Breaking Cues

jrhendy

Verified Member
Joined
May 24, 2004
Messages
5,717
From
Placerville, CA
John' Hairless story got me to thinking about breaking cues. After 60+ years in the pool rooms I have seen quite a few and even did it once myself. I had the ring liability snooker game on the 6 x 12 for $5 a point stuck pretty good, well over 1k. Now these same players and I had an unwritten rule that the big winner did not pull up until the big loser did. After 20 hours or so I finally got helpless and blew all the $$ back plus a few hundred of my own. After dogging an easy seven ball and selling it out I dropped my cue to the floor and took a lazy kick at it. I missed, so now I concentrated much better than I had while shooting, and took another kick. I caught it perfectly and shattered a nice Tad Cue against the wall.

One of the regular customers at the Golden Cue in the 70's was Archie 'The Greek' Karas, famous in later years for winning over 30 million dollars at Binion's Horseshoe in Las Vegas. In those days Archie gambled at everything and was a good score if you could outrun the weight he always asked for. If you could get him stuck he would get helpless and go off for whatever he had in his pocket.

We would match up and I would fire one barrel at him if he won because the game was usually in his favor. You had to try it because you were getting odds on the $$. He would keep raising it and usually keep playing worse. One time he went off pretty good and snapped his Tad Cue over his knee and threw it in the trash can and stormed out of the room. John, one of the sweator's, was an electrician who was Japanese and a good friend of Tad and helped Tad wire his machines. John took the cue to Tad and came back with a nice rebuilt Tad Cue.

This did not go unnoticed to Archie, but he never said a word. Some time later, Archie had another nicer Tad Cue and after going off big again, snapped it over his knee and was getting ready to throw it in the trash can when he saw John sitting there. Archie walked outside with the broken Cue, laid it on the curb and jumped on it until it was nothing but small pieces.

Archie gathered up all the pieces and brought them back into the pool room. He walked over to where John was sitting, threw them in the trash can and said 'Fix That'.
 
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