TRICK SHOTS A history of the sport.

TRICK SHOTS A history of the sport.

6 pages, 4-95, rev 1-24-07, CR, Fast Larry Guninger all righs reserved. Published in numerous internet publications.

Many of us like to attend a pool trick shot show and see really cool shots being made by a top showman and performer. These shots are more complex and difficult than you see in a real game. How many times do you see a player making 2 balls at once?
The standard trick shots are 3 or 4 at once and some may make 14 in one stroke for you.

I have played on the pro trick shot tour since 1995 and I also am a ranked touring 9 ball pro in the UPA. I am a former world TASA trick shot champion.

We do not like the term trick shots. When I do a shot I rarely trick you. Yes I do a few of them just to get some laughs in my show but most of what we do is skill shots.

Trick shots are just that. I make two balls in the side pocket which one is laying side by side on the rail which seam’s impossible but the go in. But how. I have them connected with a screw and they are called Siamese balls and that is a true trick shot. I tricked you.

Artistic shots are what we now call what we do. At the turn of the century they were called fancy shots.

Shooting trick shots goes back several hundred years with shots being diagramed in books as far back as the early 1800’s. We are in our fourth century of these shots. Let us focus on the last century, around 1900 to date. I have recently acquired quite a number of films of all the champions in pool, snooker and billiards shooting trick shots. I have them all from Maurice Daly to Mosconi. What is so fun is to see how these people actually played and stroked the ball. Some were very fast and some slow. I love to see them miss and how they react. I have a lot of uncut shots that were in vaults that were used to put together the old newsreels and the Fox & MGM movie shorts. I have the original pool movie with W.C. Fields in 1915 and shots from the 1920 are on up to date. The 20’s and 30’s stuff is rough on some and others are quite clear.

I have every book written in pool since 1807 so again every shot made was diagramed and I have studied every one and duplicated them on the table. This gives me a clear perspective to evaluate how good these people were and the difficulty of the shots they once performed in public.

The first big world pool 14.1 champion was Frank Taberski. His main show shot and they all had their signature shot, was Chinese pool, or chop sticks pool where he takes two cues and picks up the cue ball and then carries it over to the shot and rolls the CB down the two cues to pot the OB, object ball. It’s funny and it takes some skill.
The pool show was always just that. A famous or world champion would be booked into a top room to play the local top dog. He would make 10 simple trick shots just to warm up the crowd and then the main event would take place. A pool match at 14.1 straight pool to 125 points. Trick shots were always a side show and those who performed them were rarely top pool shooters or ball runners. It really is two different games and skills involved. Kids come up seeing Taberski’s show and they long to be like him. A generation later the kid Jimmy Caras grows up, wins a world title and the Chinese pool becomes his signature shot and it’s passed on down the line from player to player that way.

I always read about how slow Taberski was sometimes taking over 5 minutes to study a shot while his opponent stewed in the hot seat. Willie said that this used to drive the new 19 year old hot blooded Greenleaf absolutely berserk which was why he began doing it. He was shaking the kid to toss him off his game. When I first saw Ralph Taberski performing his shows and running balls on film I was amazed. This guy was fast as a cat. So the slow down shark was born with him. Taberski has a natural talent for these trick shots and enjoyed performing them for a crowd. He had a professional manager who had a nice manner and introduced him and would Ref his matches. Later on Mosconi could do the same thing.

Finally the aging Taberski in his mid 40’s had to wear glasses and the young kid Greenleaf took over and became the big star of the day. His trick shot show was basically a copy of Taberski’s except he did not do Chinese pool and added the masse down the long rail. Shows evolve and shooters drop and add new things as time goes on. They basically get tired of performing the same old shot year after year and they see a new shot and it knocks out and replaces the older one.

Greenleaf was the great champion in the 20’s and 30’s. All of these early shooters were taking their shots from Joe Hood who wrote the bible of trick shots in l908. This book became the main source of the main shots performed for most of the next 75 years. Joe was a little known player when pool was not much of a sport and came from rural N.H. Soon he just vanished and few of his books got out there and few survive today. His identity and the source of the book which became the holy grail of Artistic became hidden. When a shooter got this book he then realized he had it all. This was the mother lode and so he hid the book and told no one about it.
This kept competitors away as well.

This secret was kept in place believe it or not up into the early 90’s when I blew the lid on it and exposed to the world who Joe Hood was and inducted him as one of the first 4 people into the TASA trick shot hall of fame. Bob Byrnes classic book on trick shots which came out in the mid 80’s is filled with shots called anonymous which were from the hood book. The guy, an Italian I shall not name, sent Byrne copies of the shots but hit the name of the book and even gave him the date of the book a decade earlier to throw him off the trail.

He would invite in famous trick shot performers to his home and feed them a great spaghetti dinner and then he would pull the book out of a safe, like it was coming out of the arc of the covenant and allow the shooter to open it and study just the two pages or shots before him. He would then take the book away and say, come back for more some day? He would never let them see who wrote the book or its title. He would flip through the pages just to tease them on what was in there.

Greenleaf was a great pool player and put on a nice trick shot show. The fans loved the guy. When Mosconi took over a generation later from Ralph his show was again a copy of Ralph’s and later Willie added more shots. He rarely did more that 10 shots as his main reason there was to play pool. These shots they did were not elaborate or terribly difficult. In fact a lot of the 2in2, this means you make 2 balls in 2 different pockets, 3in3; 4in4’s are baby shots now. They did the Rail Road shot every one loved and could not get enough of. That basic show raged on for a half of a century virtually unchanged.

Keep in mind during this period pool was not the main game, Billiards was and the main champion on a 5x10’ table with no pockets they played balk line or 3-Cushion on was the reining world champion Willie Hoppe. He was the world champion most of the first half of the century from l906 up to the 50’s. He was the main attraction and the top showman of his day. About his only weakness were the masses which he struggled with. He was not real good with these but usually made the 3 rail shots in 4 or 5 snaps. That same shot I make in 1 or 2 today. All pool halls then had pool and billiard tables and most of the tables had rails that could be changed so every table could then be 3-c or later all pool with pockets when they had a tourney in town.

The trick shot shows were going on strong when I entered pool in the late 40’s. The world champion Bennie Allen showed me my first trick shot in my home room in Kcmo at Kling and Allen’s. The new hot trick shot book was out in 48 by Jimmy Caras. This copied a lot of the standard shots in his show and book during that period and most were from the Hood Book. The 48 Caras book became the Caras trick shot show. Paul Gerni a generation later copies the entire Caras show and when he performed his show it went almost page by page though Jimmy’s book.

About the toughest shot they were making back then were a 2in2 off the spot and then swing the CB around 3 rails to pot a ball in the corner inside the break line, a 3in3. That shot is still in the world championship program today. The old time pool players that did not play 3-c had a lot of trouble with this shot which included Greenleaf. It was so funny to watch Ralph on the out takes trying to make it and missing it 4 times in a row. He would stomp his feet, cuss, flail his arms around showing that temper he was known for. He was a riot to see from the director’s chair yelling cut when he finally made it and the shot was ruined by the comment.

Greenleaf today would not be competitive with any of us in the Artistic world but again that was not Ralph’s main thing. None of us would stand a chance against him at 14.1 pool. Hoppe was actually doing the Railroad shot on a billiard table which was not easy since he had no pockets to lock the cue butts into.

Greenleaf literally drank himself to death and drugs finished him off in the mid 50’s. This cut his career short by a decade and allowed Mosconi to completely take over pool and trick shots. Willie had a short show of 10, rarely more than 12 fairly simple set up shots which he made fast and on the first attempt which was impressive. Willie was the man at every thing he did.

Hoppe on the other hand missed a lot of his masses and I even saw him once miss the opening break shot in a show. Everyone misses and its how many shots you do make and on the first snap that makes the shooter a top gun.

During this era there were a few players who specialized in doing nothing but trick shots. Some of the ball runners like to have them in their shows to do the warm up function and loosen up the crowd so they did not have to mess with them or practice and set the shots up which can tale an hour. Sunshine Anderson worked for Greenleaf and Mosconi and when he retired Paul Gerni got into the business doing that.

The main entertainer in billiards besides Hoppe became Charlie Peterson and his shows were only on billiards tables. Peterson, Caras and Mosconi did a lot of short movies during the late 40’s to early 50’s called super cue men and table toppers. They were the greatest trick shots show up to that time and were extremely tough. Willie did a 2 table 6in6 in the movie. Peterson was doing an entire show of nothing but Artistic shots when he toured and Caras was the first major player to do the same thing as he then showed off all the shots in his new book to promote its sale.

These trick shot shooters in that era had no world trick shot championship to compete in so they all just made up world titles which allowed them to have more value in a show. The ball runners of that time did not care if they faked the titles as long as they did not fake 14.1 achievements and having a trick shot world champion, even if he was a fake in the show made them all money. Even Mosconi turned his head and ignored Paul Gerni making up a world title every year when he played no one ever and won nothing.

In the late 30’s the best in the world was Isidro Ribas of Spain and they decided to have a world championship to determine who was tops and we put up Peterson. Ribas took him with out much trouble. As far as competition after that most were fixed frauds and some even got on TV doing that. Trick shots became like wrestling. They had the TV events Mosconi put on and every one kissed canvas so Willie could beat Fats, Hopkins and the Miz or who ever the hot sticks of the day were.

Very few new shots had come along until the Bob Byrne book came out in 1985 which was a 300 page collection of about every thing Bob could find done up to that point in time. Willie Jopling began inventing new shots and did a few books and got a column on this in Billiards Digest. People like Jopling would put a crowd to sleep and he could not draw flies. The handsome more gregarious Gerni could draw a crowd. Performing a successful show has nothing to do with making the shots. Gernis shows were all simple shots and mostly 3in3 and 4in4’s once wired in any one in the house could make. It’s then all about working crowd and making them laugh and have a good time. Gerni got backed by the BCA and took his shows all over the world and Europe like Peterson had done before him.

Mike Massey who was a gambler and tour player began doing shows and his massive stroke and abilities soon made him famous. He began doing some really difficult stroke shots that Gerni could not make. Still most of Mikes shows were set up shots as well and he just added extra balls to older shots.

Tom Rossman came on the scene and performed the Caras book as well.

The Europeans for decades have been doing things on a billiard table what put the pool shooters to shame. Some of the power draws, force follows and masses are beyond belief. The Japanese and Koreans were tops as well but the best of the two was Raymond Steylears and his Belgium Pal Raymond Cuelemans.

Enter the age of the video shooters. Caras, Mosconi and Peterson had already done that in 49 but in the early 90’s Kimura and my self did a lot of shots that were so hard almost nobody could duplicate them. I have dozens I have made nobody has touched in the last 14 years. The crowds had been burned out seeing the same old tired worn out Caras/Gerni show over and over. Once they saw this video stuff they wanted to see it live and there is the problem. Most of these shots are so tough it might take you 100 snaps to pull one off. In trick shots you are expected to make any shot in 3 attempts and you can try a couple of super hard ones and take 4 or 5 snaps. If you keep flogging away at every shot for 10 or 15 snaps like George Middleditch used to do you bore and put the audience to sleep or they will walk off in disgust. They want and expect you to make shots which force you into easier stuff you can pull off.

Rick Wright and I studied the tapes of the 17 times European Artistic champion stylert’s and marveled at his skill. We tried to copy him. We studied their 72 world championship shot program and converted about half of those shots to be made on a pool table. Rick and I began doing world class European skill stroke shots in public and pulling them off. Where all of our competitors were shooting DF 4 & 5’s, we were out there shooting DF 9, 10 & 11’s. Gerni could not make them, Rossman was afraid of them and Massey did not want to change his show and learn anything new.

When I formed TASA and began the world first true trick shot championship where you had to play and beat somebody to become a champion I was shocked to see none of these guys wanted any part of it. They all had their made up titles and did not want to risk who they had become or allow any one new to get in and make a name.
Rick Wright and I became world champions in the TASA events which ran from 1995 to 1999. I had 72 shots which were almost twice as many twice as tough as they are doing today in the World event. It was just too much of a challenge for those guys at that time who were in a world of simple 3in3 and 4in4’s. TASA has small success but lost money at every event and I gave it to the BCA in 2000 and they turned it over to Tom Crossman who put in his show shots he had been shooting for the last 20 years so he could win. Massey surprised him and dominated it for years until Tom finally won the world late in 2006. They were supposed to upgrade and make the program harder every year but Crossman kept the same shots for 6 years which he felt favored him and they finally did.

Maybe now the program will finally expand and become more European and difficult which is should have done if one person had not been holding it back.

I invented over 1,000 new shots during a decade and filmed over 2,000 shots. I had a stroke and almost died during the 2000 world championship and played injured with a broken foot and sick with heart disease. I did not do well and never competed again and retired. I was crippled for 3 l/2 years after that and did not work or compete. I am now in a semi comeback. It is my desire to return to their competitions but I now doubt that will ever happen because I am so stoved up with Arthritis it is tough for me to practice long hours which is necessary to win. I can still do shows and teach and I am happy with that.

I am the founder of the pool world trick shot championship and its governing body TASA. I wrote the first rule book and they are using mine still today. Prior to me, every one just made up titles and played no one. I stopped that and cleaned it all up. I made Artistic a sport and a new pool game.

Best Wishes,

“Fast Larry” Guninger

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PoolChat: TRICK SHOTS A history of the sport. - PoolChat