My Pool Story

This article is part of Volume 9 of PoolSynergy, a monthly collection of the best writing on pool. The rest of the July edition of PoolSynergy is at Michael Reddick's blog Angle of Reflection. The April theme is "What's Your Story?".

When I try to think how I got started with pool, I'm unable to trace it back to any single memory. Instead, I just remember various moments and places along the path. None of these contains a single moment that got me started, but all of them —in their own way— have been elemental to my pool story.

The earliest memories I have are from my teens, back from the days when I used to play table tennis seriously. Our team practiced in a hall that was built for nearby school as a temporary sporting facility while they had their own built. Needless to say, it was not exactly state-of-the-art as far as sporting facilities go. In fact, it didn't even have a bathroom. It's still in use, it seems, but nowadays it's mainly used for floorball.

Anyhow.

It was built near a larger sport center that had, among others, a swimming hall, ice-skating hall and a bowling center. One of the buildings had pool hall, not surprisingly in the bottom floor, beneath the ground if I remember correctly. We used to visit that hall once in a while and I can still remember the excitement and wonder I had watching others play the game. It seems the pool hall still exists. Maybe I should visit the place next time I'm around.

That was about 20 years ago.

Forward some amount of years and enter darts. I have no idea where it started, but me and couple of my friends started playing darts quite intensively. We never got around to play darts competitively, but we managed to practice enough to become pretty good. However, it was with the same lot that we had the idea to play pool billiards.

Now, I still have nothing against darts as a sport, but I guess we were at the most unrewarding point of our development as darts players, meaning that we had become pretty good, but it was going to take a whole lot more disciplined practice to advance to actual good. So throwing darts was pretty frustrating at that time and playing pool offered a somewhat similar, but a more rewarding hobby.

We didn't have a pool hall real near us, so it took quite the arrangement to get to play, but when we got there, we used to stay for hours. None of us got any formal training or advice. We just played. Most of the time there were exactly three of us and only two of us played at a time. I remember waiting anxiously to get back to playing when it was my turn to wait. I think we mostly played eight ball and sometimes those frames took ages.

Unlike darts, we didn't really have any yardstick to compare our level of play. We just played. And enjoyed. Sure, like in any competitive sport, you get frustrated, but compared to the frustrations we experienced with darts, pool billiards seemed somehow more enjoyable. It's not to say pool billiards is better than darts, but I guess it was better suited for us, at the time at least.

We used to play in a place that had quite a few regulars one of which approached us to give advice on our play. I don't know what our problem was, but we were quite dismissive about his advice. He was obviously a better player then any of us, but we just wanted to mind our own business, which, in hindsight, was quite a bad decision.

Pool remained a recreational hobby for us, but we played quite irregularly. The situation remained similar until one day, around ten years ago, another friend of mine got couple of thousand Finnish marks to spend. He decided to buy a pool table with the money. They had a place for the table, in a private club, and soon enough I joined their club. I was friends with some of the lot, but my main motivation was the pool table. I was eager to practice alone. Unfortunately, my practice methods and fundamentals weren't quite in shape, but sure enough I got better, slowly. Practicing wasn't the pleasure as I've managed to transform it nowadays, but I got some hours in.

Then one day another acquaintance visited the place. He was a better player than me, but I remember managing to hold my own against him at that time. I don't remember what the exact score was, but I won some and he won some. I guess that inspired him to hint about a weekly pool tournament held nearby. It was at a bar, Pub Ysipallo (Pub Nineball in English) it was called. They had four tables and the place itself was a regular pub, far from fancy or "polished".

I needed to build some courage to enter the tournament. I knew I wasn't that good and somehow I thought I would embarrass myself. Fortunately, the atmosphere and the players organizing the tournaments were extremely nice and kind. Still, I remember being extremely nervous and tense for the first match, but I managed to win some frames, maybe even a match.

It was the players and the atmosphere that brought me back to the weekly tournament, week after week. There were quite some characters in the bunch, and I didn't necessarily every one of them, but it was a fun company and became good friends with some of them. I did practice some, but it was mostly these tournaments that kept me playing. I wanted to become a better player, like most of us, but didn't want to do much about it. I just focused on enjoying myself in the tournaments.

Even though now, years later, I have a different agenda with my pool career, I still fondly remember the times at Pub Ysipallo. The place is no longer called that and they don't have the pool tables anymore. (And in fact, most players hated the tables; they were a bit clunky and not in the greatest condition either.) But that's the place and those are the people I go back to in my memories of my pool story.