon Bernthal on the podcast.

00:10:20.000 You know, he's a very famous actor who's in The Punisher and The Walking Dead and a bunch of movies and stuff.

00:10:26.000 Really, really interesting guy.

00:10:27.000 But he went over to Russia to study theater.

00:10:30.000 And he said that it was so different than anything he'd ever done and for the first year you didn't even read anything.

00:10:37.000 They just worked with you on rhythm and remembering things and concentration and acrobatics and ballet.

00:10:46.000 It's like Russia is, the way they treat sport is so disciplined.

00:10:52.000 Well, back in USSR, I think they treated it even more strict than nowadays.

00:10:57.000 You know, the coaches were really, really hard on the kids, and I think that's why they all raced with discipline.

00:11:04.000 I think that's the main factor that really favors them.

00:11:09.000 So in Russia, they have the pyramid game.

00:11:12.000 Is that the primary game that people play?

00:11:13.000 That's what everybody's playing.

00:11:14.000 I mean, honestly, pool is so small in Russia that you can count the players on both hands.

00:11:19.000 So why did your coach think that you should play pool then, if the pyramid game was so big?

00:11:25.000 Really, that's a good question because, like I said, I was really, really short.

00:11:31.000 Maybe he was feeling that...

00:11:33.000 You weren't going to grow?

00:11:34.000 No, but he was thinking, I think, at that time that it's better off starting with pool because I can reach the table and then switch back to pyramid.

00:11:44.000 But he wasn't expecting that I will be as good.

00:11:48.000 I started to progress really quick.

00:11:50.000 I started to win amateur tournaments, you know, winning junior tournaments.

00:11:55.000 Let's see that game.

00:11:56.000 Pull up a game of Russian...

00:11:58.000 How do you call it?

00:11:59.000 Russian Pyramid Billiards?

00:12:00.000 Russian Pyramid.

00:12:01.000 Russian Pyramid.

00:12:03.000 Is it a larger table?

00:12:05.000 It's a 12-foot table with tiny pockets, bigger balls.

00:12:09.000 So it's tougher to make the ball.

00:12:12.000 It's a completely different game.

00:12:13.000 It's fun to play.

00:12:15.000 It's not fun to play if you've never played any billiards.

00:12:18.000 Are the corners rounded or are they flat?

00:12:21.000 They're flat.

00:12:22.000 So they're flat like a pool table, not like a snooker table.

00:12:25.000 Oh wow, look at the size of that table.

00:12:27.000 That's wild.

00:12:28.000 Look at the tiny pockets!

00:12:29.000 So the pocket is essentially the size of the ball.

00:12:33.000 Almost, almost.

00:12:34.000 Wow, this is crazy.

00:12:37.000 Why is it called pyramid?

00:12:39.000 Because of the shape of the rack, I don't know.

00:12:44.000 So, and in Russia, when you play this, you mostly play with an open bridge, right?

00:12:51.000 Yeah, mostly they use open bridge, but for like hard shots, I believe, when they have to draw the ball.

00:12:58.000 And so you can use any ball?

00:13:01.000 It depends on the discipline you play.

00:13:03.000 So this guy is shooting...

00:13:04.000 This guy is some amateur.

00:13:05.000 I don't know what he's doing. 0.95

00:13:05.000 Yeah, he's just whacking balls around. 0.95

00:13:06.000 Yeah.

00:13:07.000 But at least we get a chance to see what the table looks like.

00:13:10.000 So there's one...

00:13:11.000 Is that a red ball?

00:13:12.000 Looks like a maroon ball?

00:13:14.000 So red ball is a cue ball.

00:13:16.000 There is a discipline where you have to play only with a red ball.

00:13:20.000 Kind of like pool.

00:13:22.000 And there is discipline where you can shoot any ball.

00:13:24.000 But it's the same thing.

00:13:25.000 It's a race to eight balls. 0.99

00:13:27.000 Mmm. 0.94

00:13:28.000 And whoever makes eight balls first wins.

00:13:30.000 In any pocket?

00:13:32.000 Any pocket, yeah.

00:13:33.000 The thing about snooker players, and I guess probably this Russian pyramid game too, is that your fundamentals and your form have to be so perfect because the table is so big and the balls are so small that any room for deviation on your shot,

00:13:50.000 you have to really tighten everything up.

00:13:53.000 Whereas opposed to a lot of American tables, those five-inch pockets, you know, there's a lot of room for fucking around and sloppy shots will still go in.

00:14:01.000 Yeah, I mean, that's the difference between the games, I think.

00:14:06.000 Fundamentals has to be really, really good, playing snooker and pyramid.

00:14:10.000 That's mostly what they work on.

00:14:12.000 And pool, you can see all the players that have their own style, their own techniques.

00:14:17.000 They can get away playing some weird styles.

00:14:21.000 Yeah.

00:14:22.000 They can get away with bad fundamentals.

00:14:24.000 Yeah.

00:14:25.000 Well, there's some great players that had bad fundamentals.

00:14:27.000 Like, have you ever watched Keith McCready play?

00:14:29.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:14:30.000 Sidearm.

00:14:30.000 Yeah.

00:14:31.000 Crazy.

00:14:32.000 Total sidearm, but amazing player.

00:14:35.000 Oliver Ortman from Germany is the same way.

00:14:37.000 Yes.

00:14:38.000 Well, you know, that's because they started when they were young, and they couldn't reach the table either.

00:14:42.000 So they had to have their arm sideways because they couldn't let it hang down normally.

00:14:45.000 That's my problem nowadays, too, because my stance, I grew up with the wrong stance.

00:14:50.000 Were they like a straightforward stance as opposed to like a sideways pool stance?

00:14:54.000 Yeah.

00:14:54.000 Like a snooker table stance?

00:14:56.000 And Russian pyramid, yeah.

00:14:57.000 Yeah, same.

00:14:58.000 Similar, right?

00:14:59.000 Yeah, and I have to slightly change it every year because I'm still growing and I'm taller than the average pool player.

00:15:07.000 You're still growing?

00:15:07.000 You're 22?

00:15:08.000 You haven't stopped growing?

00:15:09.000 No.

00:15:10.000 No.

00:15:11.000 That's interesting.

00:15:13.000 Yeah.

00:15:14.000 So you also have to bend at the knees too because you're kind of tall.

00:15:18.000 So like to lock the legs out.

00:15:20.000 So that's the thing that I always experiment with.

00:15:23.000 I can play with one bent knee and with both bent knees.

00:15:28.000 Yeah, because I was always taught to lock legs, that if you locked your legs, you have a more stable stance.

00:15:35.000 But then I watch guys like Shane Van Boning, and he bends at the knees.

00:15:39.000 Yeah.

00:15:39.000 Well, every player is really different.

00:15:42.000 You can see, for example, Carlo or Carlo Beato or Jason Shaw.

00:15:48.000 They have their legs straight, both of them.

00:15:50.000 Yeah.

00:15:51.000 Because they're not as tall as the other ones.

00:15:54.000 Right.

00:15:54.000 You have both legs straight, right?

00:15:57.000 Yeah.

00:15:57.000 Yeah, I always do that.

00:15:59.000 I didn't used to do that though, but then I got some pointers from someone.

00:16:02.000 Max Eberle actually helped me with that.

00:16:04.000 Max Eberle coached me when I lived in LA. That was the first.

00:16:08.000 I had some lessons when I first started out in New York from like, there's a guy named Jimmy Abel that was like an old school straight pool player, was a really good player.

00:16:16.000 And a few other guys gave me some pointers and tips, but Max gave me some real lessons.

00:16:21.000 Yeah.

00:16:21.000 And he changed a lot of my fundamentals and tightened everything up, because I had a lot of bad habits that I didn't even know I had.

00:16:28.000 That's the difference, I guess, what I'm talking about with Russia, is that if you have a coach and you have a program, It's probably, like, explain how that works.

00:16:39.000 Is it like a very disciplined regiment that you guys would practice?

00:16:43.000 I mean, not really.

00:16:44.000 It may sound really professional, but what happened with me, I had four, five different coaches.

00:16:53.000 And from the very beginning, I was, for example, as a seven-year-old, I had a coach, and I reached the limit That I could learn from one coach and my parents used to always tell me, well, we have to switch because that's the only way to grow.

00:17:10.000 And once I found that coach, the very last Russian coach that I had at the 13, when I was 13, I felt like I couldn't grow more because we don't have many professional coaches in Russia because the game was really small.

00:17:27.000 Russian pyramid has many, many coaches.

00:17:31.000 And I got really lucky because in 2015, Johan Reising, he was a Mosconi Cup captain many, many, many times for Europe and US. He came to Russia as a national coach and practiced with the national team for two years.

00:17:50.000 That's when things really changed and I think I'm really grateful that it happened.

00:17:55.000 Interesting.

00:17:56.000 So you're playing pool over in Russia.

00:17:59.000 Are there many pool tournaments?

00:18:01.000 I mean, we have amateur tournaments every two weeks, maybe, and one tournament a month, which is called Russian Cup, which is kind of like a professional tournament.

00:18:13.000 Just one a month.

00:18:14.000 So you realized at some point in time that you were eventually going to have to come to America to pursue it professionally, or Europe.

00:18:21.000 Europe was my first step because we have a Euro Tour.

00:18:25.000 That's the major tournament in Europe that I started with.

00:18:30.000 I mean, that's the path that all the players have to go through in Europe.

00:18:35.000 You have to play the Euro Tours and if you do good on them, then you can start really traveling and playing international tournaments.

00:18:43.000 I watched a match with you against Oscar Dominguez, who I know from L.A. I played in a tournament once against his dad, and his dad actually did that table out there, that really tight Brunswick.

00:18:55.000 His dad cut those pockets.

00:18:57.000 Oh, he's the best, yeah.

00:18:58.000 He's the best.

00:18:59.000 He did my old diamond at my house, too.

00:19:01.000 Yeah, he's amazing.

00:19:03.000 The best table mechanic in the business.

00:19:04.000 Oh, 100%.

00:19:05.000 Yeah, and boy, he did all the hard times tables, and they were all brutal.

00:19:10.000 Yeah.

00:19:10.000 Really tight tables, yeah.

00:19:13.000 But I watched you play him, and what did you run, seven and out on him?

00:19:17.000 There was like this one match.

00:19:18.000 How long ago was it?

00:19:20.000 It wasn't that long ago.

00:19:22.000 We played in his pool room in Sacramento.

00:19:25.000 I think it might have been, yeah.

00:19:27.000 I think it might have been in hard times.

00:19:28.000 In hard times in Sacramento.

00:19:31.000 But it was like, you played a perfect match.

00:19:33.000 Perfect match.

00:19:34.000 It was beautiful.

00:19:35.000 I mean, you got perfect on every ball.

00:19:37.000 Is this it right here?

00:19:37.000 Yeah.

00:19:38.000 A month ago.

00:19:39.000 Yeah, the name of the video is Absolute Perfection, Fedor Gorsett vs.

00:19:45.000 Oscar Dominguez.

00:19:46.000 Oh yeah, that was this year.

00:19:47.000 That's actually his pool room in Sacramento.

00:19:50.000 Which is Hard Times.

00:19:51.000 Yeah, he bought Hard Times, which is amazing.

00:19:54.000 It's an amazing place.

00:19:55.000 I played there once when I was doing stand-up comedy up there.

00:19:58.000 So you guys playing ten ball?

00:20:00.000 Ten ball, yeah, with the magic rack.

00:20:03.000 Yeah.

00:20:04.000 The magic rack, for people that don't know, there's a regular rack.

00:20:08.000 When you put the balls in the rack, it's a wooden rack or a plastic rack, and it's shaped like a triangle.

00:20:13.000 And then there's this plastic sheet that keeps the balls completely tight, and it's not a rack like a normal rack.

00:20:20.000 It's something that you place the balls on, And it ensures that all the balls are completely tight.

00:20:26.000 So, in a situation like that, and obviously you know this, it's just for people who don't know, the balls will spread very evenly or very, they have a similar reaction every time.

00:20:41.000 So you're playing for specific balls.

00:20:44.000 Yeah, you have more control.

00:20:46.000 You can actually control the ball you can make on the break versus the regular wooden rack.

00:20:51.000 It's not really like that.

00:20:53.000 Some people get upset at the magic rack because really good players, when they have a very good controlled break, they either make the one on the side or they make the corner ball and then they play in position on the one with the cue ball and then they just get out over and over and over again.

00:21:09.000 But I appreciate perfection.

00:21:12.000 I appreciate watching something like this where someone just gets dead on every ball.

00:21:17.000 It was fun playing you out there too.

00:21:19.000 Oh yeah, me too.

00:21:19.000 It was fun watching, you know?

00:21:21.000 I honestly didn't think that you were that good.

00:21:25.000 But you played really good.

00:21:26.000 Well, I was just happy I ran out the first game on you.

00:21:28.000 Oh, yeah, you put some pressure on me.

00:21:30.000 At least I got one.

00:21:31.000 I had to make some tough shots, too.

00:21:33.000 Yeah.

00:21:33.000 That's a tough table, too.

00:21:35.000 That four and a quarter inch diamond.

00:21:37.000 That's not an easy table.

00:21:39.000 No, it's not.

00:21:39.000 Yeah, but I got excited.

00:21:41.000 I was excited to play.

00:21:42.000 Because I don't get a chance to play.

00:21:43.000 I play my friend Sean, but I don't get a chance to play real elite players.

00:21:48.000 He wins some games.

00:21:50.000 Yeah. 0.90

00:21:51.000 Something to fuck up? 0.95

00:21:53.000 He gets out. 0.99

00:21:55.000 He gets out.

00:21:55.000 He can win some games.

00:21:56.000 But not like you.

00:21:58.000 Well, I appreciate it, too.

00:21:59.000 My pleasure.

00:22:01.000 So, when you decided, like, pool as a profession is, there's a small handful of people that make a good living.

00:22:13.000 Oh, very small, yeah.

00:22:14.000 Yeah, very small handful.

00:22:15.000 And then everybody else is just basically doing it because they have a passion for it.

00:22:19.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:22:20.000 Yeah.

00:22:21.000 That's a strange thing to dedicate your life to.

00:22:25.000 Because a lot of people feel like it's one of those things where if you get really, really, really good at it, you go, damn, I could have got really good at something else and I'd be rich.

00:22:34.000 Oh, for sure. 0.83

00:22:34.000 For sure. 0.83

00:22:35.000 Like if you got really good at tennis, you'd be rich.

00:22:37.000 Yep.

00:22:38.000 If you got really good at golf, you'd be rich.

00:22:40.000 But honestly, the way I see it, the game is growing nowadays.

00:22:45.000 The prize money is getting bigger and bigger.

00:22:47.000 It is.

00:22:48.000 Well, Matchroom Pool is doing a great job.

00:22:50.000 They put on a lot of tournaments, and you could watch them on DAZN, the streaming app.

00:22:56.000 But it's an underappreciated game that occasionally blows up in America.

00:23:03.000 When The Hustler came out, everybody wanted to play pool.

00:23:06.000 And then there was a lull, and then The Color of Money came out with Tom Cruise and Paul Newman, and everybody wanted to play pool.

00:23:12.000 Pool rooms exploded all over the country and it was on ESPN. But then slowly but surely it kind of fades.

00:23:20.000 And it's in a position now where I think the internet is really doing a good job of bringing it back.

00:23:26.000 And I have some ideas of my own what I want to do.

00:23:29.000 And one of the things that I want to do is I want to host matches here.

00:23:33.000 And me and my friend Tommy from the East Coast, who's a really good player, do commentary and put it up on YouTube.

00:23:41.000 Sure, that'd be great.

00:23:43.000 I think it'd be a fun thing to do.

00:23:44.000 That'd be fun for sure.

00:23:45.000 And to get a guy like, you know, maybe you versus a guy like Mika Eminen or a guy like Shane Van Boning and have you guys play matches.

00:23:53.000 Absolutely.

00:23:54.000 For prize money.

00:23:55.000 That'd be fun.

00:23:55.000 Good, right?

00:23:56.000 Yeah.

00:23:57.000 I think...

00:23:57.000 I've been trying to figure out ideas to make pool more popular.

00:24:03.000 For sure, yeah.

00:24:04.000 I mean, that helps.

00:24:05.000 I think that's the best one, is me do commentary.

00:24:08.000 Because I can't play good enough to play in a tournament, but I can, you know, I can play good enough that I understand what's going on.

00:24:17.000 Yeah.

00:24:18.000 You know?

00:24:18.000 Sure.

00:24:19.000 So, there's a hope.

00:24:22.000 Well, that sounds real good.

00:24:23.000 Yeah.

00:24:24.000 So when you first started going to Europe and playing, how old were you then?

00:24:30.000 I was 14 when I went to, or 13 when I went to my first Euro tour.

00:24:35.000 So this is like your parents fund this or someone else?

00:24:39.000 Do you have a sponsor?

00:24:40.000 No, so what happened was when I was, the very first Euro tour I went to, I was sponsoring myself.

00:24:50.000 So I spent my own money out of my own pocket and did really good.

00:24:54.000 I finished in the last 32, my very first Euro tour.

00:24:58.000 And then my father passed away when I was 13. And two years later, after tough, tough times, one guy...

00:25:12.000 So I was always going to the pool room in Moscow trying to hustle people.

00:25:17.000 At 13?

00:25:18.000 At 13, yeah.

00:25:19.000 I mean, I was really passionate about the game, and after school I was always going to the pool room trying to play with somebody, I mean, cheap, like $10, $20, trying to make something.

00:25:31.000 And also it's good practice for me because...

00:25:35.000 I mean, the more you play, the better you play.

00:25:37.000 Yeah.

00:25:38.000 And there was one guy, his name was Mike Nikolaev, and I know he was playing worse than me, and we were playing for like 15 bucks per set.

00:25:51.000 So I was going, you know, thinking that, you know, it's free money, 45 bucks, win a couple of sets and go back home.

00:25:59.000 I get there and I only had like 20 bucks with me.

00:26:03.000 I had no money.

00:26:04.000 And I ended up losing all of the sets, all three sets.

00:26:09.000 I don't know.

00:26:10.000 I don't know how it happened, but I lost everything.

00:26:12.000 And I told him that I'll pay him later.

00:26:17.000 And then the same evening, he messaged me, you know what, we have to meet again tomorrow.

00:26:23.000 And when I came to the pool room, he offered me a sponsorship.

00:26:27.000 He said, I'll take care of you.

00:26:29.000 You can pick whatever cue you want.

00:26:31.000 And, you know, we have to plan your career.

00:26:35.000 And if you really want to make it, then I'll help you.

00:26:37.000 Really?

00:26:38.000 Just one match?

00:26:39.000 You played one set against each other?

00:26:41.000 No, we played three sets.

00:26:41.000 Three sets.

00:26:42.000 I lost all of them.

00:26:43.000 Yeah, but even though you lost, he still saw so much potential in you that he wanted to sponsor you.

00:26:48.000 That's interesting.

00:26:49.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:26:49.000 There was a lot of situations like this in my life, honestly, that I'm grateful, and it's absolutely amazing how it happened.

00:26:57.000 So...

00:26:58.000 Yeah, after this we started with some European tournaments.

00:27:01.000 I went to Norway, Sweden, some Euro tours.

00:27:05.000 And I wasn't really winning, but I had a slightly progression.

00:27:08.000 I was always practicing and trying to get better.

00:27:11.000 And yeah, like I said, with Johan Reising coming to Russia as a national coach at the same time, that was perfect timing.

00:27:21.000 Because Mike told me that we can possibly work with Johan individually later on.

00:27:27.000 which happened and uh that's how it all started that's so fortunate yeah it is isn't that crazy how that works a one encounter with someone can change your entire life oh yeah mike and his brother vladimir they uh they helped me so much and it's crazy how it happened and then we went to derby city classic people saw how i play and then uh How old were you then?

00:27:52.000 16. 16 at the Derby City.

00:27:54.000 They wouldn't even let you in this year, right?

00:27:57.000 I think you have to be...

00:27:58.000 Last year they changed the rules because of the casino, and I didn't play the year before.

00:28:05.000 Well, it used to be on a boat, right?

00:28:06.000 Yeah.

00:28:07.000 Which is like, there's a term, riverboat gambler.

00:28:11.000 I was good friends with this guy who was a really hilarious pool player who used to call everybody, oh, he's a riverboat gambler.

00:28:19.000 Everybody who is a wild, crazy gambler, he would call a riverboat gambler.

00:28:24.000 So I thought it was so appropriate when they moved Derby City to an actual riverboat.

00:28:31.000 But I would imagine...

00:28:33.000 Do they have to deal with waves?

00:28:35.000 Does the boat move?

00:28:37.000 I don't know.

00:28:38.000 I really... 0.99

00:28:39.000 I mean, that sounds stupid for a pool. 0.99

00:28:40.000 It is, it is. 1.00

00:28:41.000 I mean, unless that sucker's anchored into the ground, like, it's gonna move around. 0.99

00:28:46.000 Like, the balls could shift. 0.99

00:28:47.000 Yeah. 0.85

00:28:48.000 Like, if somebody drives by and leaves a big wake, you know, the tables could move a little bit.

00:28:54.000 So yeah, what happened was then the year after I came to Derby and I did good in that invitational tournament and on the side I used to always hustle and do something like bet on the matches and trying to win a little more.

00:29:10.000 And then I... Actually, what it was, I was playing that Invitational Temple tournament, and me and my friend Maxim, who also was a pool player with me on the trip, we used to bet on me playing in that tournament on every match.

00:29:26.000 And we didn't know the person that we were betting on.

00:29:28.000 It was Alan and Jason, the brother that came with me today.

00:29:34.000 So we were betting and betting and betting, and then I think the final match, I got into the finals.

00:29:39.000 I played Roberto Gomez.

00:29:41.000 We asked him if you want to double or nothing or bet again.

00:29:45.000 And they said, no, we're good.

00:29:46.000 So I ended up losing, and then they were staking Skyler Woodward at the time.

00:29:52.000 They were putting Skyler in the tournament, and I drew Skyler in round 10 of Derby City Classic and beat him 9-1.

00:30:01.000 Wow.

00:30:02.000 Yeah.

00:30:03.000 He's very good.

00:30:05.000 Oh, yeah, he is.

00:30:05.000 He's still a top player today.

00:30:07.000 Yeah.

00:30:08.000 And that's how I met the other two brothers, Alan and Jason.

00:30:12.000 That's another...

00:30:14.000 Oh, that's crazy.

00:30:14.000 Yeah.

00:30:15.000 Well, was Skyler on the Moscone Cup this year?

00:30:18.000 Was he on the U.S. team?

00:30:19.000 Yeah.

00:30:20.000 The Moscone Cup, for people who don't know, is a really amazing event that they put on where it's every year...

00:30:27.000 It's in December?

00:30:29.000 It's either end of November or beginning of December.

00:30:32.000 It's a team match between Europe and the United States.

00:30:37.000 So you have all the top European players and they play all sorts of different ways.

00:30:42.000 They play individually, one-on-one.

00:30:44.000 They play two versus two, which is very interesting.

00:30:47.000 If you and I were playing two versus two, And we were on the same team.

00:30:51.000 You would make a shot and leave position for me, and then I would make a shot and leave position for you, which is interesting because some of the guys are left-handed and some of the guys are right-handed, so you have to leave position for a left-handed shot where it would be awkward for you to reach if you're right-handed,

00:31:07.000 but it's perfect for left-handed.

00:31:09.000 So there's a lot of weird thinking.

00:31:11.000 And then on top of that, there's the wildest crowd in all of Portland.

00:31:16.000 But they're great, because they're quiet when the player's down on the ball.

00:31:21.000 Yeah, I mean, they know what's going on.

00:31:23.000 All of them are pool fans, and they know when they can get in.

00:31:26.000 I wanted to get out to Vegas to see it this year, but I was just too busy.

00:31:29.000 I really wanted to go, because it looks like so much fun to watch on TV, because there's so much screaming and cheering when someone makes a shot, and then everybody quiets down again.

00:31:40.000 Yeah, this year that was as wild as it could be, I think.

00:31:43.000 Yes, it was very wild.

00:31:45.000 And Europe won this year.

00:31:46.000 And unfortunately, you weren't allowed to play for the European team.

00:31:51.000 I was allowed, but I wasn't...

00:31:53.000 They didn't pick you.

00:31:54.000 I wasn't picked, yeah. 1.00

00:31:56.000 That's bullshit. 1.00

00:31:58.000 I think that's bullshit. 1.00

00:32:00.000 I mean, yeah, I think so too. 1.00

00:32:02.000 I think it's bullshit. 1.00

00:32:03.000 I think it's because you're Russian, 100%. 1.00

00:32:05.000 It just seemed like they probably were like, look, maybe it's not the best time to put a Russian player in the Moscone Cup.

00:32:14.000 And it probably isn't.

00:32:16.000 Maybe politically.

00:32:17.000 I don't think they have a problem with it in America.

00:32:20.000 No.

00:32:20.000 Because, like, when Russian fighters fight in the UFC, no one has a problem with it.

00:32:24.000 It's like when they're really good, you know, no one cares.

00:32:27.000 No, and honestly, this year, being in the United States, I stayed here since February, and I had a lot of support from American fans, and everybody treated me so well that I don't think there will be any problem.

00:32:40.000 Not at all.

00:32:41.000 No, this is a country of immigrants.

00:32:43.000 Yeah.

00:32:43.000 I mean, it's the whole country.

00:32:46.000 There's no one, I mean, unless you're Native American, and even them, most likely some of them came across the Bering Strait a long time ago, or some of them might have been here originally.

00:32:56.000 But this is a country, primarily the vast majority of the population, their grandparents or their parents or some or them, they came from another country.

00:33:05.000 So I think we're more accepting of that here.

00:33:08.000 Yeah.

00:33:10.000 I mean, it's a tough question for me because I still don't really know the real reason why I wasn't picked.

00:33:17.000 It's 100% because you're Russian. 1.00

00:33:19.000 I'll just tell you the real reason.

00:33:20.000 All right.

00:33:21.000 It has to be.

00:33:22.000 You're without doubt one of the best players in the world.

00:33:25.000 Like I said, I think you're in the top five of the world, for sure.

00:33:28.000 You could win any tournament in the world, right?

00:33:30.000 Don't you think?

00:33:30.000 Yeah, I can.

00:33:31.000 Yeah, any tournament.

00:33:32.000 You enter, you could win.

00:33:34.000 You're in the finals against Jason Shaw, whoever it is.

00:33:37.000 You have a very good chance of winning.

00:33:39.000 I agree, yeah.

00:33:40.000 But that elite level, when you get to that level, the Shane Van Bonings, you, Dennis Orcolo, anybody can win.

00:33:49.000 Oh, for sure, yeah.

00:33:50.000 And everybody, we have a different winner every tournament, too.

00:33:53.000 Yeah.

00:33:54.000 But for the rare people that can win, like, how many times has Shane won the U.S. Open?

00:33:59.000 Five.

00:34:00.000 Crazy.

00:34:01.000 It is.

00:34:01.000 That's crazy.

00:34:02.000 Or Earl, how many times did Earl win the U.S. Open?

00:34:05.000 It's the same, I think.

00:34:06.000 I invited Earl on the podcast.

00:34:08.000 He didn't even get back to me.

00:34:09.000 Earl was mad at me because I did an impression of him.

00:34:13.000 Have you ever seen my impression of him?

00:34:14.000 Yeah, yeah, that's great.

00:34:15.000 But I can only do an impression of him because I'm a fan.

00:34:18.000 Yeah.

00:34:19.000 Like, if I can do that voice, the only reason you can do that voice is you've watched my game.

00:34:26.000 I'm a giant fan of that guy.

00:34:28.000 Oh, yeah.

00:34:28.000 Like, when I was doing that, that was with Justin Collett from The Action Report, who was...

00:34:33.000 Play that, Jamie.

00:34:35.000 For people who don't know, this is my best impression.

00:34:40.000 Like, out of all the impressions that I do, I can do a bunch.

00:34:42.000 I can do like Mike Tyson.

00:34:44.000 My voice is not good at impressions, but there's a few that I could do.

00:34:48.000 Here, rewind.

00:34:49.000 This is Justin with TheActionReport.com.

00:34:50.000 We're joined here tonight, live from Hollywood Billiards in Los Angeles, California, Mr. Earl Strickland, ladies and gentlemen.

00:34:56.000 Earl, how are you doing tonight? 0.99

00:35:11.000 For people who don't understand, Earl is very eccentric and he wears like weights on his arms and shit. 0.98

00:35:39.000 What's your plans for the rest of the year? 0.98

00:35:41.000 I mean, you've got a lot going on.

00:35:44.000 A lot of it involves marijuana.

00:35:48.000 I think that's what he got upset at.

00:35:52.000 Probably.

00:35:52.000 How does he know?

00:35:54.000 Now play a video of Earl Strickland actually talking.

00:35:57.000 Because there's a video of me and Earl when I met him.

00:36:00.000 I don't even know if he remembers when I met him.

00:36:02.000 I met him after that.

00:36:04.000 And he's like, why are you picking on me?

00:36:05.000 I'm like, I love you.

00:36:06.000 I'm a big fan.

00:36:22.000 Okay.

00:36:24.000 That's good enough.

00:36:25.000 So, that's my best impression.

00:36:26.000 It's the most obscure impression in all of the world of entertainment, and I picked Earl.

00:36:32.000 It is.

00:36:33.000 It's a perfect copy of him.

00:36:34.000 I want you on, Earl.

00:36:35.000 Come on.

00:36:36.000 Come on, Earl.

00:36:37.000 I'm your fan.

00:36:38.000 That'd be fun.

00:36:38.000 I love the guy.

00:36:39.000 I'm a giant fan of his, and he's absolutely one of the greatest, if not the greatest, nine-ball player of all time.

00:36:46.000 Yeah, and the greatest character in the game.

00:36:48.000 Oh, my God.

00:36:49.000 For sure.

00:36:49.000 I mean, for people who don't know, he wears, like...

00:36:52.000 Tape all over the tips of his fingers so that it looks like he's got golf balls in the end of his fingers.

00:36:58.000 Weights all over the body, too.

00:36:59.000 Yeah, he wears weights on his body so he stays still.

00:37:02.000 Yeah.

00:37:02.000 He wears weights on his elbow sometimes.

00:37:05.000 Sometimes he wears, like, shooting glasses, like tactical glasses.

00:37:09.000 He wears giant headphones so he can't hear anybody.

00:37:11.000 I mean, he's very athletic, too.

00:37:12.000 He runs every day.

00:37:14.000 Yeah.

00:37:14.000 He has, like, a thousand push-ups and seat-ups every day.

00:37:17.000 And he's, you know...

00:37:19.000 Super, super accomplished.

00:37:20.000 And still, to this day, can play top-flight, world-class pool.

00:37:24.000 And he's in his 60s.

00:37:25.000 I mean, he was on Moscone Cup.

00:37:27.000 Yes, he was on Moscone Cup.

00:37:28.000 Played really well.

00:37:29.000 He's playing with, like, a very large tip now.

00:37:31.000 What is he doing?

00:37:32.000 This is his new thing.

00:37:34.000 It's like a 14-millimeter tip, it looks like.

00:37:36.000 He has some weird cue.

00:37:37.000 It's like a brake cue shaft with a brake cue ferrule, but the playing tip.

00:37:42.000 I don't know.

00:37:43.000 It's, like, super thick.

00:37:45.000 And he never lets anybody touch his cue.

00:37:49.000 I don't know.

00:37:51.000 Well, he has tennis rap all over there.

00:37:54.000 And he was the first guy, I think, to play with an extension completely attached to his cue all the time.

00:38:01.000 Yeah, and I think Shane Van Boning is also playing with an extension because of Earl.

00:38:05.000 I think so, too.

00:38:06.000 Yeah, I think he actually played Earl and he's like, let me try that. 1.00

00:38:09.000 Oh, shit. 0.99

00:38:10.000 There's something to it. 1.00

00:38:11.000 I know you don't like the extension, but...

00:38:13.000 But there is something to it.

00:38:14.000 When you have that extension on, it seems like there's a little bit more momentum.

00:38:17.000 It changes the balance, and that's what players like about it, I think.

00:38:21.000 Yeah, like a lot of top players now play with at least a 4-inch extension.

00:38:25.000 Yeah, and a tiny one, too.

00:38:26.000 The 1-inch extension.

00:38:28.000 Oh, really?

00:38:29.000 Yeah.

00:38:29.000 Just for just a little bit of weight out back.

00:38:31.000 Just a little extra weight out back.

00:38:33.000 Yeah, I'm, like I said, I wanted to get Earl on, but he didn't want to do it.

00:38:37.000 But I'm like, I think it'd be interesting to talk to you because I just think your journey and just to be such a young guy and to make this trek...

00:38:45.000 Come from Russia and come to the United States and now live here and play pool. 1.00

00:38:49.000 I'm just fascinated, like, what is that like?

00:38:52.000 Does it feel strange to you?

00:38:54.000 I mean, it feels really strange, but it's been already eight months, so I got really used to that already.

00:39:02.000 Do you have a permanent residence in America?

00:39:05.000 So, actually...

00:39:08.000 I actually should apply for a green card this week.

00:39:11.000 My girlfriend, Christina, she already got a green card last weekend. 0.67

00:39:16.000 Your girlfriend plays too?

00:39:17.000 Yeah, and she's good. 0.91

00:39:18.000 Yeah, well, that's the key to a relationship with a pool player.

00:39:22.000 You can't be playing with non-pool players, or you can't have a relationship with non-pool players, because they're not going to understand.

00:39:29.000 No, it's tough.

00:39:30.000 I mean, pool players, they're traveling a lot and playing pool all day.

00:39:34.000 I mean, how can you like it if you're not...

00:39:36.000 No.

00:39:36.000 I think you have to be involved.

00:39:38.000 So it narrows the dating pool for pool players.

00:39:42.000 How many guys date pool players that are actual pool players?

00:39:47.000 Like Josh Filler, his wife is a pool player.

00:39:51.000 Tyler Steyer.

00:39:52.000 His wife is a pool player.

00:39:53.000 Yes.

00:39:55.000 I mean, who else?

00:39:59.000 There was someone else.

00:40:04.000 Whatever.

00:40:04.000 Someone else.

00:40:05.000 But there are pool groupies.

00:40:07.000 Yeah.

00:40:08.000 And I found that out with my friend Johnny.

00:40:10.000 Because my friend Johnny was a really good player when I lived in New York. 0.98

00:40:12.000 And, like, girls wanted to fuck him because he was a pool player. 0.98

00:40:15.000 I'm like, this is crazy. 1.00

00:40:17.000 He's a big, fat guy. 0.98

00:40:19.000 Oh, yeah.

00:40:20.000 But girls loved him because he was so good.

00:40:22.000 He was such a good pool player.

00:40:24.000 You know, I don't know if you've ever read this book.

00:40:27.000 It's a book called McGurdy, Life of a Billiard Tussler.

00:40:31.000 Very interesting book.

00:40:33.000 Robert Byrne wrote it.

00:40:34.000 And it's about a guy who, you know, Robert Byrne, the guy who writes all those instructional books.

00:40:38.000 Yeah, I've heard of him, but I never read the book.

00:40:40.000 He wrote this book about this guy who was a famous pool hustler in the Depression and traveled around.

00:40:47.000 It's an interesting book for anybody to read, not just someone who's interested in pool, because it's about this person who's involved in just deep struggle, like riding around on railroad cars and begging for food.

00:41:03.000 It wasn't an easy life by any stretch of the imagination.

00:41:07.000 But what was my point?

00:41:10.000 I forgot my point.

00:41:13.000 Oh, this is my point.

00:41:14.000 So they were in a pool hall once and Nixon was on TV and he was the president.

00:41:20.000 And he was with this guy and the guy goes, look at that guy.

00:41:24.000 President of the United States and he can't make a ball.

00:41:28.000 That's how pool players think. 0.98

00:41:30.000 They don't give a fuck about you if you can't play pool. 0.97

00:41:33.000 I mean, some of them are like that, yeah. 0.96

00:41:36.000 Yeah.

00:41:36.000 No, a lot of them are like that, man.

00:41:38.000 That's like one thing that I'm proud of.

00:41:41.000 I've played pool with some people, and they're like, oh, you actually can play some pool.

00:41:46.000 Well, that's how I was today.

00:41:48.000 I played Mike Siegel once, and I broke and ran out.

00:41:51.000 Well, I didn't break and ran out.

00:41:52.000 He missed a ball, and I ran out the first set on him, too.

00:41:54.000 And he talked about it on a podcast, too.

00:41:56.000 Wow.

00:41:57.000 I was very proud, because he said that I'm a really good pool player.

00:42:00.000 I'm like, oh, Mike Siegel said that.

00:42:02.000 Wow, I mean, that's an achievement.

00:42:04.000 Yeah.

00:42:04.000 For sure.

00:42:05.000 Yeah, he has a podcast now.

00:42:07.000 It's him and Kim Davenport and David Pierce.

00:42:11.000 I think I saw it, yeah, at the International Open this year.

00:42:13.000 They were doing something.

00:42:14.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:42:15.000 It's cool.

00:42:17.000 I'm glad that people are, you know, because of the internet, there's like a whole thing with live streaming.

00:42:23.000 So there's like live stream matches and there's live stream matches that people do for pay-per-view.

00:42:28.000 Yeah.

00:42:29.000 Which is really interesting.

00:42:30.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:42:31.000 And it's also helping the game to grow, I think.

00:42:34.000 Yeah.

00:42:35.000 Yeah.

00:42:35.000 There's still guys that don't travel and don't do anything, and they stay in their hometown.

00:42:40.000 And they're like elite players, too, like Justin Bergman.

00:42:43.000 Yeah.

00:42:44.000 I mean, Justin is an elite player.

00:42:46.000 He's as elite as it could be.

00:42:48.000 As elite as it gets.

00:42:49.000 Yeah.

00:42:49.000 There's a video of him.

00:42:50.000 Pull this up.

00:42:51.000 Justin Bergman runs 18 racks.

00:42:54.000 That's been recently, but it was on the bar table.

00:42:57.000 It was on a bar table.

00:42:58.000 Was it seven foot or six foot?

00:42:59.000 Seven foot.

00:43:00.000 Seven foot. 0.99

00:43:00.000 So it's not as impressive, but it's fucking crazy. 0.99

00:43:05.000 When you watch him do it, it's not as impressive because he's playing on a smaller table, but I mean, holy shit. 0.99

00:43:14.000 But also it's a nine ball with the magic crack. 0.97

00:43:18.000 Yes.

00:43:18.000 So it's the easiest game you can ever imagine on a pool table.

00:43:22.000 Yes.

00:43:23.000 Easiest game you can imagine on a pool table, but still.

00:43:25.000 Yeah, of course.

00:43:26.000 I mean, 18 pack is an 18 pack.

00:43:28.000 Now, he plays with one of these keelwood shafts.

00:43:31.000 Yeah.

00:43:31.000 What do you think of those?

00:43:33.000 I actually tried his shaft, and I'm the big fan, but I've tried a lot of keelwood shafts, and they're not as consistent as carbon fiber, I think.

00:43:43.000 Well, it's a different thing because you have a different feel, right?

00:43:49.000 Yeah, a completely different feel.

00:43:50.000 But, you know, Richard Su?

00:43:52.000 Yeah.

00:43:53.000 He makes those Tsunami shafts.

00:43:55.000 Those are really good.

00:43:57.000 I've got one of those for my Southwest.

00:43:58.000 I like it a lot.

00:44:00.000 And I'm going to have him make me some for other cues.

00:44:03.000 See, it's very, very personal when it comes to cues.

00:44:06.000 I mean, you like extensions, skill with shafts.

00:44:09.000 I like non-extensions and carbon fiber, and we could be playing completely different styles.

00:44:14.000 That's what's great about pool, I think.

00:44:15.000 Well, I like carbon fiber, too.

00:44:17.000 I think it used to be, back in the day, people would play with fiberglass Mm-hmm.

00:44:23.000 Cues, and they were a lemon.

00:44:24.000 Like, you saw someone playing, like, a black fiberglass shaft. 1.00

00:44:28.000 You're like, oh, this guy sucks. 0.99

00:44:29.000 Because they kind of sucked back then. 1.00

00:44:32.000 Yeah.

00:44:32.000 But then Q-Tech, which is your sponsor, started sponsoring Earl, and then they eventually sponsored Shane and a bunch of other elite players, and they started making, like, really good pool cues.

00:44:42.000 Yeah.

00:44:43.000 Yeah, they did, and I think they were the first ones that were making this fiberglass shafts that were really popular back in the day.

00:44:50.000 Well, remember they used to make a wooden shaft that's covered in like a thin sheet of clear plastic.

00:44:56.000 I think that's what Shane used to play with.

00:44:58.000 Yes, back in the day.

00:44:59.000 Earl, it looks like his was sanded down.

00:45:02.000 Yeah. 0.76

00:45:02.000 It looked like he sanded the shit out of that clear stuff and got down to the wood. 0.76

00:45:07.000 And he was playing with like a very small millimeter. 0.82

00:45:09.000 I think it was like a 12 millimeter shaft.

00:45:11.000 Yeah, probably thinner.

00:45:12.000 Yeah.

00:45:13.000 How do you fall on what weight to play with, what millimeter to play with?

00:45:21.000 Did you slowly evolve?

00:45:23.000 Because you play with a fairly light cue.

00:45:25.000 You play with an 18 ounce cue.

00:45:27.000 For a lot of people that don't know, that's on the lighter side.

00:45:30.000 And your tip is 11.5?

00:45:33.000 12.5.

00:45:34.000 Oh, excuse me.

00:45:35.000 12.5.

00:45:35.000 You used to play with the 11 in the house?

00:45:38.000 I used to play with 11.7, and I used to shape it down a little more, so it probably was 11.5.

00:45:43.000 And was that the Z shaft?

00:45:45.000 No, that was actually the Jacobi edge shaft I used to play with.

00:45:49.000 Actually, that's another good story.

00:45:51.000 I came to Derby City Classic the very first time and Mike was a Jacobi Q ambassador, or he was a dealer in Russia, and he said, you have to pick a Q when we go to US. And I didn't want to change my Q on the tournament right before I start playing.

00:46:08.000 And he said, it's all right, you can do it, you know.

00:46:11.000 And I picked the cue from the wall and I started hitting and I really, really liked the cue.

00:46:16.000 And I ended up beating everybody.

00:46:18.000 I played so good.

00:46:21.000 That's amazing for me because it never happened to me after.

00:46:24.000 Right off the rack.

00:46:26.000 That is unusual.

00:46:27.000 Yeah, usually you have to experiment with cues and find what's better for you and what's with you and that's actually how I found that 12.5 is better for me and I've experimented so much that it's crazy.

00:46:42.000 For me it's so fascinating because what the game is, is you are rolling a ball purely with the force of your arm and the weight of the cue And you're trying to calculate the exact or very close to the exact amount of revolutions a ball is going to make over the course of like a nine-foot table.

00:47:04.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:47:05.000 And for people that don't play it and don't know how nuts that is, like some of the shots that you made out there, I was like, damn. 0.97

00:47:11.000 Because you're making these long shots, but you got within inches of where you wanted to be. 0.98

00:47:17.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:47:17.000 That's just like a roll, one extra roll and you're fucked. 1.00

00:47:20.000 Oh yeah. 1.00

00:47:21.000 You know?

00:47:21.000 It's such a game of just millimeters.

00:47:25.000 It's a game of millimeters, a game changer for sure.

00:47:27.000 But that's why the feel of the cue is so important.

00:47:31.000 Yeah.

00:47:31.000 That's why, you know, and getting accustomed to what happens with that lighter weight cue or that heavier weight cue.

00:47:39.000 Like a lot of the older players, like Efrem Reyes always played with a very heavy cue.

00:47:44.000 I think his cue was more than 21 ounces.

00:47:47.000 Yeah, and they liked high deflection shafts.

00:47:49.000 Same as all the agents.

00:47:52.000 I don't really know the reason why, but they all like the high deflection shafts.

00:47:56.000 They like those stiff, southwest-style shafts.

00:48:00.000 Do you think it's just because that's what they started with and they're accustomed to what happens when you hit the ball?

00:48:06.000 I think so, yeah.

00:48:07.000 I think so.

00:48:08.000 For people who don't know what we're talking about when it comes to high deflection and low deflection, the way you hit a ball with English, so if I hit a ball and I hit a ball on the right side of the ball, it'll actually throw the ball off to the left.

00:48:22.000 And so everybody calculates that when you shoot a ball.

00:48:25.000 Like sometimes when you're aiming at a ball with a shaft that has high deflection, you're really aiming to miss.

00:48:32.000 But you're aiming with deflection so that you know that when the ball actually leaves the cue, it's going to kind of squirt off to the right and it'll make the ball perfectly.

00:48:42.000 Yeah, sometimes you'll have to aim to the right side of the ball to hit the left side.

00:48:45.000 Yeah, but all of that...

00:48:48.000 Is only available in your head if you're playing all the time.

00:48:52.000 Oh, yeah.

00:48:52.000 It takes a lot of practice, of course.

00:48:54.000 You get a feel for pool.

00:48:56.000 When I was playing, when I lived in New York and I was playing every day, the best feeling in the world was when you're in stroke.

00:49:04.000 Like you've been playing every day, eight hours a day, and you can get out there and you can just fire balls in.

00:49:09.000 You just have that touch and it just comes and it goes.

00:49:14.000 It is.

00:49:15.000 It's a crazy thing.

00:49:17.000 It doesn't really matter how much you practice.

00:49:19.000 You have these days when you just feel everything.

00:49:23.000 When everything just comes together and you just don't miss.

00:49:27.000 And the problem with me is I like to work out.

00:49:29.000 And if you lift weights, your feel's gone.

00:49:33.000 I know, that's why I'm very slim.

00:49:35.000 Well, do you know Willie Hoppy?

00:49:37.000 He wouldn't even drive a car on the days that he had a match.

00:49:40.000 Wow.

00:49:41.000 Wouldn't even drive a car. 1.00

00:49:42.000 He's like, I'm not touching shit. 0.99

00:49:44.000 I'm just going to leave my arms. 0.99

00:49:44.000 Well, I have my own things, too, and every player has them, but that's too crazy for me. 0.99

00:49:50.000 But his was like, he didn't want to use his arms.

00:49:52.000 He didn't want any strain at all on his arms, even just turning.

00:49:56.000 I bet back in the Willy Hoppy days, I don't even know if they had power steering back then.

00:50:01.000 Oh, yeah?

00:50:01.000 I don't know.

00:50:02.000 Did they?

00:50:03.000 What year was Willy Hoppy around?

00:50:07.000 So Willy Hoppy, by the way, wasn't even necessarily always playing pool.

00:50:12.000 He was more of a billiards player.

00:50:13.000 Died in 1959. Okay.

00:50:16.000 So when did they invent power steering?

00:50:18.000 Let's find that out. 0.62

00:50:21.000 Because, like, that makes sense, because I have an old Porsche, and it doesn't have power steering, and every time I turn the wheel, I go to fucking, you know, it's like, it involves a lot of strain. 0.99

00:50:31.000 So maybe if he was playing, it was driving around some old bullshit car. 0.87

00:50:35.000 Technically a 1926, but I can't imagine that it was fully in every car or everything by then. 0.99

00:50:40.000 Yeah, and it probably sucked.

00:50:43.000 Even though they had it, it probably was terrible.

00:50:45.000 Yeah, probably.

00:50:45.000 But yeah, lifting weights is the worst.

00:50:48.000 Like I'll come here from the gym and then I'll try to play with Sean and I can't make a ball.

00:50:53.000 Yeah, you feel like it's like a toothpick to you, right?

00:50:55.000 No, it's just your arms not communicating with you right.

00:50:59.000 But it's actually really good to play after your workout because then your muscle memory kicks in and after practice sessions like this you will be playing better.

00:51:11.000 Maybe.

00:51:11.000 I think the only thing...

00:51:13.000 Your arms are exhausted, though, when you work out.

00:51:16.000 So, like, all the muscle fibers are torn, and they have to sort of rebuild.

00:51:21.000 And so the communication with your arm is like...

00:51:24.000 It's like your arm's drunk.

00:51:26.000 It's not thinking well.

00:51:28.000 I think it might not be a bad time to practice.

00:51:31.000 Just like set up some balls and just practice using the weight of the cue and stroke through it. 0.99

00:51:36.000 But if I had to play like a serious game and I just worked out, I'd be fucked. 0.99

00:51:40.000 I don't have any confidence. 0.99

00:51:41.000 Of course, yeah.

00:51:42.000 It's the worst thing.

00:51:43.000 Yeah.

00:51:44.000 Do you do anything before you play like get a massage or anything like that?

00:51:50.000 Does that ever help you?

00:51:51.000 Yeah, I stretch a lot.

00:51:53.000 Stretch?

00:51:54.000 Yeah, I have a lot of problems with my back because of the way that I grew up and the way I had my stance set up when I was a kid.

00:52:03.000 So I have to stretch every day after the practice and before every morning.

00:52:08.000 What part of your back?

00:52:09.000 Your lower back?

00:52:10.000 The lower back, yeah.

00:52:11.000 Have you ever done anything to strengthen that?

00:52:14.000 I'm doing some core exercises, yeah.

00:52:17.000 I mean, I'm doing some planking, but I'm not very into it.

00:52:22.000 You're not very into exercise?

00:52:23.000 No, but I want to be.

00:52:25.000 You want to be?

00:52:27.000 Yeah.

00:52:27.000 Well, there's a bunch of things that you can do for lower back that can help you a lot.

00:52:32.000 I'll show you afterwards.

00:52:33.000 We have a gym next door.

00:52:35.000 Well, I bought a thing, the machine that called HIPAA extension, I think.

00:52:39.000 Yeah, okay.

00:52:39.000 That's what I do.

00:52:41.000 I mean, that's for the lower back, right?

00:52:42.000 Yes.

00:52:43.000 Yeah, that'll help a lot.

00:52:44.000 Yeah.

00:52:44.000 There's another machine called the Reverse Hyper, which is amazing.

00:52:48.000 But it's a very specialized machine.

00:52:50.000 You have to go to like a real strength and conditioning gym for them to have something like that.

00:52:54.000 But that's really good because it actually decompresses your back as well as strengthens it.

00:52:58.000 Yeah, well, the thing with me, I have one side of my back which is really tight and the other one which is really, really weak.

00:53:07.000 So I have scoliosis and it really makes it difficult for me to strengthen both sides.

00:53:14.000 Have you always had scoliosis?

00:53:16.000 Or do you think this is pool-related?

00:53:18.000 I think it's pool-related.

00:53:19.000 Yeah, you know, they've done these examinations of bodies of archers from like, you know, 2000 years ago, like guys who pulled a bow.

00:53:30.000 And so you'll pull a bow with your right side.

00:53:33.000 So one side is pulling and the other side is just holding.

00:53:37.000 And so you have one side that's like very muscular and the other side, it's totally imbalanced.

00:53:42.000 Like my friend John Dudley, he's a professional archer.

00:53:45.000 And he's a professional bow hunter.

00:53:48.000 And he's an archery coach. 1.00

00:53:49.000 And his back is so fucked up. 0.99

00:53:51.000 Because for decades, he's just been pulling with his right arm. 0.99

00:53:56.000 And so his right side is like his whole body's back's all funky because of that.

00:54:02.000 Well, it's kind of the same for me, but since I started to stretch and really take care of it, it's been better.

00:54:07.000 I mean, I'm 22 and my back is already like 45, I don't know.

00:54:12.000 Oh no.

00:54:14.000 Have you seen the documentary on Jeanette Lee?

00:54:16.000 Yeah.

00:54:17.000 Well, she had really bad scoliosis, and I didn't know how bad it was, which is so impressive that she was able to play so well, because they put these giant rods in her back. 0.67

00:54:27.000 That's crazy. 0.77

00:54:28.000 Oh, my God, the scar goes up her entire back, and there's all these screws and shit in there that's trying to straighten her back out. 1.00

00:54:36.000 Yeah, I don't know. 0.99

00:54:36.000 It's crazy. 0.99

00:54:37.000 They don't have to do that to you.

00:54:39.000 No, no, I didn't do any surgeries or anything.

00:54:41.000 But if you tightened up the other side, if you strengthened up the other side, there's got to be some exercises that you can do to balance your body out.

00:54:49.000 For sure, for sure.

00:54:50.000 You're just eventually going to do that?

00:54:53.000 I eventually have to do it, yeah.

00:54:54.000 This is Jeanette Lee's back. 0.58

00:54:55.000 Look at the size of that scar.

00:54:57.000 I mean, that is like, that's crazy.

00:54:59.000 That's like a two and a half foot scar.

00:55:02.000 It is.

00:55:02.000 That's her entire back.

00:55:04.000 It's wild.

00:55:07.000 Yeah, I don't want none of that, so I have to.

00:55:09.000 I don't think they do that anymore.

00:55:11.000 I don't think they do it like that anymore.

00:55:13.000 There's all sorts of things you can do.

00:55:15.000 I mean, scoliosis is obviously a very complicated ailment, but there's people that believe that spinal decompression and strengthening and yoga exercises, like I was following this lady on Instagram and she had scoliosis and she fixed it with yoga and stretching and Well I was going to some gym called Functional Patterns or something like that in Russia and they told me that they found some program that I can work just on one side

00:55:45.000 for my back but unfortunately I can't go back and do that so I have to find something else here and I didn't really have time this year.

00:55:55.000 It was crazy.

00:55:56.000 I was playing pool non-stop.

00:55:57.000 How many hours of pool do you play a day?

00:56:01.000 Like I said, it's different.

00:56:03.000 When I practice and I don't have any tournaments, I try to play more, like six, eight hours a day, just straight practicing.

00:56:10.000 But when I'm in the tournament season and just have a day in between tournaments, I play probably two or three hours just to stay in stroke.

00:56:17.000 So when you say practicing, are you setting up drills?

00:56:21.000 Both.

00:56:21.000 Drills.

00:56:22.000 I work on specific parts of the game that are weak that I want to strengthen.

00:56:28.000 The break, the jumps, kicking, there's a lot of different aspects in the game that you can practice.

00:56:33.000 Do you break with one of those break rack things, or do you just keep racking the balls?

00:56:37.000 No, I actually ordered a break rack thing a couple of months ago. 0.74

00:56:42.000 It's pretty sweet.

00:56:42.000 It is.

00:56:43.000 It is.

00:56:43.000 Yeah, it's a great thing.

00:56:44.000 I mean, it leaves a big white spot in the middle of your pool table because the ball keeps bouncing.

00:56:48.000 Well, I put the double tape underneath.

00:56:51.000 Oh, that's smart.

00:56:52.000 Yeah.

00:56:52.000 Yeah, but there's a bunch of those interesting inventions that people have come up with.

00:56:57.000 Yeah, it's super sweet.

00:56:59.000 Yeah, when you have a great break, like a guy like Shane that has a killer break, like it's such an advantage.

00:57:06.000 I watched a match once, I forget who he was, I think he was playing Kopinyi and he was playing ten ball and he made six balls in the break.

00:57:14.000 Yeah, I mean break became so big nowadays that it's probably 80% of the game playing nine ball and ten ball.

00:57:21.000 Especially with that magic rack, right?

00:57:23.000 Yeah, I mean with the wood rack it's a little bit different.

00:57:28.000 It depends who will be racking the balls, what are the rules.

00:57:31.000 I actually like the rules that they do nowadays.

00:57:34.000 They have the referees at every table racking with a wood rack and they don't touch any balls once they remove the rack so it's completely random.

00:57:43.000 That is probably better as long as the referee is giving you a good rack.

00:57:49.000 Yeah.

00:57:50.000 The worst is when you're playing someone and they purposely leave a little space there and you hear that slug sound.

00:57:57.000 Yeah, that happened to me too.

00:57:58.000 Yeah, it's gonna happen.

00:58:00.000 Yeah, especially on the big stage, big match.

00:58:03.000 I mean, it hurts.

00:58:04.000 Yeah.

00:58:05.000 Well, there's so much at stake.

00:58:07.000 Oh yeah, of course.

00:58:08.000 There's room for shenanigans.

00:58:09.000 Yeah, it's crazy.

00:58:11.000 Yeah, but the break shot and pull is also like from a spectator perspective, like people don't like to see a soft break.

00:58:18.000 They like to see someone smash the balls and them scatter all over the place randomly.

00:58:23.000 That's why I really like the break that they have now, because everybody's just whacking them and hitting hope and believe that something goes in.

00:58:30.000 Yeah, well, there was a time where they were making people spot the nine ball on the spot, because they thought that would help, but then people figured around that, too.

00:58:39.000 I mean, pool players are figuring out the break so easy and so quick that it's a joke.

00:58:45.000 I mean, it doesn't matter which format you create.

00:58:47.000 With the magic rack, they will always figure it out.

00:58:50.000 Yeah.

00:58:51.000 Well, they'll just practice all day and figure out which ball should be in which positions and whether to use a cut break where you hit it on the side or hit it straight from the middle.

00:59:01.000 What do you think about breaking from the box when they had rules like that for a while?

00:59:05.000 You couldn't break from the corner because you could make a better bridge off the side rails and people were hitting it harder and hitting it at that angle, you got more action on the balls.

00:59:15.000 Well, they use that breaking rule at matchroom events nowadays.

00:59:19.000 They have a nine ball on the spot and break box.

00:59:23.000 Not like a tiny break box that you can break from, and it's in the center.

00:59:28.000 So you really have to cut a lot, cut the one ball, and you still can make both wing ball and the one ball on the side, but that's way, way tougher.

00:59:38.000 That would be a place where I would think like physical fitness would come into play like if you were stronger you know you could if in that motion like maybe there's a thing that you could do with like bands or something like that where you develop a stronger break uh I mean I saw a lot of different pool machines that develop special muscles really yeah in Asia they they have them but I never what yeah they have like workout pool machines Yeah,

01:00:08.000 kinda.

01:00:09.000 Can you find them online?

01:00:11.000 I think so, yeah.

01:00:13.000 What are they called?

01:00:14.000 I don't know.

01:00:15.000 There is a pool machine called HIPS in Russia.

01:00:22.000 So it's like a round thing with a pool ball there and it just goes around so you just keep shooting the cue ball.

01:00:31.000 And what the Asian machine has is your cue is always going straight in the same line. 1.00

01:00:38.000 So you're developing the right muscles and your muscle memory remembers the straight cueing.

01:00:44.000 Are you putting the shaft through a tube or something?

01:00:48.000 Like how is it always going in the straight line?

01:00:50.000 Yeah, it's kind of like a tube, yeah.

01:00:52.000 Because Buddy Hall had a thing like that for a while, where he was selling, it was like a tube that sat on a table, a small tube, with like little legs.

01:01:03.000 And you would make a bridge, and the whole thing would be like sliding your cue through that tube.

01:01:09.000 I think it's really helpful.

01:01:11.000 I don't see these things, and I think if I were using it when I was a kid, it would help me a lot.

01:01:17.000 Because some people, they're cueing the ball and they don't even realize they're kind of going through the ball sideways.

01:01:22.000 Yeah, and even myself, even myself, I noticed that it's crooked a little bit.

01:01:27.000 Nobody's perfect, but...

01:01:29.000 Do you film yourself?

01:01:30.000 Yeah, that's what I did a lot when I was 16, 17. You know, I'm like a pool geek.

01:01:36.000 I'm always trying to figure out what's wrong and work on mistakes, and I used to analyze a lot of things, yeah.

01:01:42.000 Well, when you were 16 and 17, one thing that's interesting is that you had access to the internet.

01:01:47.000 Yeah.

01:01:47.000 You had access to pool matches.

01:01:49.000 Yeah, I watched a lot of pool matches.

01:01:51.000 How much did that help you?

01:01:52.000 A lot, and that's actually what people don't understand, that they can learn a lot just by watching and not playing.

01:02:01.000 You definitely can.

01:02:02.000 You can learn a lot about where pathways that people like a pro takes.

01:02:08.000 Yeah, how to run balls, the strategy of the game.

01:02:12.000 You can even work on your fundamentals.

01:02:15.000 You know the player Nick Vandenberg?

01:02:17.000 Sure.

01:02:18.000 He used to work on his fundamentals, from what I heard, through hypnosis.

01:02:25.000 So he was closing his eyes and trying to repeat the stroke while he was asleep.

01:02:35.000 Yeah, that's crazy.

01:02:36.000 That's next level.

01:02:37.000 Yeah, it is.

01:02:38.000 It is.

01:02:39.000 Do they drug test people at these events?

01:02:41.000 What do they test for?

01:02:44.000 I don't know, but we have a drug test on all the Metrum events, I believe.

01:02:50.000 One thing I think you should definitely drug test for is beta blockers.

01:02:55.000 What is it?

01:02:55.000 Beta blockers, they cut your adrenaline.

01:02:59.000 So you don't get antsy.

01:03:02.000 Like, you don't get nervous when you're shooting.

01:03:04.000 That's a big thing in pool.

01:03:05.000 It's a big thing in pool, yeah.

01:03:07.000 Yeah, I think they use beta blockers.

01:03:10.000 People have been caught using beta blockers for a lot of games.

01:03:14.000 Because anxiety and stress, which is, you know, look, if you can make a great shot under pressure, it's wonderful.

01:03:22.000 It's a great feeling.

01:03:23.000 Yeah.

01:03:24.000 But if you had zero pressure, you would play better.

01:03:27.000 I'd play a different thing, of course.

01:03:29.000 So if you were in a big tournament, but you were on beta blockers, you probably wouldn't feel any of those nerves.

01:03:36.000 Like, I've seen people that are shooting a nine ball for a lot of money, and you see their hands shaking.

01:03:40.000 Oh, yeah.

01:03:40.000 And you see they have to put the cue down and...

01:03:43.000 Yeah, take a deep breath.

01:03:45.000 And sometimes they forget to breathe, and you can see them, they're like...

01:03:49.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

01:03:52.000 Well, pool is one of those things where when you're...

01:03:55.000 It's one moment.

01:03:58.000 There's one moment.

01:03:59.000 And you're playing, and maybe it's a race to 12, and it's 11 to 11. And you and I are playing, and I have one shot on the nine ball, and this is for everything.

01:04:09.000 And if I miss, and if I hang that ball, you're going to win.

01:04:12.000 But if I make it, I'm going to win.

01:04:14.000 So it comes down to all this playing, comes down to this one brief moment.

01:04:17.000 And the walls close in on you.

01:04:20.000 It's like...

01:04:20.000 And it makes it very difficult for people if they don't have a very specific mindset or pre-shot routine that they approach a shot with.

01:04:32.000 They can get caught up in what's called like an open loop system where you just kind of like let the cue go.

01:04:38.000 And you've seen that.

01:04:39.000 Everyone's seen that.

01:04:40.000 They just miss the ball by like a full diamond. 0.99

01:04:43.000 They dog the ball and you're like, what the fuck happened? 0.99

01:04:45.000 Well, he spazzed out. 0.99

01:04:47.000 So do you have a pre-shot routine?

01:04:50.000 Yeah, of course I do.

01:04:51.000 Otherwise, it's impossible to play under pressure like you said.

01:04:55.000 What is your pre-shot routine?

01:04:56.000 How do you do it?

01:04:58.000 It's secrets, but...

01:04:59.000 Secrets?

01:05:00.000 Come on, give up the secrets, bro.

01:05:03.000 I mean, now it's so automatically that I don't really think about it.

01:05:07.000 But before, I used to always stand up on the line of my shot and kind of visualize what I'm going to do.

01:05:14.000 Decide what speed, what spin, and how I'm going to shoot.

01:05:18.000 Like, I already visualized the whole process, how I'm shooting the ball, and I even can imagine where the cue ball will land after the shot.

01:05:26.000 And then once I figure it out and I'm ready to shoot, I go down.

01:05:31.000 Then I... Do a couple of pre-strokes, do the pose on my last backswing, then I shoot.

01:05:39.000 Always pause?

01:05:40.000 I always pose, yeah.

01:05:41.000 Yeah, I love that.

01:05:43.000 That changed my game a lot when I started pausing.

01:05:45.000 Oh, it's way better timing, and I think you can analyze things better that way.

01:05:51.000 Yeah, some guys pause with the tip in forward.

01:05:54.000 On the key ball, yeah.

01:05:55.000 Yeah, and then they draw back and shoot, and some guys pause on the backswing.

01:05:59.000 Where do you pause?

01:06:00.000 I pause on my backswing.

01:06:01.000 That's the Buddy Hall way.

01:06:03.000 He was the first guy that ever saw it do it.

01:06:05.000 He had a long pause.

01:06:06.000 People called it the Buddy Hall pause.

01:06:08.000 Yeah.

01:06:09.000 Because he would hold back and shoot through.

01:06:11.000 And when Buddy Hall was playing, there's a great book.

01:06:14.000 It's not a great book, but it's an interesting book.

01:06:18.000 That his road guy that he would travel with wrote a book about him.

01:06:26.000 And, um, back in his day, in Buddy Hall's day, they all took speed.

01:06:32.000 They all took amphetamines.

01:06:33.000 So they were all, like, he was real skinny at the time.

01:06:37.000 And, like, these guys, because they would play for, like, 12 hours, 15 hours, 16 hours.

01:06:41.000 They'd play until somebody went bust.

01:06:43.000 And sometimes they'd play for 24 hours, 48 hours. 1.00

01:06:46.000 They would just keep fucking playing. 1.00

01:06:48.000 Over and over and over again. 1.00

01:06:49.000 So they'd be just whacked out on amphetamines playing pool.

01:06:53.000 But the way it's been explained to me, I've never taken amphetamines and I've never played pool on anything other than marijuana, which helps a lot.

01:07:02.000 That's why I said that about Earl.

01:07:04.000 Marijuana helps a lot.

01:07:06.000 Do you ever smoke marijuana?

01:07:07.000 Yeah, I did.

01:07:09.000 Once upon a time?

01:07:12.000 It enhances feel.

01:07:15.000 Marijuana makes you more sensitive to things, and I feel like it enhances my touch, like where everything's going.

01:07:22.000 I can focus on things more.

01:07:24.000 Well, it's also very individual, I think.

01:07:26.000 For me, it was bizarre.

01:07:30.000 Paranoia?

01:07:30.000 Yeah, it wasn't very good, especially playing pool.

01:07:33.000 Yeah.

01:07:34.000 Well, that can happen too.

01:07:37.000 It's also something that you...

01:07:39.000 I think marijuana is something that you have to learn.

01:07:41.000 You have to learn what the effects are, what's the right dose, how much to do.

01:07:47.000 I smoke it before I go on stage.

01:07:49.000 I smoke it before I write.

01:07:51.000 I used to smoke it before jujitsu all the time.

01:07:54.000 A lot of jujitsu players smoke pot.

01:07:57.000 And they smoke pot and roll.

01:07:59.000 And I always said that it made my jujitsu quite a bit better.

01:08:03.000 Like, when I rolled and I was on jiu-jitsu, I was quite a bit better than I was when I was sober.

01:08:09.000 Well, for us, it's illegal to do it on a professional stage.

01:08:12.000 Right.

01:08:13.000 For a reason.

01:08:14.000 Yeah.

01:08:14.000 Because I think it is...

01:08:15.000 I mean, I've said this about jiu-jitsu, and I'll say it about pool.

01:08:18.000 I think marijuana is a performance-enhancing drug with some things.

01:08:22.000 Possibly yeah, it definitely is for comedy writing for comedy writing marijuana is a performance enhancing drug it 100% enhances your performance when you're writing for that kind of writing because like I write Silly shit, you know and when I'm silly with pot like silly ideas come to your head more often But for those guys when they were taking amphetamines what they said was And I've talked to someone who has played on them. 0.98

01:08:49.000 He said the balls, like you could see edges on the balls differently. 0.89

01:08:55.000 Like it almost like where there was a bunch of edges.

01:08:58.000 Instead of a round surface, they would see like a different geometry to the balls.

01:09:05.000 I believe that.

01:09:06.000 And they'd see lines more clearly.

01:09:08.000 They were just like hyper focused and like, you know, just like laser beam locked in.

01:09:16.000 Well, that's the difference between pool players too.

01:09:18.000 Like somebody is so talented and I believe that some players have a better vision, like a better eye.

01:09:25.000 Like Jason Shaw, I believe he has like the best eye in the pool world.

01:09:30.000 They call him eagle eye.

01:09:31.000 Yeah.

01:09:32.000 For a reason.

01:09:33.000 Yeah.

01:09:33.000 No, he's ridiculous.

01:09:35.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:09:35.000 That guy can, he shoots like long, hard shots and just fires them in. 1.00

01:09:42.000 Yeah.

01:09:43.000 He's another one of those guys.

01:09:46.000 It's like, there's this small handful who could just beat anybody in the world.

01:09:51.000 And he just won, he just beat, rather, the world straight pool record.

01:09:58.000 He touched a ball, and so they made it like 669, but he kept running and got to like 700 and something, where the previous record, like Willie Moscone had a record back in the day, it was like 500 and something balls.

01:10:14.000 But that was on an eight-foot table, wasn't it?

01:10:16.000 Yeah, and bigger pockets.

01:10:17.000 Five-inch pockets, eight-foot table.

01:10:19.000 But he did it on a nine-foot, and then John Smith beat that, right?

01:10:25.000 Yeah, 620-something, I think.

01:10:28.000 Right, and then Jason Shaw beat that.

01:10:31.000 And Jason Shaw's not even a straight pool player, which is crazy.

01:10:33.000 No, and that's the thing with the shooters.

01:10:36.000 Yeah.

01:10:37.000 I mean, nine ball players will take over. 0.86

01:10:39.000 Well, that was the same with Earl, too.

01:10:40.000 You know, when Earl Strickland started playing straight pool, he'd just start running hundreds.

01:10:44.000 And everybody's like, Jesus Christ, he doesn't even play the game.

01:10:46.000 Like, imagine if he understood the patterns, like those guys who play straight pool all the time.

01:10:51.000 Oh, absolutely.

01:10:52.000 It's completely different.

01:10:54.000 They just never miss.

01:10:56.000 And for people who don't know what straight pool is, straight pool is the old school game that was in the movie The Hustler with Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman.

01:11:04.000 And what straight pool was was always the king of pool games because you would play whether it was to 125 points or 150 points and you rack all 15 balls and the opening break is a soft break where you're trying to leave no shot for your opponent.

01:11:21.000 So you're just kind of clipping the edge of the ball and you're trying to leave the cue ball as far away from the stack as possible with everything as close as possible so there's no shot.

01:11:30.000 And the pressure of a shot then becomes very high because if you miss...

01:11:36.000 And you go into the rack and spread the balls out, a really elite player could run, like I saw Mike Siegel do that with a guy.

01:11:44.000 The guy made a shot, missed, and Mike Siegel ran 125 balls and out.

01:11:49.000 The guy never got a chance to shoot again.

01:11:51.000 And that's commonplace with the really, really elite players.

01:11:55.000 Yeah, I mean I played the straight pool tournament in October and there was a group stage where I had to play five matches and two matches I ran 125 and out.

01:12:07.000 We played race to 125 points and two matches I've lost I didn't play as good and the third match I ran 107 and I didn't get out through my group.

01:12:17.000 I just I finished fourth in my group.

01:12:20.000 Wow.

01:12:20.000 So the level of players are increasing every year.

01:12:25.000 I think the level of players right now is as high as it's ever been.

01:12:29.000 Yeah.

01:12:29.000 And I say this as someone who really respects the old school players.

01:12:33.000 I love to watch old school matches.

01:12:36.000 But I watched an old school match recently between Jimmy Rempe and Mike Siegel.

01:12:42.000 I was kind of amazed at the shots they missed.

01:12:47.000 If you watch the game compared to what we play nowadays, it's completely different.

01:12:53.000 Yeah, the best players I think ever are around right now.

01:12:57.000 But I think if you had a guy like Earl Strickland, Earl Strickland's still elite today, so he maybe is not the best example because he's continued to grow with the game.

01:13:06.000 I think the best players back then, if you put them in the same pressure environment with the same level of play that guys have now, they would probably be at that level too.

01:13:16.000 But back then, the players just weren't the same level.

01:13:21.000 Yeah, but also the game was completely different.

01:13:23.000 The environment was different.

01:13:25.000 The equipment was different. 0.79

01:13:27.000 They used to play in worn cloth, really thick cloth, dirty equipment, dirty balls. 0.58

01:13:34.000 The break didn't matter as much.

01:13:36.000 Everybody was just breaking hard and hoping for the best.

01:13:39.000 Yeah, they didn't have a sophisticated kicking method either.

01:13:44.000 I think when the Filipinos came here and guys like Efren started kicking balls to get safe, that's when people started really opening their eyes to what was possible. 0.93

01:13:55.000 Yeah.

01:13:58.000 What's interesting to me, too, is that the Filipino players, a lot of them played three-cushion billiards.

01:14:03.000 And they learned how to kick by understanding how the balls are bouncing off the rails in a table with no pockets.

01:14:11.000 And then because of that deep understanding of angles and how hard to hit in English, they developed this insane kicking game.

01:14:20.000 Yeah, I mean, they all say it's a feeling, but in the end of the day it's all practice and there is many, many different systems you can use for kicking.

01:14:31.000 And I really believe that some of the Filipinos are really super talented and they have that feel for kicking, but a lot of shots they just use different systems. 1.00

01:14:42.000 Yeah, it's also really amazing how many good players come from the Philippines.

01:14:46.000 Oh, it's unbelievable.

01:14:47.000 Unbelievable.

01:14:48.000 I went to the Philippines when I was 15. What was that like?

01:14:52.000 It was crazy.

01:14:53.000 I went with my friend and I was playing everybody.

01:14:58.000 I was playing a bartender that I couldn't beat.

01:15:02.000 I was 15, and I was thinking I'm good.

01:15:04.000 I mean, I was coming there to play good players, but I ended up playing everybody, and I was just amazed how good everybody's playing over there.

01:15:11.000 Like, the guy who works 24 hours behind the bar just never plays pool.

01:15:17.000 I mean, he's just a regular player in some random pool room, can run a couple of wrecks playing nine ball.

01:15:24.000 That's how crazy it is.

01:15:26.000 For me, it's insane.

01:15:28.000 If you walked into the bar here or anywhere else, I mean, would you imagine that the guy will run a two-pack of nine ball?

01:15:36.000 Probably not.

01:15:37.000 Yeah, most likely not.

01:15:38.000 It happened multiple times for me there.

01:15:40.000 Really?

01:15:41.000 So the level seemed higher there?

01:15:44.000 Yeah, yeah, and the game is really, really big.

01:15:46.000 I mean, the taxi drivers, they know, everybody knows who Efren Reyes is, you know, Francisco Bustamante.

01:15:52.000 I've met people that are Filipino immigrants to America, and they'll tell me they're Filipino.

01:15:57.000 I go, do you know who Efren Reyes is?

01:15:58.000 And they're like, Bata! 0.99

01:16:00.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:16:00.000 Like, they know who he is.

01:16:01.000 It's amazing.

01:16:03.000 Pool is really, really big in the Philippines.

01:16:05.000 Well, pool came over the Philippines in the 1950s when the GIs were over there.

01:16:10.000 So American GIs were over there and they brought pool to the Philippines and the Filipinos just took over. 1.00

01:16:16.000 It's pretty crazy like how that transpired because when they play over there, they're playing on very tough conditions because the tables are all damp because it's very humid outside and a lot of times the tables are not balanced very well and the cloth is dirty and they use a lot of powder.

01:16:35.000 Oh yeah, they just throw it on the table.

01:16:37.000 This is crazy.

01:16:38.000 Yeah, they just leave it on the rails.

01:16:39.000 They leave stacks of powder on the rails, which is unheard of anywhere else.

01:16:45.000 No, and it gets messy everywhere.

01:16:47.000 See if you can find these Efren Reyes matches where he still plays right now.

01:16:54.000 He's playing all the time.

01:16:55.000 He plays constantly.

01:16:56.000 And they put them up online.

01:16:58.000 They go to Star Billiard's Efren Reyes.

01:17:02.000 And so when he's playing, not only do they have powder all over the table, which gets on everything.

01:17:10.000 It's all over the table.

01:17:12.000 But every time someone's about to shoot, someone...

01:17:16.000 Who's like either gambling or someone who's been assigned to it comes over and marks chalk where all the balls are in case someone moves the ball.

01:17:26.000 So that's a big distraction.

01:17:28.000 And then there's 50 people around the table with flip-flops talking on their cell phones.

01:17:34.000 Well, also, the action side of pool in the Philippines is huge.

01:17:39.000 Huge.

01:17:39.000 You have people betting every game, like yelling names before every game starts.

01:17:44.000 And you have, like, chickens running around the table.

01:17:51.000 Literal chickens. 0.98

01:17:52.000 Yeah.

01:17:53.000 Yeah.

01:17:54.000 I was watching the Alex Pagulayan video, and you hear...

01:18:00.000 That's very common in the Philippines.

01:18:02.000 Do you have any videos from Star Billiards?

01:18:05.000 I don't know exactly what I'm looking at.

01:18:07.000 Nothing's coming up from a Star Billiards account.

01:18:09.000 Yeah, I'll find something for you.

01:18:10.000 It's pretty specific.

01:18:12.000 But the scene there is so fascinating because it's contrary to everything that you would ever expect in a pool tournament.

01:18:20.000 In a tournament other than the Moscone Cup where people are cheering in between shots, In these matches that they're playing, there's so much distraction.

01:18:29.000 Oh, distractions every shot.

01:18:31.000 I mean, they're trying to shock you, too, because if you're a foreign player coming to Philippines, they most likely will be betting against you.

01:18:39.000 Yeah.

01:18:39.000 Oh, yeah, definitely.

01:18:42.000 I'll find something for you here.

01:18:44.000 Hold on a second, Jamie.

01:18:51.000 This is this guy, Jeff Guiling.

01:18:53.000 G-A-L-I-N-G. Yeah. 1.00

01:18:58.000 Go to...

01:18:59.000 Here, I'll send this to you.

01:19:02.000 Here we go.

01:19:03.000 Hold on a second.

01:19:04.000 Share.

01:19:05.000 Jamie.

01:19:08.000 Okay.

01:19:12.000 Here, I sent you something.

01:19:13.000 So, this place, the way they do it, is the best preparation against someone distracting you.

01:19:23.000 Because they're constantly distracted, so they learn how to relax and focus.

01:19:27.000 Like, here, look at this game.

01:19:30.000 Yeah, that's a typical game in the Philippines.

01:19:32.000 Everyone's smoking cigarettes.

01:19:34.000 People are taking selfies.

01:19:36.000 They're all surrounding.

01:19:37.000 I mean, they are feet from the table.

01:19:40.000 Like, moving around walking while the match is going on with flip-flops on.

01:19:45.000 You have to move them to shoot every ball.

01:19:48.000 Like, imagine if you're that frozen in that back short rail.

01:19:51.000 Yeah, you have to get in the corner and say, excuse me, and these guys are on their phone, and it's so normal.

01:19:58.000 Now, look at the powder.

01:19:59.000 So there's a stack of powder on each side rail, and the stack of powder is so that they can use it and keep the cue ball moving slick through their hand, but no one anywhere else does this.

01:20:11.000 No.

01:20:12.000 Well, you can also imagine how humid it is over there.

01:20:16.000 Yeah, he's just practicing right now.

01:20:17.000 He's getting ready and warming up.

01:20:19.000 So scoot ahead a little bit so you can actually see the match.

01:20:24.000 This is not the match, for sure.

01:20:26.000 Here we go.

01:20:27.000 Now he's actually playing. 1.00

01:20:29.000 So, that fucking powder, that shit gets on the table itself, and it slows everything down. 1.00

01:20:36.000 And it also makes the balls cling. 1.00

01:20:39.000 They stick to each other. 0.98

01:20:40.000 Oh, yeah.

01:20:40.000 He's grabbing the cue ball before every game starts, too, and he gets on the cue ball, and then...

01:20:45.000 But because they play in these imperfect conditions, because they're accustomed to it...

01:20:52.000 They developed these amazing strokes.

01:20:55.000 I mean, Efren's stroke is just a thing of beauty.

01:20:59.000 And also, I think that's probably one of the reasons why they chose heavier cues, because they were dealing with this very slow cloth, because it was always dirty, humid conditions, so in humidity the balls don't move as well because there's dampness on the table.

01:21:16.000 Oh, he's getting a spot from that guy.

01:21:17.000 It looks like he's getting a spot.

01:21:18.000 Well, you know, Efren's very old now.

01:21:20.000 Yeah.

01:21:20.000 He can't see very well, but the guy's still in action constantly.

01:21:25.000 Every week, I'm sure. 1.00

01:21:26.000 But look at this fucking crowd! 1.00

01:21:28.000 Look at all these people. 0.99

01:21:29.000 So this guy, Jeff Guiling, he has this YouTube channel where he's constantly showing these matches.

01:21:36.000 Look at the people on the street.

01:21:38.000 That's the street there.

01:21:39.000 Yeah, the doors open.

01:21:40.000 There's people on the street outside that can't get in that are watching this match because that's what kind of a legend Efren is.

01:21:47.000 Yeah, there's a guy sitting in the closet over there. 0.99

01:21:49.000 Yeah, he's in a fucking closet watching from the closet. 1.00

01:21:52.000 I mean, in any other pool room, like if you were in Texas and this was going on and you're gambling, Be like, get the fuck out of here! 1.00

01:22:01.000 Why is everybody near the table? 0.99

01:22:03.000 They're right there!

01:22:04.000 They're like where I am, like right here.

01:22:08.000 They're that close to the table while some of the best players in the world are playing.

01:22:11.000 But it's really good practice, like you said, after playing in such a different experience.

01:22:19.000 Well, the Filipinos are what you call shark-proof.

01:22:22.000 Yeah.

01:22:22.000 And what sharking is, people think of pool shark as being someone who's like really good at pool.

01:22:27.000 That's not what we call sharking.

01:22:29.000 Sharking, for the people that don't know, is like if you were about to shoot and I moved and distracted you on purpose.

01:22:34.000 Like, I'll wait until you're right about to move and I'll drop my cue.

01:22:38.000 Yeah.

01:22:38.000 Or I'll spill a drink.

01:22:39.000 I'll make some noise.

01:22:41.000 Like, people do things on purpose to try to distract people.

01:22:45.000 Yep, that happens a lot.

01:22:46.000 Especially gambling. 1.00

01:22:47.000 That's some bitch shit. 1.00

01:22:48.000 Yep. 1.00

01:22:48.000 Isn't it? 1.00

01:22:49.000 Oh yeah, they try it all the time too. 1.00

01:22:51.000 But it's some bitch shit. 1.00

01:22:52.000 When someone does that, that's bitch ass shit. 1.00

01:22:54.000 Like, what are you doing? 1.00

01:22:55.000 Just play.

01:22:56.000 Well, there's a lot of moves, even when it comes to pro players too.

01:23:00.000 Is there, like, what?

01:23:02.000 I don't really want to mention names.

01:23:05.000 You don't have to mention names.

01:23:06.000 So I was playing a guy a long race last year, and, for example, everybody knows, like, if you win...

01:23:17.000 So we're playing a race to 100, and every day we're playing a race to 33. So I ended up winning day one, and I should be the one breaking the balls next day.

01:23:29.000 So I come in, and we're about to begin, and he's like, are we legging again? 0.95

01:23:36.000 So I'm like, ugh.

01:23:37.000 No, bro.

01:23:38.000 It's my break.

01:23:40.000 So there was a lot of different moves.

01:23:43.000 We agreed to play with one magic rack, and he ended up stealing the magic rack.

01:23:50.000 And then we were on a break, and I broke the balls, made four balls on a break, and I was dead out.

01:23:56.000 And he's like, are you practicing, or what are you doing?

01:23:59.000 I'm like, no, we're playing.

01:24:00.000 I just asked you a minute ago, are you ready to start?

01:24:03.000 And he's like, I didn't say anything.

01:24:05.000 I was thinking, you're correct.

01:24:08.000 This is a professional who did this?

01:24:10.000 I think you should say his name.

01:24:12.000 What does it rhyme with?

01:24:14.000 What does his name rhyme with?

01:24:16.000 What does it rhyme with?

01:24:19.000 Like, Bogan rhymes with Rogan?

01:24:24.000 Filler rhymes with Diller?

01:24:26.000 Everybody will understand.

01:24:27.000 He was a Filipino.

01:24:31.000 They're probably gambling a lot of money, right?

01:24:35.000 We played for $20,000, yeah.

01:24:37.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:24:39.000 A big chunk of money, especially for the Philippines.

01:24:40.000 Yeah, a big chunk of money and people get a little feisty.

01:24:44.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:24:46.000 In gambling, do you think that people take drugs when they gamble?

01:24:52.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:24:55.000 What do you think they take?

01:24:57.000 Adderall.

01:25:00.000 Amphetamines.

01:25:01.000 Yeah.

01:25:02.000 Because you can see, if you go to Derby City Classic, you will see people play for two, three days straight without any breaks.

01:25:09.000 That's a heart attack special right there.

01:25:11.000 Oh, yeah.

01:25:12.000 It is.

01:25:13.000 And they play some crazy games like that.

01:25:15.000 These aren't the healthiest people in the world, either, that are taking this Adderall and staying up for days.

01:25:18.000 Like, they're burning it.

01:25:21.000 Oh yeah, it's unbelievable.

01:25:22.000 They play some crazy-ass games like 15-ball bang game where you just...

01:25:27.000 It's an old man game where you just kind of clip the balls and you're just banging balls around for like 50 minutes.

01:25:33.000 So it's a bank game?

01:25:35.000 Yeah.

01:25:35.000 15 balls?

01:25:36.000 Yeah, but there is a lot of moving part.

01:25:37.000 Like you just play safety, safety, safety.

01:25:40.000 Right.

01:25:40.000 Until you have a good bank shot.

01:25:41.000 Yeah, and then after 50 minutes of playing safeties, you have a bank shot.

01:25:45.000 Most likely you're going to miss it.

01:25:46.000 And then it goes over and over and over and they do it for like days and days.

01:25:51.000 So Adderall's the big one?

01:25:52.000 It is a big one.

01:25:55.000 I'm sure people play on cocaine.

01:25:58.000 I would think cocaine would be a problem.

01:26:00.000 I've never done cocaine, but for what I understand, it doesn't last that long.

01:26:04.000 No, but they're taking breaks.

01:26:07.000 And I've seen, one time I've seen the guy was using cocaine instead of the powder for his cue.

01:26:15.000 What?!

01:26:16.000 That's an expensive powder right there, yeah.

01:26:18.000 He was putting cocaine on his fingers?

01:26:20.000 Yeah, and then doing like...

01:26:22.000 Oh my god!

01:26:29.000 Cocaine for baby powder?

01:26:31.000 Oh my god, that's insane! 1.00

01:26:33.000 But he was fucked up, like completely. 1.00

01:26:37.000 Was he playing well? 1.00

01:26:39.000 He was playing decent.

01:26:40.000 I mean, he's a decent player.

01:26:41.000 I don't know his name, but he was just an action junkie.

01:26:45.000 Well, like I said about that book, Buddy Hall, I think it's From Rags to Riflemen is the name of the book.

01:26:52.000 I have a copy of it, and it's a very old book, and the way it was made, it looks like it was self-published, like the font would be different sizes on different pages.

01:27:03.000 It's a rare book.

01:27:04.000 You can still find it, like sometimes on AZ Billiard, someone has a copy of it for sale, but it's pretty valuable now.

01:27:10.000 But they all played on amphetamines, and they would all play for days and days and days, but it fucked a lot of people's lives up.

01:27:20.000 Oh, of course.

01:27:20.000 Because they all got addicted to that stuff.

01:27:22.000 Of course, yeah.

01:27:23.000 I mean, I've played a lot of matches that lasted more than 10 hours.

01:27:28.000 And for me, it's really, really tough because I never do anything like that.

01:27:32.000 I drink water and maybe I'll drink Pepsi if I feel that I need some energy, some sugar.

01:27:39.000 So, yeah, of course, it gives them big advantage in matches like that.

01:27:43.000 There was a top player in New York in the 1990s.

01:27:48.000 He had a bunch of different names.

01:27:51.000 One of them was Water Dog.

01:27:54.000 Other times they called him Buffalo Bill because he had this kind of crazy mustache.

01:27:58.000 I think I've heard about him.

01:27:59.000 Yeah.

01:27:59.000 He was an elite player, but he was a heroin addict.

01:28:03.000 So, he would go to the bathroom, and everybody knew what was going on.

01:28:07.000 He would go to the bathroom and lock the door, and he would be in there for like 10-15 minutes, and then he would come out, and he would sit on the stool.

01:28:15.000 He'd sit on a billiard stool like this.

01:28:19.000 I mean, sit there for like 20 minutes, just like this, like...

01:28:24.000 Just gone.

01:28:25.000 Just gone in the world of heroin.

01:28:28.000 And then he would get up from that and he had shark eyes.

01:28:32.000 They were like, the pupils were like fully dilated like a gerbil.

01:28:36.000 Like you weren't even talking to a human.

01:28:38.000 He didn't even see you. 0.99

01:28:39.000 And he would get on the table and he couldn't fucking miss. 0.97

01:28:43.000 And there was a table at Executive Billiards. 0.98

01:28:45.000 It was tight, tight tables.

01:28:48.000 Table one.

01:28:49.000 And that's the table where everybody gambled if they played one pocket or straight pool. 0.60

01:28:52.000 There were ridiculous pockets. 0.99

01:28:54.000 There were like four inch, but it was a gaff pocket where whoever made the shims, they were all fucked up. 1.00

01:28:59.000 They didn't line up that good. 0.91

01:29:00.000 So there was like, they were rough on the corner. 0.99

01:29:03.000 So if you could like clip the edge a little, you're fucked. 0.99

01:29:05.000 You're not making the ball. 0.99

01:29:07.000 And this guy couldn't miss.

01:29:09.000 I believe that it was wild because he was just like in this heroin fog With no nerves at all and he was just firing balls in and he was playing this guy named George the Greek and George the Greek was this character that was an old-school Hustler grifter gambler who he used to he used to race horses he would do those carriage races and And they banned him

01:29:40.000 from carriage racing because while his horse was winning, he stood up in the carriage and was trying to slow the horse down because people had gambled against him.

01:29:51.000 But he had a really good horse because he was the favorite.

01:29:55.000 To win because of this horse.

01:29:57.000 So he's standing up, pulling back on the horse, trying to slow him down.

01:30:02.000 And his story was always that he hired William Kunstler.

01:30:09.000 And William Kunstler is a famous attorney.

01:30:12.000 Kunstler.

01:30:13.000 Kuntzler's gonna get me out of this case. 1.00

01:30:15.000 These cocksuckers, they don't know what the fuck they're dealing with. 1.00

01:30:18.000 William Kuntzler's gonna get me back on that track. 1.00

01:30:20.000 And so George wind up actually opening up his own pool hall in White Plains.

01:30:25.000 But for a while, he was like hanging around executive billiards, and then he was a house man for a while too.

01:30:31.000 But he was playing this guy, Water Dog.

01:30:33.000 And he was playing him for...

01:30:35.000 They were playing for a lot of money.

01:30:37.000 It was like, I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of five to ten thousand dollars.

01:30:40.000 For like games of straight pool.

01:30:42.000 So they play like 150 points for like $10,000.

01:30:46.000 And he was so angry because Waterdog would come out of the bathroom like this and then just couldn't miss. 1.00

01:30:53.000 And he's like, this cocksucker, he goes with that fucking John and he's shooting up that shit and he comes out here and he can't fucking miss. 1.00

01:31:00.000 And so he was doing this to try to get Waterdog agitated. 1.00

01:31:04.000 But he was just like this. 0.99

01:31:06.000 He didn't give a fuck. 1.00

01:31:07.000 George could be screaming in his face. 1.00

01:31:10.000 He just couldn't wait to get back to the table and just fire in balls. 0.94

01:31:15.000 It was beautiful to watch. 0.83

01:31:18.000 He had this just like, I've never done heroin, but I would imagine it must be wonderful.

01:31:23.000 Because the flow that he had around the table, it was something to watch.

01:31:28.000 It almost made you want to try heroin.

01:31:31.000 But he couldn't play without heroin.

01:31:33.000 And I didn't see him for years later.

01:31:35.000 And then it was 1994. And I had moved to Los Angeles, and I was playing in the Hard Times tournament.

01:31:44.000 Hard Times was the big pool hall in Bellflower, California, where all the pros would go.

01:31:48.000 You would go there on a Sunday night or Sunday day to play, and you could play Francisco Bustamante.

01:31:55.000 You could play Efren Reyes, Oscar Dominguez.

01:31:58.000 You could play Max Eberle.

01:32:00.000 All these top, top pros were there.

01:32:03.000 And Waterdog was there.

01:32:04.000 And I saw him, and I said, hey, man, what are you doing?

01:32:08.000 And he goes, yeah, I came here to play pool, but I need someone to get me in the tournament.

01:32:12.000 I'll go, I'll put you in the tournament.

01:32:13.000 You know, it was like, I don't remember what the entry fee was, 25 bucks or something like that?

01:32:17.000 You didn't have any money.

01:32:18.000 I said, I'll put you in. 0.99

01:32:20.000 He goes, yeah, but we gotta go get some shit. 0.99

01:32:22.000 I go, what do you mean? 1.00

01:32:23.000 And he goes, he goes, I gotta get my shit. 0.99

01:32:25.000 I go, where do you have to go get it? 0.99

01:32:27.000 He's like, South Central.

01:32:28.000 I'm like, okay, well, go get it.

01:32:30.000 He goes, I need someone to drive me.

01:32:32.000 I go, I'm not driving you there.

01:32:34.000 Because, like, back then, if you got arrested for buying drugs, they would take your car.

01:32:41.000 So I had a 1995 Toyota Supra. 1.00

01:32:45.000 It was the shit. 0.99

01:32:47.000 It was a Supra Turbo. 1.00

01:32:48.000 Did you ever see one of those?

01:32:50.000 I can imagine.

01:32:50.000 Oh, they're beautiful.

01:32:51.000 It had a wing on the back of it.

01:32:53.000 It was my pride and joy.

01:32:54.000 It's like I'd never had a nice car in my whole life.

01:32:56.000 And then all of a sudden I had this, like, I was on television.

01:33:00.000 And I had this new car. 0.99

01:33:01.000 And he was like, we've got to go get some shit. 0.99

01:33:04.000 I'm like, I am not. 0.99

01:33:05.000 That's the car.

01:33:06.000 That's what it looked like.

01:33:06.000 Mine was silver.

01:33:08.000 It was beautiful.

01:33:09.000 That's exactly what my car looked like.

01:33:11.000 Oh, I love that car.

01:33:12.000 I still love that car to this day.

01:33:13.000 I might go buy one.

01:33:15.000 But he was so angry at me that I wouldn't take him to go buy heroin.

01:33:21.000 I'm like, dude, I can't.

01:33:22.000 They'll take my car.

01:33:23.000 They're not going to take it.

01:33:24.000 I go, how do you know? 1.00

01:33:25.000 You don't even have a fucking place to sleep. 1.00

01:33:28.000 Like, they'll take my fucking car. 1.00

01:33:30.000 I'm not taking you to buy heroin. 0.99

01:33:31.000 So I put him in the tournament with no heroin.

01:33:34.000 And he couldn't make a ball.

01:33:35.000 Well, of course.

01:33:36.000 It was so sad.

01:33:37.000 He was angry. 0.99

01:33:38.000 Like, he was just missing and just fucking... 0.95

01:33:40.000 Yeah, I mean, like you said, there's a lot of players like this, especially playing all these action matches. 0.94

01:33:48.000 Yeah.

01:33:49.000 There's no rules.

01:33:50.000 Do you ever notice those players who are top players who play really well on drugs, then they try to enter into a tournament with no drugs?

01:34:00.000 Yeah.

01:34:01.000 And you see the difference?

01:34:01.000 Of course.

01:34:02.000 You can see they just play completely different.

01:34:05.000 But it makes you want to try drugs, doesn't it?

01:34:07.000 Not really.

01:34:08.000 No.

01:34:11.000 No, you shouldn't.

01:34:12.000 Well, you play so good without it, why would you?

01:34:15.000 Yeah, I mean, I kind of found a way how to get better without them.

01:34:20.000 Well, just constant practice and technique.

01:34:23.000 Do you meditate at all?

01:34:26.000 Sometimes I do, and I think it's helpful, but I need to do it more.

01:34:33.000 Especially when I lose.

01:34:35.000 You know, pool is a mental game.

01:34:39.000 It really is.

01:34:39.000 You can lose a tournament without making any mistakes, and especially with pool players not making a good living, it can be super mental.

01:34:48.000 And I think meditating is really helpful to all the players.

01:34:55.000 Yeah, that's what people don't understand.

01:34:57.000 You could play really good and get bad rolls.

01:34:59.000 Like, you could miss, and every time you miss, you get lucky.

01:35:03.000 Yeah, or for example, you can get easier layouts.

01:35:07.000 After the break, you can get tough, tough layouts.

01:35:10.000 You can knock a nine in on the break.

01:35:12.000 Yeah, especially playing 9-ball, there's a lot of luck in the wolf.

01:35:15.000 Yep, yeah.

01:35:16.000 And when guys start losing like that, and they're down like seven, eight games in a row, you could see they tighten up.

01:35:23.000 They tighten up like a real world-class player, and they might miss a straight-in shot.

01:35:29.000 Yeah.

01:35:30.000 Because it's so much pressure.

01:35:32.000 And especially these guys that are living hand-to-mouth.

01:35:36.000 Whatever they make that day is what they have for food.

01:35:39.000 And there's a lot of pool players like that.

01:35:40.000 A lot of pool players like that.

01:35:42.000 Which, on one hand, there's a beauty to that.

01:35:46.000 This is the beauty, is that they really just love the game.

01:35:50.000 They could just sell cars.

01:35:51.000 And a lot of guys have, right?

01:35:53.000 A lot of guys have gone on and just quit.

01:35:57.000 Dennis Hatch, he wound up becoming a car salesman. 1.00

01:36:00.000 Dennis Hatch was a fucking killer. 1.00

01:36:02.000 Dennis Hatch was around back when I was playing. 1.00

01:36:05.000 There was a place called West End Billiards.

01:36:09.000 I think it was in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

01:36:13.000 See if that's true.

01:36:15.000 But it was a sketchy neighborhood. 0.99

01:36:18.000 Fucking sketchy. 0.99

01:36:20.000 Every time you go there, you would go outside every hour or so to check on your car, just to get a look at it and look around. 0.99

01:36:26.000 It was super sketchy.

01:36:29.000 Went there and I'm playing and Steve Mizorak is there and Rodney Morris is there and Johnny Archer is there.

01:36:37.000 It was crazy It was that was my first experience as a young man with being able to enter a tournament Like if you're a guy like me who sucks you can enter a tournament and you might play the number one player in the world Yeah, that's the beauty of the game.

01:36:52.000 It's a beautiful thing.

01:36:53.000 Yeah And I would go there to those tournaments and watch those guys and just, there's no other sport like that where you could, nor the game like that, where you could be a low-ranked player and you would at least be in the presence on the table with one of the greatest players that's ever lived.

01:37:14.000 Yeah.

01:37:16.000 You know, like I was playing right next to Steve Mizorak, and this was when, you know, Steve Mizorak was older, but it's still, my God, that stroke that he had, it was beautiful.

01:37:26.000 He just, he had this Effortless stroke.

01:37:31.000 I mean, it was just this perfect, classic stroke.

01:37:35.000 He was a left-handed guy, and he would get down on that ball. 0.81

01:37:38.000 And, you know, he was a big, fat guy.

01:37:40.000 So, like, he wasn't moving anywhere.

01:37:41.000 He didn't need any weights.

01:37:43.000 And he would settle down on that ball, and people would just watch him.

01:37:46.000 And you would see these guys just go, God.

01:37:50.000 I always say that pool is an art form that only the people who practice can appreciate.

01:37:58.000 Maybe.

01:37:59.000 Yeah, I mean, most people don't understand how hard it is, how tough it is.

01:38:02.000 They don't care.

01:38:04.000 Like, if I'm watching pool and my wife comes in the room and I'm watching pool, she's like, what are you doing?

01:38:10.000 I'm like, look at it.

01:38:11.000 Watch this.

01:38:11.000 Just watch this.

01:38:12.000 Just watch this.

01:38:12.000 Watch this guy.

01:38:13.000 Watch this guy's stroke.

01:38:14.000 She's like...

01:38:15.000 Well, you have to try to understand how tough it is.

01:38:19.000 Right.

01:38:19.000 You also have to have experienced like the feeling of making a really good shot to know how beautiful it is to watch someone just do that over and over and over and over again.

01:38:33.000 So it's not good that these guys are living hand-to-mouth, but the beautiful thing is that they're doing it just because they love the game.

01:38:41.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:38:41.000 They love that game.

01:38:42.000 Otherwise, I don't see any other reason why they do it.

01:38:45.000 There's a few disciplines that I really appreciate because the people that are doing it are only doing it for the glory of the pursuit of excellence.

01:38:53.000 Wrestling is another one.

01:38:55.000 Like, amateur wrestling, there's no money in amateur wrestling.

01:38:58.000 There's no money in it.

01:38:58.000 There's no professional venue.

01:39:00.000 Other than mixed martial arts, when guys leave wrestling, they generally, if they're the elite of the elite, they might go on to coach.

01:39:08.000 You know, guys like Mark Schultz or Daniel Cormier, they go on to coach kids or coach colleges.

01:39:15.000 But for the most part, they're doing it just for the glory and the love of the sport.

01:39:22.000 And it's great.

01:39:24.000 It is great, man.

01:39:26.000 That's one of the things that I want to try to do when I want to try to host these matches, is try to get people to appreciate what I'm appreciating.

01:39:37.000 And it's very hard to do.

01:39:40.000 Not just to do, but to get people to appreciate it.

01:39:43.000 Well, it's tough to explain what they have to understand.

01:39:49.000 Because it's, like you said, you will have to be doing the job.

01:39:53.000 You will have to be doing the right commentary for that.

01:39:56.000 Yeah.

01:39:58.000 But it's possible, I think.

01:40:00.000 I think it's possible. 0.96

01:40:01.000 I think I can get people to pay attention if I can do commentary and talk a little shit and have fun and make it fun, make it funny. 0.89

01:40:08.000 And my friend Tommy that I'm gonna do with, he's a very good player too. 0.98

01:40:11.000 He was a top player when he was younger, but then realized, hey, there's no fucking future in this.

01:40:17.000 He was playing this guy, he told me this story, he said he never forgot it. 1.00

01:40:22.000 He was like 21, 22 years old and he's He's a fucking stone cold killer. 0.99

01:40:28.000 I mean, he's playing big money gambling matches. 0.99

01:40:31.000 Like, Tommy easily could have gone on to be a really good pro.

01:40:35.000 Easily.

01:40:36.000 Like, he was really...

01:40:37.000 He could break a run five, six racks in a row.

01:40:39.000 Excellent cue ball control.

01:40:41.000 Great shot maker.

01:40:43.000 But he was playing this guy, Neptune Joe Frady.

01:40:45.000 And Joe Frady was another guy who played at West End Billiards back in the day in those pro tournaments.

01:40:51.000 And he was one of those guys who always had a cigarette.

01:40:54.000 The cigarette was in between his fingers while he's holding the chip.

01:40:58.000 Yeah.

01:40:59.000 And he'd play with his mouth open.

01:41:02.000 So he was like this older guy, he was bald, had his pot belly, and he would get down on the ball, droned out with a cigarette in his hands with his mouth wide open, like this, and just a straight murderer, just a killer on the table.

01:41:16.000 And Tommy was playing this guy. 0.99

01:41:19.000 And he was like, look how good this guy is, and he doesn't have a fucking pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. 0.99

01:41:26.000 And that's what he said. 0.99

01:41:27.000 He said, I realize I can't do this.

01:41:29.000 I don't want to be that guy when I'm his age.

01:41:31.000 I don't want to be this guy who's amazing at pool, but he's fucking just perpetually broke with no options and no future.

01:41:39.000 I mean, yeah, that's what most pool players, I'm pretty sure that they think nowadays still, like, do I really have to do this? 0.58

01:41:46.000 Do I have to really go through this?

01:41:48.000 Or maybe I should change my lifestyle and do something else.

01:41:51.000 I went through it and I'm 22. I imagine all this 35, 40-year-old players.

01:41:57.000 I mean...

01:41:58.000 I thought that very much so when I was a young man when I was doing martial arts because I was competing for free.

01:42:05.000 I was doing amateur Taekwondo tournaments.

01:42:07.000 They were very dangerous and it was free.

01:42:10.000 I wasn't getting any money.

01:42:12.000 I was traveling so it cost me money to travel these tournaments. 0.99

01:42:16.000 And you're watching people get knocked out and watching people get concussions and head kicked and shit. 0.96

01:42:22.000 And then I got an offer for a kickboxing fight. 0.98

01:42:26.000 It was like a professional fight and it was $500.

01:42:30.000 And I remember thinking $500.

01:42:32.000 I have to train for like six weeks.

01:42:35.000 I have to run.

01:42:37.000 I have to hit the bag and spar and do rounds.

01:42:40.000 And if I win, I get $500.

01:42:44.000 And there was no UFC back then.

01:42:47.000 And professional kickboxing was very small.

01:42:49.000 It really wasn't successful in America.

01:42:51.000 It never took off.

01:42:52.000 And I realized, like, I gotta find something else to do.

01:42:55.000 I can't do this.

01:42:56.000 It was also, I was worried about brain damage too, but it was, that's a little different than pool.

01:43:01.000 It is, it is. 0.75

01:43:02.000 It's like, if you lose, you get kicked in the face.

01:43:04.000 Yeah, I can't, I can't.

01:43:06.000 That's not for me.

01:43:07.000 But it's that thing where I felt like I was really good at something that wasn't even profitable.

01:43:14.000 I think where you're at right now with Poole is different because my personal belief is like the stuff that's going on right now with Matchroom Poole and with a couple of these other companies that are putting on these streaming shows and I think you're at the right time where you're a young guy where Poole is because of the internet there's enough people following it where it's starting to emerge And then things like the Moscone Cup,

01:43:40.000 where people see it's so exciting, that I think there's some momentum now.

01:43:44.000 I think you're catching the wave at the exact right time.

01:43:48.000 Yeah, I think so, too.

01:43:50.000 That's why I keep playing.

01:43:51.000 I think so, too.

01:43:52.000 Do you have goals?

01:43:56.000 Do you have aspirations?

01:43:58.000 What is your goal with the game?

01:44:00.000 So, I mean, I used to have goals every year based on my schedule.

01:44:06.000 It used to be like to win the World Championships and I used to always have goals for every tournament I went to, of course, but this year it's been different.

01:44:16.000 I've been playing everything and everywhere I could have in the United States.

01:44:21.000 I flew in the beginning of March and I played literally non-stop pool for six months straight, just being on the road constantly playing in the bars and playing all the smaller events.

01:44:32.000 It was miserable, but at least I was playing and I think it was smart coming here because I was still playing pool and that's what kept me in stroke.

01:44:43.000 For next year, the goal would be to show my best game on all of these official events because I'm finally back.

01:44:54.000 I can't leave the country because I'm applying for a green card, but I believe once everything gets approved, hopefully, Second half of the year I will be able to go and play all these bigger events outside of the United States.

01:45:12.000 And that's once you get a green card?

01:45:14.000 Yes, so I need to get what's called travel authorization and then I'll be able to leave the country.

01:45:23.000 Are you going to apply for U.S. citizenship?

01:45:26.000 Once I get a green card, maybe I... Come on, bro.

01:45:30.000 Become American.

01:45:31.000 I didn't think that far, but there is a chance.

01:45:34.000 Don't you want to be American?

01:45:35.000 A lot of people want me to play for American Moscone Cup.

01:45:39.000 That would be crazy!

01:45:41.000 I think it would be good for the sport.

01:45:43.000 I mean, it would be a huge thing.

01:45:45.000 I think it would be great.

01:45:46.000 I think people don't realize how tough it is.

01:45:49.000 I mean, to get a citizenship, you need to spend at least five years.

01:45:52.000 And then there's a thing called, if you change the country that you play for internationally, I think there is a quarantine that you have to go through.

01:46:03.000 I think you can't play two years in any big international events if you want to switch the country. 1.00

01:46:09.000 And so it's seven years for me to become a player representing the United States.

01:46:17.000 But by then you'll be in your prime.

01:46:19.000 Hopefully.

01:46:20.000 29 years old?

01:46:21.000 Oh my god.

01:46:22.000 You'll be in your prime.

01:46:23.000 Because you think about the elite players.

01:46:26.000 The guys that are the best, a lot of it's between 26 and 33, 34, 35. Then when they get older, it starts to slide.

01:46:36.000 It's very rare.

01:46:37.000 Dennis Okolo is still one of the very best players in the world, and he's in his 40s, right?

01:46:41.000 Oh, yeah, Dennis.

01:46:42.000 I mean, Dennis is not a great example. 0.91

01:46:45.000 He's sick.

01:46:46.000 It's unbelievable what he does for his age. 0.60

01:46:50.000 He's sick?

01:46:51.000 Like physically sick?

01:46:52.000 No.

01:46:52.000 Oh, sick, like unbelievable.

01:46:55.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:46:55.000 No doubt.

01:46:56.000 And then Bustamante, he's 50. He's still one of the best players in the world.

01:47:00.000 Yeah, I just watched his match on the stream the other day.

01:47:03.000 He was playing Darren Appleton, I believe, in the Philippines, and it was unbelievable to see.

01:47:09.000 Yeah, he's still one of the very best players in the world.

01:47:12.000 And I have a framed photo of him outside here from the bicycle club.

01:47:19.000 Which was a casino in Los Angeles, and I think the tournament, I went to see the tournament, it was like 1995, back when he had a mullet.

01:47:29.000 He had kind of like spiky hair and a mullet, and he had this break that was like one of the craziest breaks that anybody had ever seen.

01:47:36.000 Like he had the best break in the world at one point in time, where he would have his finger on the rail, he'd break off the rail on the side rail, and the cue would slide out of his hand.

01:47:47.000 And then back through.

01:47:49.000 Oh yeah, there's two Russian players that do the same thing.

01:47:52.000 Have you ever heard of Evgeny Staliev?

01:47:54.000 No.

01:47:55.000 He used to be around that IPT time, so I'm pretty sure you saw him play.

01:47:59.000 He does the same thing.

01:48:00.000 He's a very unique player.

01:48:02.000 He is like the Russian Pyramid star.

01:48:04.000 Everybody who's involved in Pyramid world in Russia, they know who he is.

01:48:09.000 He won everything in his time.

01:48:11.000 And he was playing pool and went to IPT and finished fourth, I believe.

01:48:16.000 So he was a good player himself as well.

01:48:19.000 And when he was breaking, he used to lift his arm, kind of like Roberto Gomez, and whack him like crazy, crazy speed.

01:48:28.000 And every time he was breaking from the rail, he was doing the same thing.

01:48:32.000 The cue would always come out of the bridge, and somehow he would hit a certain spot on the cue ball.

01:48:37.000 Yeah, I don't know how Bustamante did it.

01:48:40.000 I would watch, like, people, they would play it, they would focus on it in the replays.

01:48:44.000 They would give you, like, a close-up of his fingers to show you, like, look how crazy this is.

01:48:49.000 Have you ever noticed that Bustamante aims?

01:48:51.000 Yeah, to the left.

01:48:52.000 To the left and then hits...

01:48:54.000 Wherever he wants to hit.

01:48:55.000 So his practice strokes, he's shooting left, like to the left side of the ball, and always low.

01:49:02.000 But then he might follow the ball, he might hit it with right English.

01:49:06.000 So what they say back when nobody knew the game that well, they're saying that he was hiding the way he was playing, and that's how he was hiding the tip position he was putting on there.

01:49:21.000 Oh.

01:49:23.000 I wonder if those guys got upset when people started using the measles ball.

01:49:28.000 Probably.

01:49:29.000 I don't know.

01:49:29.000 So for people who don't know, they don't use that anymore in most tournaments, right?

01:49:33.000 Yeah.

01:49:33.000 But the measles ball was a ball that they developed for television play where it had little red dots all over the ball.

01:49:41.000 So if you hit the ball with left-hand English or right-hand English, it was very obvious to anyone anywhere near because you could see the dots spinning to the left.

01:49:52.000 Whereas, sometimes guys would make a shot.

01:49:54.000 It was an incredible shot. 0.99

01:49:55.000 Like, what fucking English did he use? 0.99

01:49:56.000 How did he do that? 1.00

01:49:57.000 Like, what kind of spin did he put on that ball?

01:49:59.000 Because you really couldn't tell.

01:50:00.000 No.

01:50:00.000 Because it was just a white ball.

01:50:02.000 And unless you were, like, right on top where you could see the tip positioning when he struck the ball, you really didn't know.

01:50:08.000 Yeah, it's insane the way he plays.

01:50:10.000 It's unique. 0.89

01:50:11.000 Well, there's so many Filipinos came over here and robbed everybody. 1.00

01:50:15.000 It was amazing. 0.72

01:50:17.000 And the best version of that is Efren.

01:50:20.000 When Efren first came over here, he had a fake name.

01:50:25.000 Oh, really?

01:50:25.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:50:26.000 Efren, when he first came over here... 0.92

01:50:29.000 God damn it, what was his name? 0.97

01:50:32.000 It was like a Spanish name. 0.99

01:50:37.000 See if you can find it.

01:50:38.000 So he played his very first tournament under a fake name because he is...

01:50:44.000 God, I can't believe I can't remember it.

01:50:46.000 Generally, I can remember it.

01:50:48.000 But he played under a fake name because even though it was like the 1980s, he assumed that someone had been to the Philippines and knew that this guy was the king over there.

01:50:59.000 Can you find it?

01:51:03.000 Efren's...

01:51:04.000 just Google, Google, Efren played under a fake name.

01:51:09.000 Yeah, yeah, Cesar Morales.

01:51:10.000 Cesar Morales.

01:51:10.000 That's it.

01:51:11.000 So that was his name.

01:51:13.000 So he came over here under Cesar Morales and robbed everybody.

01:51:17.000 And then when he came back, he was Efren Reyes. 0.99

01:51:21.000 And everybody was like, oh, we got fucked. 0.99

01:51:24.000 There it is. 1.00

01:51:25.000 Cesar Morales stuns the field at Reds.

01:51:28.000 Wow.

01:51:29.000 And this was back when he was playing with a $5 pool cue.

01:51:34.000 He had a pool cue.

01:51:35.000 That looks like a Dennis Hercola on the left.

01:51:37.000 It does look like him, but I don't think it is.

01:51:39.000 Because Dennis is quite a bit older.

01:51:41.000 Yeah, younger.

01:51:42.000 Younger rather than that guy.

01:51:44.000 But that was in Houston.

01:51:45.000 And what year is that?

01:51:46.000 85. 1985. Yeah, so he stuns the field.

01:51:51.000 They came over here and fucked everybody up. 0.97

01:51:53.000 They had no idea that he would go on to be the greatest of all time. 0.98

01:51:57.000 Wade Crane. 1.00

01:51:58.000 Wade Crane was a bad motherfucker. 1.00

01:52:01.000 Dave Matlock. 1.00

01:52:02.000 Look at all these guys.

01:52:04.000 Yeah, Mike Gugliassi.

01:52:07.000 Wow.

01:52:08.000 Interesting.

01:52:09.000 Bobby Hunter.

01:52:10.000 Danny DiLiberto.

01:52:11.000 All those names.

01:52:14.000 Yeah, Wade Crane also had a fake name.

01:52:17.000 He called himself Billy Johnson.

01:52:20.000 Yeah, Billy Johnson was Wade Crane's road name.

01:52:22.000 Well, when the internet wasn't around, there was a big thing, I think.

01:52:25.000 Yeah!

01:52:26.000 Well, that was his...

01:52:27.000 He would go around playing as Billy Johnson because everybody had heard of Wade Crane.

01:52:31.000 And so he would just show up places and, you know, people had no idea, and then he would rob them.

01:52:37.000 That's perfect, yeah.

01:52:38.000 Well, there was a great book called Playing Off the Rail.

01:52:42.000 Have you ever heard of that book?

01:52:43.000 Uh-uh.

01:52:44.000 Playing Off the Rail was a book by this guy David McCumber, who at one point in time was Hunter S. Thompson's editor when he was writing for a newspaper.

01:52:54.000 And they took this guy, Tony Anagoni, who was a really good pro.

01:53:02.000 And they went on the road with like $35,000 so like like like tape the money to his body and shit in some places and They they did it for a book and the book is still available.

01:53:13.000 You can still find the book somewhere It's it's well worth it if you're a pool player if you're into pool to get this book because it's really David McCumber is a really good writer.

01:53:22.000 It's really well written and Tony Anagoni became a friend of mine and And I actually did commentary with him once on a match back in L.A., back in the day.

01:53:31.000 And I became friends with him and played with him a bunch of times.

01:53:34.000 And tragically, I think about a year and a half or so ago, he took his own life.

01:53:40.000 He jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.

01:53:42.000 Yeah, very sad.

01:53:44.000 But in that book, they went to Chelsea Billiards.

01:53:48.000 They went to all these different places where they hustled.

01:53:53.000 And they just set up matches and set up games and played people.

01:53:56.000 But it just gives you this kind of taste, especially because McCumber is such a good writer.

01:54:01.000 It gives you this feeling, this really interesting depiction of what that life is like.

01:54:10.000 These guys that do things like that, like Wade Crane did when he called himself Billy Johnson.

01:54:15.000 That is a whole subset of Americana where these guys would travel around, stay in shitty hotels, and gamble.

01:54:24.000 Yeah, I mean, it's it's kind of the same picture nowadays, too.

01:54:28.000 Yeah, there's still a lot of that.

01:54:30.000 Oh, yeah. 0.96

01:54:30.000 Yeah, it's It's fucking cool. 0.96

01:54:34.000 You know, it's a it's a really cool part of like this Subculture that people don't know about and I've always admired people who did it I always I always thought that was a cool way to live your life. 0.98

01:54:46.000 It's a crazy reckless But the people that did it, they were such fucking characters. 0.83

01:54:54.000 They were such interesting people. 0.97

01:54:56.000 Yeah, I mean, all of them.

01:54:57.000 It's a crazy lifestyle.

01:54:58.000 I don't know if I would recommend it to my kids, but...

01:55:02.000 No.

01:55:03.000 But it's...

01:55:04.000 I mean, yeah.

01:55:06.000 Maybe you would, if pool becomes something really big, you know, if pool does grow to the point where there's million-dollar purses...

01:55:15.000 Absolutely, but not the gambling side.

01:55:17.000 I went through a lot of that, and it's shady.

01:55:23.000 Did you ever get in a situation where people pulled out guns or people were robbing people?

01:55:27.000 No, but my friend did in the Philippines.

01:55:29.000 What happened?

01:55:30.000 Well, he beat the guy out of a small amount of money, and the guy didn't want to pay him.

01:55:36.000 And he wasn't even, like, pushing him to pay.

01:55:39.000 He was, like, 100 bucks.

01:55:42.000 But he was the only foreigner in the building, and he had a guy with him that took care of him and kind of made games for him.

01:55:51.000 And that guy started saying something in Tagalog in their own language.

01:55:57.000 And the guy pulled his gun and, like, started shooting in the air, like, trying to say that I'm not playing here.

01:56:04.000 He was like an authority or something.

01:56:07.000 For a hundred bucks?

01:56:09.000 I mean...

01:56:10.000 Imagine what he'd do for 51,000.

01:56:12.000 Gambling junkies.

01:56:13.000 Yeah, that's the thing.

01:56:15.000 Gambling junkies.

01:56:16.000 It's not about the money for him.

01:56:18.000 Right.

01:56:18.000 And there's so many of those guys that are connected to underworld characters.

01:56:23.000 There's all these, you know, wild gamblers that are, they're almost all at least one step removed from criminals.

01:56:33.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:56:34.000 If they're not criminals themselves, they might have a criminal who's a backer.

01:56:40.000 Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of drug money involved, I think, in gambling.

01:56:45.000 Oh, yeah.

01:56:46.000 Oh, yeah.

01:56:47.000 There was always guys that were backing people back in my day when I was hanging around New York where there were these guys that were drug addicts or drug dealers.

01:56:58.000 They were selling coke.

01:56:59.000 Yeah.

01:57:00.000 And they had that money and that was how they burned the money.

01:57:02.000 They would come in and gamble it.

01:57:04.000 Yeah, do the same thing tomorrow.

01:57:05.000 Yeah.

01:57:06.000 I remember one time we went to Harlem to play this guy because these pimps, they would have a ton of money and they would play big money one pocket.

01:57:17.000 And so we went down to Harlem, and here I am, this dorky, fresh...

01:57:21.000 I was your age.

01:57:22.000 I was like... 0.93

01:57:22.000 I was hanging around in Harlem in this, like, fucking heavy-duty, like, hardcore pool room where these pimps would go and gamble big money. 0.93

01:57:36.000 And they'd come in with flashy clothes on, and it was just such a scene, man. 0.90

01:57:42.000 It was such a scene.

01:57:43.000 It was so cool.

01:57:45.000 It was just so, just to sit there, I mean, I wasn't playing those guys. 0.96

01:57:48.000 I sucked.

01:57:49.000 But I was with my friend Johnny and this guy, Mount Vernon Tommy, who was like a real top player from the area. 0.98

01:57:54.000 And they were all, and this guy Juan, who was also this killer.

01:57:58.000 And they would, we would all go down together.

01:58:00.000 We'd take this drive down together to Harlem.

01:58:02.000 And at the time, The garbage workers were on strike.

01:58:07.000 So all the garbage was stacked outside.

01:58:10.000 So when they would take garbage out to the curb, nobody would throw the garbage out.

01:58:14.000 So there was six foot high piles of garbage that lined the whole street. 0.75

01:58:21.000 Not bullshitting.

01:58:22.000 So you'd walk down the sidewalk and rats would be everywhere. 0.60

01:58:26.000 I mean everywhere.

01:58:27.000 You'd see the garbage bags moving.

01:58:30.000 They would scramble in front of your feet.

01:58:31.000 I'm like, oh my god.

01:58:33.000 Like, I grew up in the suburbs of Newton, Massachusetts, right?

01:58:36.000 That's where I went to high school.

01:58:38.000 In this, like, very nice, you know, upper-middle-class neighborhood.

01:58:42.000 I was this fresh-faced little cute kid, and I'm wandering around with these degenerate gamblers in a pool hall in Harlem filled with pimps.

01:58:53.000 But I got out of there and I wouldn't trade those experiences for the world because it was so interesting to see that the subculture of these gamblers and pool players and all they cared about was like, who's the killer?

01:59:06.000 Like, who's the guy?

01:59:08.000 You know?

01:59:09.000 And they all had these crazy names and everybody had these cool nicknames.

01:59:13.000 Nicknames, yeah.

01:59:14.000 Oh my god.

01:59:14.000 It was such an amazing time.

01:59:17.000 But it's such...

01:59:18.000 That's what scares me about it.

01:59:20.000 Right now it's got, like we said, this resurgence.

01:59:25.000 But there was a time where I thought this could go away.

01:59:28.000 Pool halls were closing.

01:59:30.000 People weren't going to them anymore.

01:59:33.000 In L.A., they all went away.

01:59:35.000 And this is one of the reasons why it was really sad to me.

01:59:39.000 Because in L.A., the big pool hall in town was Hollywood Billiards.

01:59:44.000 And when I first moved to LA, I played the original Hollywood Billiards, but then there was an earthquake.

01:59:51.000 And Hollywood Billiards, the building got fucked up, so then they had to move it.

01:59:54.000 And then they moved it to this place that was, like, much nicer.

01:59:57.000 And then it became, instead of, like, this place where, like, it was a lot of players, then it became a place where people would take their dates, and they served good food, and they played nice music, and it kind of changed.

02:00:08.000 And then it went under.

02:00:10.000 And then there was no pool halls in L.A. None.

02:00:12.000 L.A. As big as L.A. is.

02:00:15.000 No pool halls.

02:00:17.000 You had the House of Billiards in Sherman Oaks, the House of Billiards in Santa Monica, which I don't even know if it's still there anymore.

02:00:23.000 And then you had Hard Times, which is quite a bit away.

02:00:26.000 There was like Bellflower, which is like 50 minutes drive.

02:00:29.000 Why do you think that happened?

02:00:30.000 When was it, like 2010?

02:00:32.000 It was just, yeah, it was somewhere around then that Hollywood Billiards went under.

02:00:37.000 Because that video of me doing Earl Strickland, that was at Hollywood Billiards.

02:00:41.000 That was at Hollywood Billiards, the new, nicer place, before it went under.

02:00:44.000 So you'd have like a few players that would go there, but...

02:00:48.000 The vast majority of the room was filled with lemons. 0.78

02:00:51.000 They were all just bail, you know, ball bangers and people on dates and, you know, girls with, you know, hot asses bending over pool tables trying to impress their dates, which is fine. 0.72

02:01:01.000 But, I mean, you need that to keep a pool room open. 0.98

02:01:04.000 But watching that place go under, I was like, God damn it, pool's dying. 0.94

02:01:08.000 Like, this is what it felt to me. 0.99

02:01:10.000 It was dying at some point, 100%.

02:01:11.000 Yeah.

02:01:12.000 I mean, I got lucky when I was starting to play pool, pool started to kind of making a comeback.

02:01:20.000 And in Europe, I mean, I never knew how it is in the U.S. until, like, I came here probably two, three years ago.

02:01:29.000 Because all I knew is Derby City Classic, that's the only tournament I went to, and it's completely opposite to what the American pool scene is.

02:01:37.000 Right.

02:01:37.000 Derby's wild.

02:01:38.000 Oh, it's crazy.

02:01:40.000 If you've never experienced it, it's even tough to describe it.

02:01:43.000 It's crazy.

02:01:44.000 First floor is the tournament, and then you go upstairs, it's a completely different life.

02:01:48.000 I mean, you have people just live there in that action room for eight days, just playing nonstop, 24 hours.

02:01:56.000 You have the players that come in at like 3 or 4 o'clock because they were sleeping before just to come and play at 3 or 4 o'clock with people that have been playing for days and just trying to take advantage of them not sleeping.

02:02:09.000 It's unbelievable.

02:02:11.000 But yeah, I mean, it's definitely different.

02:02:17.000 What kind of a neighborhood did you grow up in?

02:02:20.000 I grew up in Moscow, Russia, so it's like a megapolis, big city, kind of like New York style.

02:02:30.000 And so you were probably never around those kind of people?

02:02:34.000 I was never around any gambling until I came on the road with Alan and Jason.

02:02:42.000 Really?

02:02:42.000 So in Europe you never saw gambling?

02:02:44.000 They don't gamble in Europe.

02:02:46.000 All they do, they can bet a little Vader on like a sparring set.

02:02:51.000 They can play for like 50 euros just to make it more interesting and put a little pressure.

02:02:56.000 So small wagers.

02:02:58.000 Yeah, just to play and make it more interesting.

02:03:01.000 But gambling is really small.

02:03:03.000 It's getting a little bit bigger.

02:03:05.000 I saw guys play for like 20 grand last week in Romania on the stream, and then Switzerland, they gamble there.

02:03:13.000 But it's nothing compared to the U.S. Why do you think that is?

02:03:17.000 Because they treat the game completely different.

02:03:20.000 Here, people in general, even the professional players, they would rather play than practice.

02:03:29.000 In Europe, I feel it's different.

02:03:32.000 People would rather practice and get better and treat it more professionally, I would say, than here.

02:03:39.000 There's some really good players from Europe that do a lot of instructionals, like Niels Fein.

02:03:46.000 Nils was actually my favorite player.

02:03:48.000 He's a great player.

02:03:49.000 Growing up, yeah.

02:03:50.000 Yeah, I sent one of his videos to my friend Sean.

02:03:53.000 We're talking about the pause, where he's practicing strokes, and he's just got these rock-solid fundamentals.

02:04:00.000 But he was also a guy that didn't gamble either, right?

02:04:04.000 I believe he gambled.

02:04:05.000 I mean, I've heard the stories.

02:04:06.000 I don't know for sure, but when he came to the U.S., I believe he gambled.

02:04:11.000 One of the big ones was Ralph Suquet.

02:04:13.000 He would never gamble.

02:04:14.000 Ralph, I believe that.

02:04:15.000 Ralph would never gamble.

02:04:16.000 Same with Thorsten.

02:04:17.000 I don't think they would gamble.

02:04:18.000 But everybody was like, you know, they were upset.

02:04:21.000 Because here is this guy who's a world beater, one of the best players in the world, and all he would do is play tournaments.

02:04:27.000 So there was a thing, there was like a label on those guys.

02:04:30.000 Like, ah, he's a tournament player.

02:04:32.000 Well, it's the same thing today.

02:04:34.000 It's the same thing today.

02:04:36.000 I mean, I'm joking myself like I'm an action player.

02:04:38.000 I'm not a tournament player.

02:04:40.000 And, you know, they released the band and I'm a tournament player again.

02:04:43.000 I'm not an action player.

02:04:45.000 So, yeah.

02:04:49.000 What do you prefer?

02:04:51.000 I prefer tournament because that's the lifestyle that I grew up and I like it.

02:04:58.000 I know what I have to work for.

02:05:00.000 I can schedule my practice sessions.

02:05:03.000 Also, it's not dangerous.

02:05:04.000 It's not dangerous.

02:05:08.000 I mean, nowadays, you can make less money playing tournaments, but that will change.

02:05:14.000 But the thing is, some of these top players, they gamble, but the way they do it, they do it in a live stream, and they make it like a one-on-one tournament.

02:05:24.000 Yeah.

02:05:25.000 So a lot of matches I play, it's pay-per-view.

02:05:29.000 So I'm getting an appearance fee as well.

02:05:31.000 But still, it's completely different to tournaments.

02:05:37.000 I mean, I'd much rather play tournaments than gambling matches.

02:05:42.000 Would you rather play a tournament that's a short match, though?

02:05:46.000 Like a race to seven?

02:05:49.000 Versus a game like you were playing with that Filipino gentleman where you could play a race to 100 for three days. 1.00

02:05:55.000 No, of course the longer race would be better for me. 0.99

02:05:58.000 Yeah.

02:05:59.000 Then the better player will win in the end.

02:06:02.000 Shorter races is okay because you can understand. 0.99

02:06:08.000 To speed things up and for the viewer it's boring to watch a longer race.

02:06:13.000 I get it.

02:06:15.000 But of course I prefer a longer race.

02:06:17.000 In the Moscone Cup, when they do one-on-ones, isn't it like a race to five?

02:06:21.000 A race to five alternate break, yeah.

02:06:23.000 That's crazy.

02:06:24.000 But they have 11 of them at least.

02:06:27.000 Yeah.

02:06:27.000 That's a lot of races.

02:06:28.000 The thing is, like, race to five is so quick.

02:06:31.000 It is, but when you have a lot of them, it will even things up.

02:06:35.000 In the end, the better player will still win.

02:06:37.000 And is it the Predator Tour that does the shootouts?

02:06:41.000 Yes, they have that strange format that they started with two years ago.

02:06:49.000 It's two races to four, and if you tie one to one after two sets, you do the shootouts.

02:06:53.000 So for people that don't understand what that is, they put the 10 ball on the spot, and you're behind the headstring, and you just see who makes the most amount of 10 balls in the row.

02:07:08.000 Yeah, I mean, it's exciting for a viewer.

02:07:10.000 Oh, yeah.

02:07:10.000 Yeah, it's a lot of pressure there.

02:07:12.000 It's a lot of pressure.

02:07:13.000 Do you like that, though?

02:07:14.000 I like the pressure, but I hate losing it.

02:07:17.000 Because every time I lose, I want to understand why I lost.

02:07:20.000 And, you know, there's a good example.

02:07:24.000 So I played Ralph Suquet in Puerto Rico last month in that Predator tournament.

02:07:31.000 The first set, I won 4-0.

02:07:33.000 Played perfect.

02:07:34.000 And then I started off the second set.

02:07:37.000 I went up 3-0.

02:07:39.000 Playing good, you know, broke dry, and then maybe kicked one time, and I lost the set.

02:07:45.000 I lost 4-3.

02:07:47.000 And it's such a mental format that I was one wreck away from the win.

02:07:54.000 The match is never over with that format.

02:07:56.000 You know, it's...

02:07:58.000 It's tough to describe, and I ended up losing in the shootout.

02:08:03.000 I missed one ball in the whole match.

02:08:07.000 When you did the shootout, how many ten balls did you guys make?

02:08:10.000 I made three, and he made four.

02:08:12.000 So it's best of four shots, and he made four of them.

02:08:15.000 What happens if you both make four?

02:08:16.000 Then you move the cue ball back one diamond, and it's a sudden death.

02:08:21.000 So whoever makes the mistake first loses.

02:08:24.000 So it's one diamond behind the headstring.

02:08:26.000 Yeah, so you're playing from the first diamond of the long rail.

02:08:30.000 That's a lot of pressure for all your cheese.

02:08:33.000 Yeah.

02:08:34.000 Win or lose.

02:08:35.000 They do that in the finals as well?

02:08:36.000 Yeah.

02:08:37.000 I won three tournaments already that Predator series once, and one of them I played Carlo Beato in the finals, and shootout was decider there.

02:08:48.000 Yeah, I mean, for 25 grand, you have to shoot one single ball.

02:08:52.000 It's crazy.

02:08:54.000 It's not a bad idea.

02:08:55.000 No, it's not, but it's absolutely brutal to lose that way.

02:08:59.000 I can understand.

02:09:00.000 I mean, I don't think it's the best expression of elite pool playing.

02:09:04.000 I think the best expression of elite pool playing is like a race, a long race.

02:09:08.000 But I believe that formats like this should survive, and they should be there for the viewing side of you.

02:09:16.000 I think it's a good format as an alternative.

02:09:18.000 Just like I think the Moscone Cup is good as an alternative.

02:09:21.000 It's an interesting way to express pool.

02:09:24.000 But I think as a person who just loves the game, I want to see like a race to 15, something like that, where it's like a real set.

02:09:34.000 Yeah, the real battle.

02:09:35.000 I agree, I agree.

02:09:37.000 But in the end of the day, they're always trying to grow the game, and I think the viewership will help, and tournaments like this will expand.

02:09:47.000 No, I think so, too.

02:09:48.000 I mean, look, it's good that someone's doing anything.

02:09:51.000 It's good that Predator's doing that, and Matchroom's doing that, and all these independent streaming companies are doing that, like Omega Billiards.

02:09:59.000 They have streams.

02:10:01.000 What's next for you?

02:10:04.000 My tournament schedule is already packed for January, February.

02:10:08.000 It starts with Turning Stone Classic in New Jersey.

02:10:13.000 Oh, that's a big tournament.

02:10:14.000 Yeah, official one, a ranking event, and then the tournament before Derby City Classic in Louisville, and then Derby City Classic, which is huge.

02:10:24.000 Then February, I have some smaller tournaments in Louisiana, some bar table tournaments, and...

02:10:32.000 Do you like playing on bar table tournaments?

02:10:34.000 No, I hate it.

02:10:34.000 I saw you posted something on your Instagram about playing in little kids' tables.

02:10:39.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:10:40.000 I mean, I hate it, but there's a lot of money out there.

02:10:43.000 Yeah?

02:10:44.000 A lot of them.

02:10:45.000 So, you know what Calcutta is?

02:10:47.000 Mm-hmm.

02:10:48.000 Yeah.

02:10:48.000 The Calcutta's on the bar table.

02:10:49.000 Let's explain the Calcutta.

02:10:50.000 The way the Calcutta works is, like, say if there's a bunch of people that are entering into a tournament, like 32 players, You can gamble by buying a player in the Calcutta.

02:11:02.000 Like if you were in a tournament and I could buy you.

02:11:05.000 And a lot of times it's an auction.

02:11:07.000 It's like someone says, I have $100 on Fedor.

02:11:11.000 And I'm like, I got $150.

02:11:13.000 And then someone will go, I'll give $200.

02:11:15.000 And then all that money gets piled up.

02:11:19.000 And if you own a player in the Calcutta, if you purchased a player in the Calcutta, when that person wins, you can get a pile of money.

02:11:27.000 And a lot of times they cut it with the player. 0.93

02:11:30.000 Like, they'll give the player a piece of the action so that they don't feel like, you know, they're getting fucked over. 0.86

02:11:36.000 Because sometimes the Calcutta is bigger than the actual prize. 0.80

02:11:39.000 Always is.

02:11:40.000 Always is.

02:11:41.000 I mean, yeah, always.

02:11:43.000 Especially on a bar table.

02:11:44.000 Bar table can be huge sometimes.

02:11:47.000 Like, sometimes it will go over 150, 200 grand.

02:11:50.000 And what is the culture of the bar table tournaments and bar table pool rooms?

02:11:55.000 How much does that differ from the big table rooms?

02:11:58.000 Usually it's just the bars.

02:12:02.000 They're in bars.

02:12:03.000 Yeah.

02:12:03.000 So it's like louder.

02:12:04.000 Super loud.

02:12:05.000 Music.

02:12:06.000 Smoking.

02:12:07.000 Yeah.

02:12:08.000 All that.

02:12:09.000 Characters.

02:12:09.000 I've had bad experience.

02:12:11.000 Yeah.

02:12:11.000 I went to East Moline, Illinois this year.

02:12:15.000 We were playing on valley bar tables.

02:12:17.000 That's like...

02:12:18.000 Coin operated.

02:12:19.000 Yeah.

02:12:20.000 Bar tables was like five and a half inch pockets.

02:12:24.000 Yeah.

02:12:24.000 With dead rails and smaller balls.

02:12:27.000 I mean, it was like absolutely crazy.

02:12:30.000 And yeah, that was one of the places where I didn't really want to go out on the street.

02:12:36.000 I just wanted to be in the corner of the pool hall and just waiting for my match.

02:12:41.000 What was the bad experience about it?

02:12:43.000 I was just feeling that something could happen to me.

02:12:46.000 I don't know, it's tough to explain, but just the vibe of the pool room and the vibe of the city, I didn't like it.

02:12:55.000 Yeah.

02:12:56.000 You know, it's in the middle of nowhere.

02:12:59.000 It was tough to get there.

02:13:00.000 I had to take a taxi from St. Louis, a four-hour drive, and it wasn't worth it.

02:13:09.000 I won't ever go back there.

02:13:11.000 It's interesting that some guys become known for being bar table killers.

02:13:17.000 Like Dave Matlock was always known as being a bar table killer.

02:13:21.000 Yeah, I mean, it's a different game.

02:13:23.000 It's a different game.

02:13:24.000 It's like a ten-footer, seven-footer, nine-foot ball.

02:13:27.000 It's different.

02:13:30.000 Seven-footers are a good equalizer because an amateur can play good on a bar table and he would absolutely suck on a nine-footer.

02:13:38.000 And, you know, you will have more players signing up for bar table tournaments because they will have a chance to beat me on paper.

02:13:48.000 So I think that's why they're bigger in the US. And that's part of the problem why pool is not there comparing to Europe.

02:13:59.000 We don't play on the seven-footers at all.

02:14:01.000 And also, it's treated with more respect over there.

02:14:05.000 Yes, that too.

02:14:06.000 Both in preparation, in the way people train and practice.

02:14:11.000 It seems like European players, when you watch them, they have a much more uniform approach than American players.

02:14:20.000 Like a lot of American players, their styles vary so differently.

02:14:23.000 The way they stroke the ball, the way they move around.

02:14:26.000 Yeah, but it's changing slightly.

02:14:29.000 Especially after Johan Reising was a captain for Team USA and worked with them for a couple of years, I think he kind of gave them an understanding of how it could be done.

02:14:41.000 And players like Tyler Steyer and Shane Wolford, you know, young guns.

02:14:46.000 Tyler plays very much like a European player.

02:14:48.000 He looks like he could be playing for...

02:14:49.000 Yeah, he's very methodical.

02:14:51.000 He works hard, he practices, and I think he's a very good ambassador for all the players that you can look up to.

02:15:00.000 So your goal, you must want to be number one in the world, right?

02:15:05.000 I want to be, but it's not my goal.

02:15:08.000 What is your goal?

02:15:09.000 My goal is just to be, to just get better.

02:15:13.000 I don't have a certain goal that I want to reach, like being number one or win.

02:15:19.000 I won a world championship already.

02:15:21.000 I want to win it again, but is it my primary goal?

02:15:24.000 No.

02:15:25.000 Especially not knowing my schedule right now, I just want to play as good as I could and practice and get better every day.

02:15:35.000 Well, I think with that goal, that could lead you to be the best in the world.

02:15:39.000 I mean, you're right there.

02:15:42.000 Who knows?

02:15:43.000 Maybe I am already.

02:15:44.000 You might be.

02:15:45.000 You never know.

02:15:47.000 You're certainly in the conversation.

02:15:48.000 I mean, yeah.

02:15:49.000 And you're only 22, which is pretty wild.

02:15:52.000 And you're the first pool player I've ever had on this podcast.

02:15:54.000 So congratulations.

02:15:56.000 Thank you.

02:15:56.000 For that.

02:15:57.000 Thanks.

02:15:58.000 And all right, man, let's wrap this up.

02:16:00.000 Thank you for doing this.

02:16:01.000 I really appreciate it.

02:16:01.000 It was great to meet you.

02:16:02.000 It was really fun to play with you.

02:16:04.000 Thank you so much.

02:16:04.000 And I wish you all the best of luck, and hopefully you'll keep on trucking.

02:16:10.000 Well, thank you, Joe.

02:16:11.000 It was a pleasure.

02:16:12.000 My pleasure.

02:16:13.000 All right.

02:16:13.000 Bye, everybody.

02:16:14.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - December 29, 2022

Joe Rogan Experience #1917 - Fedor Gorst

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