Fedor Gorst, Russia’s top-ranked pool player (top 3-4 globally), discusses his career shaped by a 2016 tournament debut at 16 and a 2023 ban lift after Ukraine sanctions, contrasting pool’s structured growth with UFC’s business-friendly approach to Russian athletes. His disciplined training—6-8 hours daily, focusing on weaknesses like breaks and jumps—reveals the mental grind of elite play, where drugs (Adderall, cocaine) and gambling (e.g., $51K wins in one day) often blur lines between sport and subculture. Gorst’s goal isn’t rankings but mastery, balancing scoliosis from years of posture with core drills like planking, while Rogan highlights pool’s resurgence through tournaments like Matchroom and live-streamed matches, pushing the game toward broader appeal. [Automatically generated summary]
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.
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.
Your brain's not fully formed.
unidentified
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.
Oh yeah, there's so many characters, there's so many oddball people.
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.
I had an ACL tear in my knee so I couldn't work out.
For a while and a friend of mine who was a comedian, we started playing pool together.
We both sucked.
We were just playing pool.
But just so lucky that the place that I picked to go to was a local action spot.
And there was a lot of big gambling going on there.
Like guys would come in and play $10,000 sets of one pocket.
It was a big deal.
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, and how exciting it is to watch.
So I was exposed to it at a very early age.
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.
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?
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.
And, you know, I have more potential.
I can travel the world.
And we decided that we have to switch, and that's when I started playing pool.
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, you have to really tighten everything up.
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.
I didn't used to do that though, but then I got some pointers from someone.
Max Eberle actually helped me with that.
Max Eberle coached me when I lived in LA. That was the first.
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.
And a few other guys gave me some pointers and tips, but Max gave me some real lessons.
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.
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.
Is it like a very disciplined regiment that you guys would practice?
It may sound really professional, but what happened with me, I had four, five different coaches.
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.
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.
Russian pyramid has many, many coaches.
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.
That's when things really changed and I think I'm really grateful that it happened.
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.
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.
The magic rack, for people that don't know, there's a regular rack.
When you put the balls in the rack, it's a wooden rack or a plastic rack, and it's shaped like a triangle.
And then there's this plastic sheet that keeps the balls completely tight, and it's not a rack like a normal rack.
It's something that you place the balls on, And it ensures that all the balls are completely tight.
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.
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.
But I appreciate perfection.
I appreciate watching something like this where someone just gets dead on every ball.
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.
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.
There was a lot of situations like this in my life, honestly, that I'm grateful, and it's absolutely amazing how it happened.
So...
Yeah, after this we started with some European tournaments.
I went to Norway, Sweden, some Euro tours.
And I wasn't really winning, but I had a slightly progression.
I was always practicing and trying to get better.
And yeah, like I said, with Johan Reising coming to Russia as a national coach at the same time, that was perfect timing.
Because Mike told me that we can possibly work with Johan individually later on.
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?
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.
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.
And we didn't know the person that we were betting on.
It was Alan and Jason, the brother that came with me today.
So we were betting and betting and betting, and then I think the final match, I got into the finals.
I played Roberto Gomez.
We asked him if you want to double or nothing or bet again.
And they said, no, we're good.
So I ended up losing, and then they were staking Skyler Woodward at the time.
They were putting Skyler in the tournament, and I drew Skyler in round 10 of Derby City Classic and beat him 9-1.
It's a team match between Europe and the United States.
So you have all the top European players and they play all sorts of different ways.
They play individually, one-on-one.
They play two versus two, which is very interesting.
If you and I were playing two versus two, And we were on the same team.
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, but it's perfect for left-handed.
So there's a lot of weird thinking.
And then on top of that, there's the wildest crowd in all of Portland.
But they're great, because they're quiet when the player's down on the ball.
I wanted to get out to Vegas to see it this year, but I was just too busy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
He wrote this book about this guy who was a famous pool hustler in the Depression and traveled around.
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.
It wasn't an easy life by any stretch of the imagination.
But what was my point?
I forgot my point.
Oh, this is my point.
So they were in a pool hall once and Nixon was on TV and he was the president.
And he was with this guy and the guy goes, look at that guy.
President of the United States and he can't make a ball.
That's how pool players think.
They don't give a fuck about you if you can't play pool.
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.
No, that was actually the Jacobi edge shaft I used to play with.
Actually, that's another good story.
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.
And he said, it's all right, you can do it, you know.
And I picked the cue from the wall and I started hitting and I really, really liked the cue.
And I ended up beating everybody.
I played so good.
That's amazing for me because it never happened to me after.
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.
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.
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.
And so everybody calculates that when you shoot a ball.
Like sometimes when you're aiming at a ball with a shaft that has high deflection, you're really aiming to miss.
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.
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.
So maybe if he was playing, it was driving around some old bullshit car.
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.
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.
That's crazy.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
What do you think about breaking from the box when they had rules like that for a while?
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.
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,
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.
And you would make a bridge, and the whole thing would be like sliding your cue through that tube.
Well, pool is one of those things where when you're...
It's one moment.
There's one moment.
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.
And if I miss, and if I hang that ball, you're going to win.
But if I make it, I'm going to win.
So it comes down to all this playing, comes down to this one brief moment.
And the walls close in on you.
It's like...
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.
They can get caught up in what's called like an open loop system where you just kind of like let the cue go.
And you've seen that.
Everyone's seen that.
They just miss the ball by like a full diamond.
They dog the ball and you're like, what the fuck happened?
I mean, I've said this about jiu-jitsu, and I'll say it about pool.
I think marijuana is a performance-enhancing drug with some things.
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.
He said the balls, like you could see edges on the balls differently.
Like it almost like where there was a bunch of edges.
Instead of a round surface, they would see like a different geometry to the balls.
It's like, there's this small handful who could just beat anybody in the world.
And he just won, he just beat, rather, the world straight pool record.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And the pressure of a shot then becomes very high because if you miss...
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.
The guy made a shot, missed, and Mike Siegel ran 125 balls and out.
The guy never got a chance to shoot again.
And that's commonplace with the really, really elite players.
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.
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.
Yeah, the best players I think ever are around right now.
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.
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.
But back then, the players just weren't the same level.
Yeah, they didn't have a sophisticated kicking method either.
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.
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.
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.
Well, pool came over the Philippines in the 1950s when the GIs were over there.
So American GIs were over there and they brought pool to the Philippines and the Filipinos just took over.
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.
But the scene there is so fascinating because it's contrary to everything that you would ever expect in a pool tournament.
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.
Yeah, you have to get in the corner and say, excuse me, and these guys are on their phone, and it's so normal.
Now, look at the powder.
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.
But because they play in these imperfect conditions, because they're accustomed to it...
They developed these amazing strokes.
I mean, Efren's stroke is just a thing of beauty.
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.
So I was playing a guy a long race last year, and, for example, everybody knows, like, if you win...
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.
So I come in, and we're about to begin, and he's like, are we legging again?
So I'm like, ugh.
No, bro.
It's my break.
So there was a lot of different moves.
We agreed to play with one magic rack, and he ended up stealing the magic rack.
And then we were on a break, and I broke the balls, made four balls on a break, and I was dead out.
And he's like, are you practicing, or what are you doing?
I'm like, no, we're playing.
I just asked you a minute ago, are you ready to start?
Well, like I said about that book, Buddy Hall, I think it's From Rags to Riflemen is the name of the book.
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.
It's a rare book.
You can still find it, like sometimes on AZ Billiard, someone has a copy of it for sale, but it's pretty valuable now.
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.
He was an elite player, but he was a heroin addict.
So, he would go to the bathroom, and everybody knew what was going on.
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.
He'd sit on a billiard stool like this.
I mean, sit there for like 20 minutes, just like this, like...
Just gone.
Just gone in the world of heroin.
And then he would get up from that and he had shark eyes.
They were like, the pupils were like fully dilated like a gerbil.
Like you weren't even talking to a human.
He didn't even see you.
And he would get on the table and he couldn't fucking miss.
And there was a table at Executive Billiards.
It was tight, tight tables.
Table one.
And that's the table where everybody gambled if they played one pocket or straight pool.
There were ridiculous pockets.
There were like four inch, but it was a gaff pocket where whoever made the shims, they were all fucked up.
They didn't line up that good.
So there was like, they were rough on the corner.
So if you could like clip the edge a little, you're fucked.
You're not making the ball.
And this guy couldn't miss.
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
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.
But he had a really good horse because he was the favorite.
To win because of this horse.
So he's standing up, pulling back on the horse, trying to slow him down.
And his story was always that he hired William Kunstler.
And William Kunstler is a famous attorney.
Kunstler.
Kuntzler's gonna get me out of this case.
These cocksuckers, they don't know what the fuck they're dealing with.
William Kuntzler's gonna get me back on that track.
And so George wind up actually opening up his own pool hall in White Plains.
But for a while, he was like hanging around executive billiards, and then he was a house man for a while too.
But he was playing this guy, Water Dog.
And he was playing him for...
They were playing for a lot of money.
It was like, I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of five to ten thousand dollars.
For like games of straight pool.
So they play like 150 points for like $10,000.
And he was so angry because Waterdog would come out of the bathroom like this and then just couldn't miss.
unidentified
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.
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.
It was super sketchy.
Went there and I'm playing and Steve Mizorak is there and Rodney Morris is there and Johnny Archer is there.
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.
It's a beautiful thing.
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.
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.
He just, he had this Effortless stroke.
I mean, it was just this perfect, classic stroke.
He was a left-handed guy, and he would get down on that ball.
And, you know, he was a big, fat guy.
So, like, he wasn't moving anywhere.
He didn't need any weights.
And he would settle down on that ball, and people would just watch him.
And you would see these guys just go, God.
I always say that pool is an art form that only the people who practice can appreciate.
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.
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.
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.
And my friend Tommy that I'm gonna do with, he's a very good player too.
He was a top player when he was younger, but then realized, hey, there's no fucking future in this.
He was playing this guy, he told me this story, he said he never forgot it.
He was like 21, 22 years old and he's He's a fucking stone cold killer.
I mean, he's playing big money gambling matches.
Like, Tommy easily could have gone on to be a really good pro.
Easily.
Like, he was really...
He could break a run five, six racks in a row.
Excellent cue ball control.
Great shot maker.
But he was playing this guy, Neptune Joe Frady.
And Joe Frady was another guy who played at West End Billiards back in the day in those pro tournaments.
And he was one of those guys who always had a cigarette.
The cigarette was in between his fingers while he's holding the chip.
Yeah.
And he'd play with his mouth open.
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.
And Tommy was playing this guy.
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.
And that's what he said.
He said, I realize I can't do this.
I don't want to be that guy when I'm his age.
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.
But it's that thing where I felt like I was really good at something that wasn't even profitable.
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,
where people see it's so exciting, that I think there's some momentum now.
I think you're catching the wave at the exact right time.
So, I mean, I used to have goals every year based on my schedule.
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.
I've been playing everything and everywhere I could have in the United States.
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.
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.
For next year, the goal would be to show my best game on all of these official events because I'm finally back.
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.
I mean, to get a citizenship, you need to spend at least five years.
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.
I think you can't play two years in any big international events if you want to switch the country.
And so it's seven years for me to become a player representing the United States.
Yeah, he's still one of the very best players in the world.
And I have a framed photo of him outside here from the bicycle club.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But the measles ball was a ball that they developed for television play where it had little red dots all over the ball.
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.
So he played his very first tournament under a fake name because he is...
God, I can't believe I can't remember it.
Generally, I can remember it.
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.
Can you find it?
Efren's...
just Google, Google, Efren played under a fake name.
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.
And they took this guy, Tony Anagoni, who was a really good pro.
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.
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.
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.
And I became friends with him and played with him a bunch of times.
And tragically, I think about a year and a half or so ago, he took his own life.
He jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.
Yeah, very sad.
But in that book, they went to Chelsea Billiards.
They went to all these different places where they hustled.
And they just set up matches and set up games and played people.
But it just gives you this kind of taste, especially because McCumber is such a good writer.
It gives you this feeling, this really interesting depiction of what that life is like.
These guys that do things like that, like Wade Crane did when he called himself Billy Johnson.
That is a whole subset of Americana where these guys would travel around, stay in shitty hotels, and gamble.
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.
It's a crazy reckless But the people that did it, they were such fucking characters.
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.
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.
And so we went down to Harlem, and here I am, this dorky, fresh...
I was your age.
I was like...
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.
And they'd come in with flashy clothes on, and it was just such a scene, man.
It was such a scene.
It was so cool.
It was just so, just to sit there, I mean, I wasn't playing those guys.
I sucked.
But I was with my friend Johnny and this guy, Mount Vernon Tommy, who was like a real top player from the area.
And they were all, and this guy Juan, who was also this killer.
And they would, we would all go down together.
We'd take this drive down together to Harlem.
And at the time, The garbage workers were on strike.
So all the garbage was stacked outside.
So when they would take garbage out to the curb, nobody would throw the garbage out.
So there was six foot high piles of garbage that lined the whole street.
Not bullshitting.
So you'd walk down the sidewalk and rats would be everywhere.
I mean everywhere.
You'd see the garbage bags moving.
They would scramble in front of your feet.
I'm like, oh my god.
Like, I grew up in the suburbs of Newton, Massachusetts, right?
That's where I went to high school.
In this, like, very nice, you know, upper-middle-class neighborhood.
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.
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?
Like, who's the guy?
You know?
And they all had these crazy names and everybody had these cool nicknames.
Right now it's got, like we said, this resurgence.
But there was a time where I thought this could go away.
Pool halls were closing.
People weren't going to them anymore.
In L.A., they all went away.
And this is one of the reasons why it was really sad to me.
Because in L.A., the big pool hall in town was Hollywood Billiards.
And when I first moved to LA, I played the original Hollywood Billiards, but then there was an earthquake.
And Hollywood Billiards, the building got fucked up, so then they had to move it.
And then they moved it to this place that was, like, much nicer.
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.
And then it went under.
And then there was no pool halls in L.A. None.
L.A. As big as L.A. is.
No pool halls.
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.
And then you had Hard Times, which is quite a bit away.
There was like Bellflower, which is like 50 minutes drive.
It was just, yeah, it was somewhere around then that Hollywood Billiards went under.
Because that video of me doing Earl Strickland, that was at Hollywood Billiards.
That was at Hollywood Billiards, the new, nicer place, before it went under.
So you'd have like a few players that would go there, but...
The vast majority of the room was filled with lemons.
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.
But, I mean, you need that to keep a pool room open.
But watching that place go under, I was like, God damn it, pool's dying.
If you've never experienced it, it's even tough to describe it.
It's crazy.
First floor is the tournament, and then you go upstairs, it's a completely different life.
I mean, you have people just live there in that action room for eight days, just playing nonstop, 24 hours.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Like if you were in a tournament and I could buy you.
And a lot of times it's an auction.
It's like someone says, I have $100 on Fedor.
And I'm like, I got $150.
And then someone will go, I'll give $200.
And then all that money gets piled up.
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.
And a lot of times they cut it with the player.
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.
Because sometimes the Calcutta is bigger than the actual prize.
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.
And players like Tyler Steyer and Shane Wolford, you know, young guns.