An exercise in the extemperaneous

I have my own pool cue. Its the screw together kind with its own case and its made from titanium. I won it off a pool shark. I was kicking back in a bar with a few buddies. Everyone was drinking including the shark and this guy had been routing us all night. Right about the 3am when I noticed his speech pass slurred on its way to gibberish, I got tired of watching my buddies get whipped by this guy for booze, so I took up a cue and laid down some money.

" I got a round that says I beat you next game."

I'm not normally so confident in my billiard abilities. That night however, I was the designated driver so I had only had a few shots of Jameson. I felt my sobriety would serve to my advantage. Worst case scenario I would lose ten bucks and I'd contribute some more entertainment to the evening.

" Rackem up then, tiger. See wutcha got. You break."

So I did. The break was impressive. I sent balls scurrying all over the table. Unfortunately none of them wound up in a hole. His turn.

So he lines up a shot and knocks in a solid. Then another. And another. In the matter of five minutes, he had me down two balls to seven when he scratches it.

I carefully line up my shot. I guestimated the distance and the angle. I took a few back and forth motions to gauge my delineation and the appropriate point of contact with the ball. All is silent, but I can see him growing impatient. I reach back and take my shot... My cue skiffs off the cueball sending it directly into the side pocket.

He laughs.

Two shots later he had run the table on me and was cuing up to drop the eight ball in the corner pocket. It wasn't an easy shot with all of my balls still on the table. The eight was kissing the 13 from behind and in order to sink it he'd have to negotiate a difficult bankshot around the my 13. In my case, thirteen proved to be a very lucky number. By some miracle of fate or circumstance, his shot was off and he scratched on the eight ball. Technically speaking, I won, or at least he had lost.

It was my turn to laugh. He was infuriated and insisted that the exact terms of the bet were that I had to beat him and I had clearly not won through any merit of my own. He might've been right, but he still seemed liked a sore loser and no one likes a sore loser. Especially my buddy's who had been losing all night to this guy. Besides, none of us were really sober enough to remember the exact terms anyway. Faced with the possibility of a fight on my hands and the possibility that someone would call the cops and discover I wasn't old enough to be in there. Both were sobering propositions for me and the shark. I made another deal.

" Look, hey, you could be right, but I won fair and square according to the rules. Let's call that one a practice match and we'll just play another one, this time explicitly stating that you have to lose in order for me to win the bet."   

"Double or nothing and you're on."

"I'll rack 'em."

So he breaks with force and authority. In the beginning he was playing. This was war. He sinks another solid and runs the table down to three. I sink two more stripes. He sinks two more before barely missing his last solid.

Its a funny thing about my personality. I'm usually a very laid back guy, but when I am in direct competition and I'm not overthinking it, I become my own personal four-leaf-clover. Through one of the more incredibly lucky streaks I've had on a pool table, I run my five stripes off the table and I have a chance to win.

At first the shark was amused, but when I dropped that last strip into the side pocket, he looked irritated again, and a bit worried. I was loving every minute of it. But cockiness is anti-thetical to my type of luck. As I was lined up to sink the eight ball, it bounced off the backing and rolled back onto the table.

His despair replaced with a renewed venegeance he hit the cueball so hard it stopped dead on contact and all we saw was a solid blur going into the pocket. I was a sitting duck. He lined up the eight, called his pocket and let loose on the cueball once more. This time too hard. It made the eight fly off the table and hit one of my buddies. The fight almost erupted right there. The bar manager came over to see what was the commotion and asked if there was a problem. Everyone demured.

"C'mon guys, it's my shot."

I placed the eight ball on the table and the rules we were playing by say that I had to hit the opposite wall before I made contact with the eight. I have no bank shot to begin with, but further complicating matters, the cueball was resting at such an awkward angle that I was going to have to shoot behind the back.  I resolved not to think about it, lightly tapped the cue ball and hoped for benificence.

I barely knocked the eight.

My buddies emitted a collective sigh of disapointment. The shark just cackled. He took another swig of his drink and lined up his last shot, still difficult because the cueball came to rest against the eight and in order to avoid scratching he'd had to put on the slow hand and hit it at just the right angle. He reared his stick back and let fly. The corner bank denied it entry to the pocket, and the cue ball came to rest across the table.

This was my best shot.

Almost without pausing I reared back and let fly, the cue ball knocking it into the corner.

My guys and I erupted in jubilation. The shark let out a howl. He owed us all a round, and he owed me twenty bucks. We were soon to find out that he only had a twenty on him and was using the guys for his drinks. There was no way he was leaving without buying them a round, so the only thing left to give me was his pool cue.