(Beware: long post ahead...)
For me, you choose to gamble on pool for one of the following three reasons:
1. To make money, you have a sucker or a good game and you want to bleed the guy dry.
2. To have fun, for the thrill of it. You like action in general, and pool just happens to be one of the possible outlets.
3. To improve your game. You're looking for better competition or just to see how good you really are.
Ideally, any action we get would include all 3 of the above. That being said, #1 seems almost impossible these days. With the internet and instant communications, hustling seems damn near impossible, and players are much more cautious than they used to be. I'd even go as far as to throw the idea out there that pool leagues have hurt action. Leagues give your average player a safe competitive arena, which makes unknown players or even people who are known, but want to play for money even more suspicious.
Reason #2 seems to have been hammered by casinos and the rise of (online) poker. Anybody with a pulse and a few bucks can get lucky at a slot machine or even on the river in hold'em, and so the thrill of gambling is much more heightened in these games as luck plays such a bigger role than in pool. Please don't come back and say that poker is about skill and all that. Let's leave that to another thread. I realize that there are many people who are very 'good' at poker, but if I catch a run of good cards, they can't touch me. Think about who's won the last several WSOP main events and then think about who's won any of the DCC events since its inception. Poker truly is the everyman game, and the short duration of each hand makes for great drama and great TV. Pool will never compete in that arena, but that's okay. What's perhaps more troublesome with reason #2 is that it's taken a lot of the backer and loose money away from the pool halls, so that action of course suffers in return. Not sure there's much to be done about this. If players could make a decent living playing tournaments, maybe more would be able to bet their own money, but that isn't the case now.
So, on to reason #3, our best hope for survival. Players who want to get better need to spend money, period, end of story. Whether it's on a decent first cue stick, table time, a table for your house, lessons from a house pro, tournament entry fees, or action games, no pain, no gain. The question is what investment of the player's money gives the best return via skill improvement. So, let's assume the player has the basics: their own stick (yes, I know Bugs never needed one), the basic skills like stance, bridge, stroke, etc. Now what? Well, I'd say that the player has 4 options if they don't want to remain an average B or C player forever: drills/solitary practice, lessons, tournaments, and action. Lessons are generally rather expensive and are helpful fixing specific issues, but lessons does not a player make. Tournaments are generally too infrequent in most parts of the country, and nonexistent in areas like Boston, and if you have to travel, expenses pile up real quick. Solitary practice is great, and all of us do either a little or a lot of it at some point. It's a necessary evil, but at some point we need to test our skills in a real situation.
So, that leaves action. Find the cheapest game you can with the best, most experienced player you can find and play. In this scenario, assuming you're going to be donating to the better player for a while, you can view these games as kinds of lessons, except these are lessons in real situations in a serious game. If the opponent is just goofing around or is on the lemon as he knows he can clobber you, well, you need to find another game. But if you can find a better player who will play you 'for real' for cheap, then your nerves, skill and mental attitude will increase very quickly, assuming you're actually any good at pool in the first place...
It's just frustrating to see all the players who spend so much time and money on pool, but never really improve and don't make much contribution to the game in return. If these players viewed action in the way I think it should be viewed, as a real-life lesson, a way to improve all aspects of their game, as the ultimate test of their abilities, then I think pool halls would be much more interesting and enjoyable places than they currently are.
So, a bit of a rant, but I think there's some sense in this. Maybe some of the more veteran players could chime in here and comment on how they got started playing and how they overcame being just good and became great.
