WOULD YOU LET YOUR KID BECOME A POOL PRO

I SAW THIS RAN ON ANOTHER BOARD AND I DID NOT REALIZE HOW PITFULL POOL HAS BECOME.
This is very long, but if you read it, and if you are a parent, would you let your kid become a pool pro I guess is the question.

Kids-Pool-The Future ( 1 2 3 4 )
drivermaker Today 12:12 PM
by grubbydubby2000

Today, 12:11 PM

grubbydubby2000
Registered User Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 15

BECOME A POOL PRO 6-7-04 1 OF 6 PAGES

I want to become a pool pro, what are the odds of that occurring and me becoming successful in 2004. Answer 1 in 4 million.

On page one; a guy wrote what if somebody told Efren or Hoppe not to be a pool player what a mistake that would have been.
Drivermaker, wanna know when Efren started playing? Or Mike Sigel? ANY of the top 10 players? With a few exceptions, they almost all started playing at a young age. Would you have told a young Efren to go get a job? Probably. How about a young (very young) Willie Hoppe?

Let me continue after Lee says let them have and pursue their dreams even if they are doomed to almost certain failure. He then tries to compare success in Golf to pool, which has to be the dumbest analogy every written by anyone on this board. Don’t forget to ad in Fats to this also since he missed one. Here are 3 success stories, for every success, I can find you 100,000 losers who ended up in the gutter. Most get smart after being a degenerate pool bum going no where and eventually get a real day job. They wake up after wasting 10 years that they are now only making was an entry level job pays kids right out of school. The ones, who don't, end up going out real bad and real ugly. These 3 guys, Efren, Hoppe and Fatty never went to school and were illiterate, Fatty could hardly sign his own name so he used a rubber stamp to hide he could not remember how to spell Minnesota. He did not have a social security card until has was over 50. He never paid taxes until the IRS busted him. All these guys did was play pool, they never did any thing else. They did not know anything else. They had no other choice.

Efren lives in a tree in the jungle or in some shack with a tin roof over his head when he is a kid. He comes into this country and can’t even speak English and still can’t. He is nothing but a miner for our gold, a carpet bagger. He’s been doing this for 20 years now, as do all the Pilipino. If you go over there and beat them and clean them out, you get robbed in the parking lot trying to get back to your hotel. He as a kid either goes into town or hustles rotation for dimes or he starves, what other option did he have, answer, none. His sister’s only option is to go down to Subic Bay and sell her self to the sailors, that was their reality of life there. That is if he had a sister, I really do not know, but most from his part of town did face that situation and most now do in 3rd world countries all over the Far East. They have no birth control and being strict Catholics most families are 10 to 12 kids and the kids can’t go to school because they must work the streets to feed the younger kids. That was their only two job opportunities. Pool hustlers or ho’s, both are street hustlers, they just use different instruments to hustle the johns and marks.

Hoppe was put on the road when he was 7 yrs old by his father and his daily gambling at pool fed the entire family. In a few years of putting on shows and exhibitions at balk line he became the sole support of his family. His older brother Frank failed as a pool hustler and got a day job. Willie went on as a billiard player. Today the old man would be put in jail for doing that to his kids. If Hoppe lost, his father, mother and brother and he starved. It was win or starve, now that can steel your nerves real fast. It was that same mentality that made Lee Trevino such a great golfer. He said playing on the pro tour after opm has no pressure because he was assured of a paycheck no matter how he came out. He said when you have not eaten for two days and you are now playing a match for $20 and only have $5 in your pocket and are on the make on your nerve, that’s pressure.

Mosconi ended up supporting his family almost the same way when his Dads one table room could not pay the rent. Willie went out and spent the night gambling and if he lost, they did not eat the next day. Fatty never sat foot in a school class room and neither did Hoppe, they grew up in pool halls, never knew anything else. All they did all their lives was move from one pool hall to another in search of money. How many of the Pilipino over here do you think even graduated from grade school? They are nothing but a pack of roving wolves in search of new weak meat.

With no education and no work resume, without pool Hoppe would have become a barber cutting heads like his dad who barely made a living at that in his one barber chair room and single pool table which was his business. He put the kids on the road because at ages 7 and 9 they were making more money hustling his customers on the pool table in the barber shop than he was making cutting heads. He closed the barber shop and made them roadies. The kids did not vote in this decision. He would not have forced his two kids on the road and made them hustlers if it was not all about money. Fatty at best would have become a janitor sweeping out the joint and dumping the spittoons. Efren would be out picking bananas and eating out of dumpsters or running with a street gang now stealing, robbing and selling drugs. Mosconi would have been a desk man in a pool hall. Keith McCreedy would be back at the Orphanage making up the beds for the kids and doing their laundry every day. Pool was their only out just as basketball to day is the only out for many inner city black kids. They did not have parents who were going to send them to prep school and then to Stanford like happens to most golfers who come on tour. The country club the kids came up in takes up a collection and drops 200K in his checking account so he can go play for 2 years and feel no pressure. He can pay them back when he hits, if he does not, it gets forgiven. Pool sends its youth off to do battle with nothing. The most some get is gas in and out of the event, motel 6 paid for and the entry fee, nothing else.
There is your reality of the situation. Your real 101 pool education and history lesson today for you kiddies who think you are going to be some big pool TV star.

This was the original post: By Drivermaker.
There have been a number of threads in the past on the current state of pool, what's wrong and right with it, what the fixes are for the future, etc.
There are a number of people here that had kids that are grown, some currently have kids, and others never had any children. If you do, did, or didn't...would you try to guide your kid into becoming a professional at the game even if he showed some early talent? I know MANY parents that are doing it or trying to do it in golf, but what's the general consensus here on the forum amongst a lot of veteran pool players and maybe that will gauge the real future of pool. Would you want to see your kid going from pool room to pool room to make a living?

Driver made a good post and it was right on. When you do not like the message, do not shoot the messenger, which is what you all did here to driver. Go back and re read what the guy wrote, then get off the guys back.

Kids come up to me and say I want to be a pool pro and I ask why, are you a criminal, just get out of the joint, have a long record and rap sheet, been fired off of a zillion jobs, are you unemployable in the work force where nobody in their right mind would hire you. Are you a dope smoker or crack head? Are you a little, puny, geeky looking, anti social, introverted punk with tattoos on your arms and look like a jungle snake with an ear ring in your nose and a total asshole? That can qualify you for pro status as no large corporation wants you on their side? Now that you punks look like carnie freaks in some side show, forget IBM ever hiring your butts, you might as well make a living in pool as you just reduced your options to near zero in life. Keep piling on the tattoos; see where that takes you when you hit 30, grow up and try to join the establishment.

Are you a lazy no good bum who is a total degenerate loser who simply does not want to work for a living? You find it more appealing to become a predator and take from others; it gives you a feeling of power and revenge, a loser beating winners in life. You finally found a game you can succeed at after losing every other game you tried to play in life.
Do you refer to your senior year as the third grade; if you flunked out of school, can’t keep a job, are now unemployed with zero future or prospects then you qualify. Go be a pool pro. You must live in a cave never seeing daylight again. You will have a tan like the belly of a fish. You can never have a wife, all attempts at this end up in divorce and your losing what little you did save and earn, you can’t hold on to any woman when you are out gambling, drinking and doing drugs every night until 4am. After losing two wives you get smart and then just run with ho’s. You find a woman who is what you are, a street hustler. When you bust out and lose your sock, she will go out and raise the loot on her back to get you to the next town and game. She will hide the dope under her skirt for you. Without a good ho, you are called a homeless person. These ho’s will come and go on your like street cars and when you lose one you will be sleeping nights in your car.

You wake up the next day at 2am and watch the soaps on TV and hit the 5pm after work crowd and begin to hustle marks. After spending your entire youth and 10 years of this non stop, 24/7 you get good enough to be a pro and play on the circuit with the big boys. You get out there and soon find out there are at best 6 tourneys worth a crap and 6 minis paying peanuts and only the top 3 make out, the rest of the field are losers. You have to pay all of your travel expenses and you will spend 12K a year going to 12 tourneys and if you earn the number 11th rank on tour you can earn gross 11K a year in prize money.

Now a moron who passed the 3rd grade and passed simple arithmetic should be able to figure this one out is a dead end door going no where fast. I am going to spend more money than I can earn playing a professional sport, then why do it. That is the question they never ask their selves, and the answer is until the money is up to support you and your family, you do not do it. When you see the top 10 players all making over a million bucks a year and the world champion getting a Rolls Royce and a Ferrari as side gifts, then you go for becoming a pro. That is what the Snooker champions in England get, Steve Davis has made over 100,000,000 lbs. He has made as much money with a cue as Arnold Palmer did with a golf driver. During this time, the American pool players starved and continue to starve. The top 35 golfers on tour now make over a mil a year. Even the ham and eggers at the bottom will become a millionaire within 2 to 3 years just by making the cut a lot. They never ever have to even win or hit the top 10 to do that.

The top 10 in pool gets all the sponsors and backing and most are making a couple hundred grand a year and driving cool cars and on TV. It no longer matters to them what the prize money is as their nuts are now well covered. You are a ham and egger who gets none of this and are totally ignored. If you’re a golfer ranked #35 you make a mil a year, if you are a pro pool player ranked #35 and you do not have a day job you are triple frigged.

You soon learn to live, you must begin to sell drugs, gamble all night long or sell the ho you travel with to eat. Your ho don’t mind going back to work on her back, she kind of likes it anyway. You soon become nothing but an animal and a predator. You have no morality or honor, no rules of religion and you ignore all government laws as things you simply work around and avoid or ignore. You are a low rent con. You become a simple criminal. Nothing more than a petty thief. When you hit 40, your body is spent and you look 60 and your body is aged to 70. Burning the candle at both ends soon destroys your total neurological system, you now can’t beat any one and you now do starve. When you pull the cue back your hand trembles and shakes. You are now like an old lion that has lost its teeth, you are doomed. It is nothing but the highway to hell. You sold your soul to the devil to become a pool pro and got nothing back from him but a wrecked and destroyed body. The devil has hell packed high with suckers like you son.

The smart ones see this and take a day job and become semi pros. Pros who think they are but are not and act the game and part they failed at. The go to the mini events on week ends and strut around like they are some big shot and not the failed player they really are. A real pro makes his living with his cue and has no day job. Today, you will find well over half of the men and lady pros are no longer true pros because they can’t make a living with their cues playing tournament pool. The really smart ones learn to make and sell something, like cues or tables and they become rich. Hustling with a cue only produces poverty.
Such an example is Sigel, after winning 100 events and being #1 for a decade; he woke up dead broke with nothing. If that was his fate, what chance do you think you are going to have? Mike began to make cues and is now finally making money off of pool. Fatty ended up broke. Greenleaf, the greatest player of the 20th century died broke and was put in a poppers grave with no tomb stone. Let this one open your eyes if nothing else I have said has sank in so far. Mosconi and Hoppe did go out millionaires so some did escape the doomed fate, but most did not.
Here is your dose of reality and the 10 teeny bopper kids trashing drivermaker now are not going to like this message either because it throws mud on their dream. They will now hate me for doing this like they now do the driver. You kids have watched color of money too many times. You kids do not know squat, that is your problems.

Here is what you do kids, stay in school, get good grades, do not smoke or do drugs. Drink in moderation; protect your bodies and health. Graduate from college and get a damn nice job with a big company and obtain your experience. Marry, have a couple of kids, buy a really nice home and set up a killer game room. Put in a 9’ gold crown and set it up right. Invite over your upscale friends in your new corporate life to play with on weekends and never ever allow any of the pool hall trash you play with in your tourney outings to ever come by your place to play, they will return later just to rob you.

Pool is a great and wonderful game; it’s the scum bags hanging around the pool halls winning all the events that have always trashed the game and its reputation. You just learn to minimize your exposure to these bums and develop your own circle of nice people you play with in the rooms and avoid having anything to do with the druggies and hustlers. You view them as nothing but criminals you have no time for now. Keep playing this game that great kings and queens and presidents all played and loved. Stop playing the criminals and bottom feeders. Ignore their insults and hustles to goad you into playing them. Play your game with your new friends. Ignore their world; make your own new pool world where you and your pals enjoy it with each other. If you want to become the top stick in the room or in town, or a pro, then you have to enter and live in their world. Remember, if you begin to hang around ducks, soon you will walk like a duck, quack like a duck and soon, become a duck as well. You will find many rooms whom do not cater to the hustlers and gamblers and do not want them around. Find these upscale places and frequent them.

Pool is on its ass and every year it gets’s worse. Pool has no future for you. You want to be a pro, get really rich and famous, and find a basketball, football, tennis racket, golf driver, table tennis racket, anything but a pool cue. The players have been raped and are only used and now play for peanuts. The only winners here are the people making and selling the equipment, the BCA, ESPN and Matt Braun. All you players are just their marks and suckers they enslave and control. It’s been this way since 93 and it keeps getting worse every year, not better.

The dumbest thing any kid could ever do in his life is to even entertain ever becoming a pool professional. Your odds of pulling that off and becoming successful at this are roughly 1 in one million. There are now 40,000,000 players, now, only 40 males are even on tour now. One in a million. How about those teeny boppers for once get a huge whopping dose of reality. Now you kiddies go apologize to the driver for trying to teach you boys something of value. No father or mother worth his salt wants any of his kids having a life of a pool hustler or becoming a pool pro. Parents know. Go back and study where most of the champions have came from and you will find they grew up in their daddies pool rooms and knew nothing else. I.E. Mosconi, Greenleaf, Hoppe and dozens more I can list. That is where our champions are produced, they are trained as babies, like Hoppe and Mosconi were. They grow up in an upside down world of hustlers and gamblers and believe this is a normal life because that is the only life they ever saw or knew. They never ever had any other options in life.

[ Edited by sananda2050 on 2004/6/8 22:21 ]

I did not try to discourage my son from anything he was interested in. Instead , we talked about various things, in which a person could make a reasonable living.

There were a couple of times that my son wanted to buy into a business which would have failed, he would have lost his money and who knows what else. In talking to others, I reported to him what people said. I might have said 'It does not look like a good idea', but I never told him he could not do this.

If my son were interested in pro pool, I would tell him the same kinds of things. My role is support, give him what information I have or encourage him to talk to so and so who has the information, then he makes the decision.

By talking to him as a person with a brain, he respects my opinion and I respect his. He does not always do what I suggest, but it is his decision and I have done all that I can do. Browbeating and lecturing goes nowhere fast with any person. The few who have given in, say go into their father's business when that was not what they wanted to do, often realize too late that they have spent their whole life chasing someone else's dreams.

And, sometimes, a person's dreams are not logical and they will be poor following the beat of that drum. But it is better to be poor and fulfilled than to be rich and miserable.

So he takes suggestions or he does not. When he makes mistakes, they are his mistakes, and just like the rest of us, he learns from his mistakes.

Well, my son is doing what he wants to do. He would not have fit into the pool world. he will not even gamble for a penny, in his words "I am afraid to, that I would become addicted to it".

Laura :-o

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