Named after the famous horse race, the Derby City Classic pool tournament in Louisville, Kentucky, offers round-the-clock gambling action. Justyn Barnes drank a lot of coffee and tried to keep up…
Modern sporting events are so sanitised. You never see the world’s top golfers play an after-hours cash game worth more than the tournament’s first prize, or a player on centre court at Wimbledon strike a wager with a spectator during a match. Cue Louisville, Kentucky’s annual Derby City Classic – the biggest pool tournament (in terms of gambling action) in the world. For raw, down and dirty, win-or-go-hungry, 24/7, sleep-and- you’ll-miss-something action, it’s unmatched.
Apparently 39.3 million Americans play pool at least once a year (9.6 million of them 25 days or more). But, while this puts the sport on a par with basketball in terms of participation, unlike b-ball, pool’s shady reputation as a game for hustlers means the men’s professional game actually gets minimal television coverage in the US.
Indeed, unlike Britain where the nearest most people get to playing ‘money pool’ is a game of winner-stays-on at the pub, gambling is ingrained in the culture of pool halls across America. If you’re not playing, you can be a ‘stakehorse’ (backer) for a player or a ‘railbird’ keeping an eye on all the games in the hall, offering odds and making side bets.
The Derby City Classic embraces this gritty reality with gusto. The nine-day DCC extravaganza attracts hundreds of top pool pros from the US, Europe and the Far East plus a motley array of railbirds, high-rollers, pimps, hustlers, whores, stakehorses, card sharps and druggies.
Within a day of arriving, I learn that the tournies at the DCC are for most players just a distraction from the real business of trying to make a big score. The second thing I learn is you’ve got to stay awake – every minute of every day there are opportunities to win (and lose) thousands of dollars on and off the table.
For instance, I meet a guy soon after he’d been hustled out of $3,500 by a crew of Chicago card sharps. I see two men settle a minor dispute by tossing a coin for $500. As an impromptu notice pinned up at a previous DCC declared, the primary rule is: ‘No no gambling allowed’.
There are specially appointed ‘action rooms’, most notably a six-table set-up next door to the hotel bar with ample seating for railbirds and players to sit, observe and wait for investment opportunities. Each day, rumours spread about potential match-ups. Negotiations about ‘weight’ can last for hours or days before a big-money game is made.
Rasta master
Stakehorses and money players with nicknames like ‘Angry White Man’ wave thick bankrolls of cash and argue their case vociferously until a deal is agreed and a wedge of stake money is posted on the table lamp.
The frenetic debates are reminiscent of those you’d see on the floor of a stock exchange, only the language is more colourful and this is a cash-only business.
Then there are ever-present pro railbirds such as Stevie Evans, a soft-spoken Rasta from Pittsburgh, who always knows where the action is and makes it his business to grab a slice. Sometimes a game worth $5,000 on the table will generate ten times as much in side action.
A non-stop succession of $1,000 mini-tournaments are played on the 40 seven-foot tables upstairs. In the early hours, you’ll occasionally hear cries of ‘We’re having ourselves a Calcutta!’ This is an auction where you bid for players to represent you in the tournie – if your guy wins the jackpot can run into thousands. Technically, it’s illegal, but the cops on duty at the hotel turn a blind eye.
Even the 26 tables in the chandelier-lit room used for the main tournament matches are passed over to money games as soon as the day’s official schedule is completed. Multi-player ring games are also staged in a 400-seater TV arena (selected games are shown on certain cable stations and live on the internet at billiardclub.net).
On my fi rst night a packed crowd watches the world nine-ball champion and inveterate gambler, Alex ‘The Lion’ Pagulayan, win $18,000 in a six-man, $3,000-a-man ring game. Then, after midnight, the two best one-pocket players in the world, 50-year-old Filipino pool genius Efren Reyes and America’s Cliff Joyner square up for a reported $15,000. The amazing Reyes emerges victorious and goes on to win two tournament divisions (one pocket and nine-ball) and the Master Of The Table $20,000 bonus to take his week’s earnings over $50,000.
No rest for the wicked
The out-of-sorts Joyner, conversely, suffers two more money game defeats to put his backers $22,000 in the red after four days. One of these defeats is to Corey Deuel, who beats Joyner at one pocket receiving weight, but playing every shot with the rest instead of a hand-bridge (try it and see how hard it is). Deuel dresses like a surfer dude and isn’t sure how to spell his own name (Cory or Corey? – even his mum can’t remember) but his breadth of pool talent gives him a lot of gambling options.
Scott Frost from Phoenix takes the award for the player delivering the most entertainment/action. His in-your- face negotiation style and string of big-money wins against top players make him a worthy winner. Asked if he’d compete purely as a tournie pro, he shrugs: ‘Until the tournaments really benefit the player, I don’t see how to survive without gambling.’
Indeed, Frost’s official tournament winnings during Derby week amount to $435 for getting through eight rounds of the one-pocket division – barely enough to cover his entry fees, let alone his expenses. That’s why he’d rather make one carefully-negotiated game for ten times as much. And that’s why Louisville’s Derby City Classic is Vegas for money pool players, a hustler’s holiday paradise.
PIRIT OF JOHNSTON CITY
The DCC represents a return to the traditions of America’s so-called ‘great age of pool’. In 1961, on the back of seminal film The Hustler, a newspaper feature on a new tournament in Illinois’ Johnston City, highlighting the heavy-duty gambling of real-life hustlers like Minnesota Fats, sparked unprecedented media and public interest in the game.
The so-called Hustlers’ Jamboree ran annually until 1972, and while efforts have been made to clean up the image of the sport since, many pool enthusiasts have yearned to re-create the spirit of Johnston City. In 1999 pool table manufacturers Diamond Billiards agreed to promote such an event and the Derby City Classic was born.
MISS YU
Playing pool for money isn’t just a male pursuit, and most eye-catching (I wonder what makes you say that – Ed) among the few female players in the action rooms at this year’s Derby City Classic was 21-year-old Ellen Yu.
Ellen first went to a local pool hall in Virginia with friends at 16 and was hooked straight away. She’s been gambling seriously for seven months and, ironically, she backed herself in this relatively anarchic field using money earned from her day job as a legal secretary. ‘No-one at work really knows about my pool,’ she laughs. ‘Sometimes I play pool all night and go to work on no sleep.’
It was Ellen’s first visit to the Derby, but after a dodgy start, she proved to be a tough competitor in a series of all-night games. ‘The first day, I was down $800, the next night I was down again,’ she admitted. ‘By the end of the week I was up though. For me, it’s not really about winning money, it’s about putting something on the line… that’s what gives me the rush.’
