“I’ll only play him even up,” Arturo says. “What are you going to give me?” Ken demands. So Arturo turns to Ken “Chopstix.” Pool players generally have nicknames Ken has been hanging around Chris’s so long he has two: He is also known as “The Master,” which suits his black ponytail and mustache. It’s easy to find an open table at Chris’s, but if you walk in with a rep, you’ll be lucky to play two or three times a night. A would-be opponent calls to say he’s decided to play cards instead. He is having trouble finding action, though. “He’s the 1985 Manila nine-ball champion,” Richie says. In hustling, that means talking up another guy’s speed to scare off his competition. After Arturo beats me (I miss an easy nine with a shot so weak an onlooker shouts “Did you eat breakfast?”), an old player named Richie starts knocking his game. Negotiating the spot is the overture to every game at Chris’s. That’s a big advantage in nine-ball, in which the goal is to sink every ball on the table, in numerical order.
“The way you play, I can give you seven,” he says, meaning I would only have to sink the seven ball to win, while he’d have to sink the nine. Every time you miss, I don’t have a shot.”įinally, Arturo deduces from my clumsy grip that I’m not a hustler, but a fish-an easy mark. “You may be hustling,” he says, after I pin the cue behind the seven ball, when I’m aiming for the two. Four dozen billiard, snooker and pool tables fill a room whose dingy stucco walls are mementos of nights when players set down their cigarettes only to chalk cue sticks.Īrturo wins the next six but suspects I’m stalling-deliberately hiding my speed. The unlit climb to the second-floor hall is accompanied by an ascending display of memorabilia commemorating Chris’s role as a location for The Color of Money. I win the first game when Arturo leaves the nine on the table. So it never changed hands.) We play cheap-$20 for a race-to-seven set of nine-ball. That’s why losers throw their money on the table.
#CHRIS BILLIARDS DRIVER#
I’m at Chris’s Billiards, in Jefferson Park, and I’ve picked up some action (that’s pool jargon for gambling) with Arturo, a school bus driver who hustles every Saturday night, usually for anywhere from $50 to $500 a game. “He hit the long,” Arturo grumbles to himself.
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