{"id":195,"date":"2018-10-17T16:23:27","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T16:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/masteringpocketbilliards.com\/?p=195"},"modified":"2018-10-17T16:23:27","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T16:23:27","slug":"confessions-of-a-pool-hustler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masteringpocketbilliards.com\/confessions-of-a-pool-hustler\/","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of a Pool Hustler"},"content":{"rendered":"

W<\/strong>iley remembers how easily the action flowed right after the release of 1986\u2019s The Color of Money. Thanks to that film, Wiley clipped off an entire bar in Pittsburgh over the course of an evening. He began with the owner, a pigeon who knew the flick by heart. He led Wiley up to hid private\u00a0pool table<\/a>\u00a0on the second floor, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s just like the movie. You saw the movie, right?\u201d The Owner couldn’t hit the floor with his hat.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter I beat him out of a few hundred, stalling to keep the games\u00a0close<\/a>, he quits and has me play everybody else in the building: the bartender, the cook, the\u00a0dishwasher<\/a>, five locals and finally the best player in town. By night\u2019s end, I had the owner stuck around 65 hundred. \u2018You know kid, you played a lot better at the end than you did at the beginning.\u2019 He says to me. I looked him square in the eyes and said, \u2018Well, you saw the movie right?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Wiley was part of an elite underground group called \u201croad players,\u201d traveling pool assassins hiding below the radar y never showing their faces in tournaments. \u201cThere were only around 30 of us,\u201d says Wiley, who\u2019s run a dozen racks without missing and won as much as $20,000 in a single night. \u201cI\u2019m talking about the solid ones, the guys who consistently got the cash.\u201d These players were known through the grapevine simply by their nicknames: Frisco Jack and One-Eyed Rd, Water-dog and Shaft Man, Big John and The Faceless Man. \u201cWe knew each other, and there was a camaraderie. We even worked together taking off scores, calling each other with steers into good games.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the pool world, the road player is the most respected, way more than the tournament\u00a0winners<\/a>. We\u2019re not just great players. We\u2019re a special bread. We have nerves strong enough to hold up for the big money. We have something extra\u2014a killer instinct, an ice-cold hearts.\u201d He pauses, then, unflinchingly, adds: \u201cI had both in abundance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wake-up Call<\/p>\n

High-stakes pool hustling is a dangerous game. Hustlers get hurt. Wiley has been clocked with a pair of roundhouses, been slipped a Mickey at least three times and was robbed at gunpoint twice. \u201cBoth times was after I won a lot of money,\u201d he says. \u201cBoth, I\u2019m convinced, were setups.\u201d It didn’t stop him, though. Wiley accepted those things as occupational hazards. \u201cI was on an adventure, and I never saw a great adventure movie without the star being chased, shot at and running for his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first time Wiley stared down the barrel of a gun while hustling, he was 18. It was 3 a.m. in a seedy section of Minneapolis, near Gentleman Jim\u2019s, a 24-hour poolroom well-known for its big money action. Wiley had scored around seven grand and was riding a rush of adrenaline. The gunman stuck his .45 so hard underneath Wiley\u2019s chin it rose the Texan onto his toes. The mugger made off with only $400, speeding off in a car. \u201cluckily,\u201d Wiley says, \u201cmy partner was always the one who carried most of the money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wiley was shaken but\u00a0not stirred<\/a>. \u201cIt had no lasting effect,\u201d he says. \u201cit was just a wake-up call.\u201d In fact, he was robber again a year later, in Albemarle, North Carolina, at some bootleg liquor joint with a backroom pool table by a guy with a shotgun who wore a nylon stocking over his head. He still felt bulletproof, though he finally learned to leave town in a hurry after big wins.<\/p>\n

Rack \u2018em<\/p>\n

Born and raised in\u00a0Green<\/a>\u00a0City, Missouri, a desperately small, poor cattle town 136 miles from Kansas City, Wiley started shooting stick at seven, standing on a wooden soda case to reach the table. Four years later he was the best player in town; by 15 he was outgunning guys twice his age for $20 a game. He found his nirvana in his senior year in high school. During Christmas break, he and two experienced partners embarked on a road trip, working spots all over Oklahoma and Kansas. The trio took in $16,000 in just 40 days. Wiley never sat though another class again.<\/p>\n

From ages 18 to 26 Wiley lived constantly on the move. His Sky-Pager would go off in the middle of the night, alerting him to action. In 1987, Wiley relocated to Dallas to be centrally located between both coasts. He\u2019d plan trips on his motor home based on trips from an underground network of informants. \u201cI would take a map, circle spots I wanted to hit and connect them as strategically as I would if I were running a rack of balls,\u201d he says. All the inside info was compiled in a \u201cspot book,\u201d a hustler\u2019s little black book containing addresses of action joints, names of gambling players, how well they played, what games they liked and how much they liked to bet.<\/p>\n

He assumed aliases: Mike from Indiana, Chris from Missouri or Butch from Tennessee. \u201cI once went to a spot where the locals were talking about all three of my aliases and arguing which one was the best player.\u201d He posed as a college student, a computer salesman, even a drug dealer. He used fake IDs and phony glasses. (\u201ca guy with glasses can always get played.\u201d) He blended with locals by mimicking their behavior, dress and accents, even occasionally stealing license plates. He did whatever it took to get the game. \u201cThere were only three guys in the country I wouldn’t play,\u201d he says, \u201cand I knew who those guys were.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also had a favorite line that never failed to lure \u2018em in. Wiley would simply smile and say, \u201cI\u2019m very good at pool\u2014is anyone here as good as me?\u201d He found it was better to be cocky than pretend to be a bad player and what could guys say when he beat them? He\u2019d warned them he was good.<\/p>\n

Like most hustlers, Wiley traveled with a partner. This guy held most if the cash, watched his back and helped the scam. \u201cSometimes, I\u2019d act like the stake-horse and my partner would be the player,\u201d he says. \u201cMy partners could play, though not as well as I could. He\u2019d beat a guy until he quit, then the guy would say to me, \u2018I can\u2019t beat him, but I\u2019ll play you.\u2019 They assumed that I couldn’t play since I was staking the money. They didn’t realize they\u2019d stepped into a bigger trap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight ball in the corner pocket<\/p>\n

Wiley didn\u2019t just roll chumps. \u201cMy forte was beating players who were supposedly unbeatable on their home tables. Even if they played as well as I did, I\u2019d simply outlast them.\u201d He built a rep for intimidating opponents, slamming balls into pockets with a popping stroke, making long-range shots as if they were mere tap-ins and shooting so fast he ran racks in minutes. He accompanied this with a mean game face derived from biting the inside of his mouth until he bled. \u201cWith good players, I didn’t just want to beat them, I wanted to crush them,\u201d he says. \u201cI got off on seeing their knees buckle, seeing fear in their eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wiley\u2019s reputation began to precede him, and the money dried up. He retired from hustling for good and went legit, joining the pros in 1991. Four years later, frustrated with the piddling prize money, he quit that, too, but not before being ranked as high as fourth in the world. \u201cWhat I made in a year on the pro tour, I used to make in one night hustling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now 38 and more than a decade removed from his poolroom cons, Wiley is still hustling\u2014but in the business world. Today, he owns a 24-hour poolroom and a $3.5 million sports bar. He lives in a three-bedroom home in the swanky suburb of Lake Highlands, outside Dallas.<\/p>\n

Does he ever miss the pool-hustling life? \u201cAt the time, I loved everything about the life, especially the freedom and being able to travel around the country,\u201d Wiley says. \u201cWhen I look back on it now, it sickens me. I was a pure predator. I\u2019d hate to ever go back to that, even though I was a winner.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wiley remembers how easily the action flowed right after the release of 1986\u2019s The Color of Money. Thanks to that film, Wiley clipped off an entire bar in Pittsburgh over the course of an evening. He began with the owner, a pigeon who knew the flick by heart. He led Wiley up to hid private\u00a0pool … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nConfessions of a Pool Hustler - Mastering Pocket Billiards<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/masteringpocketbilliards.com\/confessions-of-a-pool-hustler\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Confessions of a Pool Hustler - Mastering Pocket Billiards\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Wiley remembers how easily the action flowed right after the release of 1986\u2019s The Color of Money. 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