A wily local at your club who is a regular winner in the card games and pool cash matches offers you nine ball for $50 a rack. You are new(ish) club/cash player, able to string runs of a few balls together but have yet to have your first break and clear.

He offers you every break, and says he will play with any of the following instead of his cue:

a) The wrong end of a house cue
b) a two liter plastic coke bottle with the lid on
c) a broom handle
d) His cue case

Which - if any - should you accept?

None.

I've seen a and c done by a good player and he barely missed a beat.

b looks extremely easy (easiest of all imo).

d is most interesting, if you are rich and can throw away $50, ask for 3:1 and take d.

(If he's offering the bet, you are a big dog to win against any of them)

None of them. This has to be a clear hustle. When something looks too good to be true, it usually isn't.

If you do take the bet, the only shot I saw the player have problem with was a Chinese snooker.

Im kind of like the player you described, an ok 4 in apa 9 ball, and i would snap take all of those offers. What am i overlooking?

But then again, my logic is based on a point based system, not sink the nine and you win. Is that where my thinking is flawed?

Clearly the cue case is a hard-style, and probably like the ones made for 3/4 cues? If so it's probably not too much different from the broom handle. I'd go for the plastic bottle because that one sounds kind of hard to me. I've tried the coat hanger bet before, and have seen someone using an umbrella, but the bottle sounds challenging.

They aren't playing APA so it's $50 every 9 ball legally made. He's counting on you not running too many balls in a row so in a sense he only needs to make 1-4 of the last balls 6-7-8-9 for example to win the game. It's all a hustle of course, and you snap calling saying you would choose any of them show's why pool is still potentially profitable if "played" correctly or in this case hustled.

If i do a lot more safeties toward the end of the racks, then i think i actually have the advantage.
WAMY?!?

Facepalm.jpg

It's 9 ball...safeties can maybe bail you out but the guy is hustling you i.e. he is capable of dealing with your safeties as a 4 in APA.

i would of thought the coke bottle was the obvious choice, how on earth can anyone play with that?

how can you even reach across the table to make a shot on a 9ball table?

Yeah, I'd probably blow $50 for the entertainment of losing to a guy with a coke bottle.

wth is wrong with you ?

I'll do this on any given day/night since Im in London now, for $50 a game, same conditions, on a 9ft tbl , playing reg 9ball

As for OP , would obv take b) with d)being close. a/c are dead giveaways

In general, you should never take bets on like this with anyone astute. Just as Damon Runyen so rightly quotes:
However, solid chunks of money are lost by players going one handicap too far, so it is always worth thinking about each of these offers before just instantly writing them off.

First up, the offer of the breaks. This is not really an edge, as you can't break and clear, and really, its very hard for them to break anyway. Although its easy enough to hit balls around softly with nearly any object, hitting a ball hard without a cue tip and chalk is very, very difficult. Not much edge here - it's possibly even worth trying to get alternating breaks.

So let's look at the items. Believe it or not, I've won money pool games with all of these objects, but some are significantly harder than others, and having a grasp of what things to think about in an object is critical to evaluating these bets well.

a) Sounds very easy but the weighting is off, the tip is not great and it's a little harder than it might seem. Of all the objects I've seen good players play with, this is the one most over estimate their ability with as it is actually quite different from the right way around. Despite all of this, its still a long object of the right weight. You will most likely be a dog here.

b) A coke bottle is a surprisingly effective object to play with. The tip is decent and flat, you can bridge with it and can stroke relatively straight with it. The big downside is that the bottle is too small, which makes a lot of shots awkward. This is the key leak with this, and it stands alone against the other long objects. If you can play clever safeties to take advantage of this, you have some equity, but in normal play you will still get ripped up.

c) By far the easiest of the three. No weight problems, decent(ish) tip, decent weight, right length. Run a mile.

d) Looks tough as well on the face of it, but actually surprisingly easy. Nice even weight, flat end, ok length, easy(ish) bridging. You won't have much of an edge.

As you can see from the above, you are most likely behind in all cases here, but you are behind by differing amounts. If you can secure some extra weight some of these might close in on +EV.

Solution: In normal situations you should avoid all four, if desperate to at least play a few games, pick the coke bottle and try and take advantage of its shortness.

Exactly what I was going to say. In a vacuum, decline the bet. If looking for action, I'd pick the bottle for just that reason.

The coke bottle is slimmest at the end and most resembles a pool cue tip.

Easy to bridge.

I feel like the shortness of it outweighs other factors. Just my opinion.

Does anyone have some good links to articles/posts/books about poolhustling?

Wamy's dried up well

Find the Odd Couple episode where Bobby Riggs spots Oscar+Felix 19 points in a 21-point game of ping pong. Throughout the match, he replaces his paddle with objects like a shoe, or a coke bottle (which were small, curved, AND ridged back then!), and doesn't miss a beat.

Expect this guy to do the same.