Pool Hustling Stories with Bill Stroud

In this video we are going to look back on an interview I had with the late Bill Stroud, a strong

pool

player who later created the Joss West cues that were used by many of the top players in the 70s and 80s. In the interview, Bill counts many. road

stories

of his encounters with legends of the game along with secrets he learned along the way and traveling with taylor eddie taylor the way he taught me to bank and it's the way I bank basically it's in the vertical center of the cue ball and use the speed to basically control the angles and you play with it, now I call it a dead cue ball, I don't know if people understand that, but it's kind of a dead cue ball that slides around, but before you start, another player of post passed away recently.

He was Dave Yeager and he was one of the best players to come out of Iowa in the 1970s when he was a teenager. I watched Dave play nine ball against visiting players at his local

pool

hall. He played at a fast pace but was very precise even running. 18 racks of nine balls in a row during a money game that he traveled with his traveling companion Ray Fredrickson, who talks about Dave in this video documentary. Dave was a very unknown great player and anyone who ever ran into Dave Yeager would soon remember him at six feet.

Four and 135 pounds was quite a different body, especially when he had the big afro on him and I'll put a link to this video in the description. Dave was one of my two favorite pool players of all time along with Afrin Reyes. I lived on a farm with my family in the small missouri town of lexington missouri uh, when I was five years old, I think for Christmas they gave me a little carom board that was this square that had little green mesh pockets in the four corners. and it had a kind of chess board on it in the middle, like you could play chess or checkers, and it had a bunch of red and green wooden rings around that size and it came with a couple of wooden sticks like this that you could move around and put in your pockets and it was kind of It caught my attention so I spent a little time with it and then I had an uncle who sold school buses in Kansas City.

My uncle mentioned that they had an old pool table in the attic and I asked him about it and he said, well, it's one. It's a little table, it's one of those things with folding legs, you know, and he says you're welcome if you want it and I didn't take it, we didn't get it then, but I went home and I just couldn't forget it and I bothered my parents until I convinced my dad to go get it and we brought it home and it had metal legs, it was bent, and it had particle board instead of chalkboard, but the rubber was still inside.

It was real rubber and it had six pockets and it was three and a half by seven and it didn't have any felt. I mean, you know I had spotty help and of course I didn't have a lot of money. I was only six or seven years old and my mother suggested that we put green corduroy on it, which is what we did, we ran the whales along and I saved my allowance to do housework and work on the farm and I bought a set of balls, It was them. They were twos and eights, but they were pool balls that cost 17 in those days, that meant the world to me 17 and it came with a couple of cues and stuff, so I started playing pool and sometimes I rolled like crazy, but I developed the basics there and you know, I went through Dallas and bought a my first tail was a willy hoppy I paid 1795 for it and it had a leather wrap that I eventually traded in.

He would just set up shots from the book and practice them and Every shot that came up that he didn't understand he would just practice until he understood it because he wanted to know why things happened. You know, I think the biggest asset to becoming a pool player, at least, is curiosity. You know, just something. happens and you say how did that happen, you know, let's find out and I think all pool players have that in common when I wasn't working, I worked after school until they closed, usually at six and seven, I would go to the pool hall. .

They had a pool hall in Haskell, in Dallas, and I met some real pool hustlers there. This was a real pool hall, I mean, it had old game tables, it had old style coke machines with water and little cokes and it had a rack man and it had some pretty good players, but soon I was the best player and he wasn't very old and from there he would go to downtown dallas to the palace up there and come back and play charlie clark and charlie was a great customer. I beat Charlie a little later, I beat him on my first 500

bill

that I won and I also beat him on the first thousand dollar

bill

and this, you know, this is what 59 58 somewhere There I was still pretty young at that time, the cotton palace opened 44 bowling alleys, the 12 pool tables and they weren't exactly four and a half by nine, they were kind of off brand and off size, so they were a real home field advantage, but there were a lot of good players there and I got to be the best player and we had guys that came through like Detroit Whitey, uh Patty, of course, but we had a lot of good local players that played there.

Too cool, Brady would come from Houston and I just beat up everyone at that spot. He was practically unbeatable in the Cotton Palace. Alfie Taylor, who was in the air force. I'm sure he read his book. He wrote a book about billiards in his life. He is a great breed, he was in airports and could play. He was Jack Taylor's brother and could play pretty well. He came there with the lemon one night while he was still in the air force and asked about the five that played nine. He used to routinely give guys a five-up because he just wouldn't miss a ball period.

I just beat his brains out. He just couldn't believe it. I mean, you know he was playing against a guy there. I ran 12 racks. about a guy who once gave him eight for three dollars a game at the cotton palace with 100 people there, you know, and it was great, we had uh, it was open 24 hours and all the night owls came, you know, the thieves , the card sharks. The Jack Ruby strippers would come and bring Chris Colt and a bunch of other strippers from his club downtown. He was a regular there and, um, Titanic Thompson, who you've probably heard of.

Well, that was his base of operations. He lived in Caddy Corner there. It was a nap around here a lot of cotton bowl caddycorn apartments on lemon avenue and the titanic lived there and I learned a lot about betting propositions extraordinary pool players we had the best extraordinary pool players in the world there and they would be playing two thousand 300 thousand a game every night and a lot of rail birds I would go in there and play a thousand a game nine ball than my own money and some of the guys I'm playing with are laying off another two or three thousand a rail I mean it's just which was amazing, phenomenal, too good to last, unfortunately and finally, the feds came and busted everyone in jail except me, I was the one at the top of the list, but it just didn't happen.

Being in the pool hall that night they put everyone in jail and they took out the pool tables, they put the pool players in these tractor trailers and took them to jail. I went to Houston to gamble and bet. They sent for a friend of his by the name of eddie taylor because there was action in houston now eddie was a really good player probably the best bank pool player but he played everything well but no one, he wasn't a, you know, he wasn't like Whimpy or Crane or him. He's a household name and Eddie came to town and we took him around, he just beat what he wanted, he wins all the time and then he asked me if I wanted to take a trip with him, so I'm serious.

It was an opportunity he certainly didn't want to pass up, so we left and traveled together just the two of us for about eight months. I guess he used to play and I was a good player. He was winning everyone. playing billiards, he played me bank billiards, one hand to two, I never won a game, not a single game, and you know that I am capable of handling six or seven banks and he would go out and bet six, eight, ten, a day ago, 14. one. -handed and ronnie allen was supposed to be the best one-handed pocket player in the world at the time, eddie and I were at the stardust, they paired up to play a one-handed pocket in the air that you know you could brush . the cushion, but you couldn't put the cue on the cushion and I didn't know if Eddie had played well or not, but I agree because he is the best player I have ever seen in my life and I'm sitting there.

I have two tables in the back room there, the game was at the Stardust in Las Vegas and I'm sitting next to Marshall Carpenter the squirrel and I'm talking to him, I said Marshall, I don't know if we have a good game. Not here, you know because Ronnie had a very strong reputation for playing one and Eddie is in the middle of the table and I'll never forget it and he has an embryonic eight-ball bank, the cue ball is in the middle of the table and Marshall . He turned to me and said, look at this, don't worry about anything.

Eddie is on the royal bench. The eight drew the cue ball position from him. I mean, he was just amazing, he hit shots that other people couldn't make and he was smart. I know one year in Johnson City they had a proposal: what was the proposal? I think it was a four railroad bank proposal or a five railroad bank proposal and a Jersey read and everyone, Boston Short, everyone was trying to do it and no one could do it for the money. and it was beanie's proposal and he came in and looked at it and walked over and said I'm like this I said well no one has been able to say look at this, he walked over and opened the back door and stood there and stood there for a while. a while and then finally every time beanie says beanie I'll know I'll take what I forgot what the odds mean let's give it like three to one or so so I'll take 200 and I'll shoot it the first time and The trick was that he opened the door and the humidity shortened the table and he was able to do it.

He had a proposal. It was one of the strongest proposals I have seen. You put a ball on the second diamond in the kitchen and then you have to bet. You have to bank that same ball and keep putting it back. Deposit that ball in each pocket. That's a pretty good proposal. A railing on the side. Two railings on the side. Three railings in the corner. But he used to show me shots like I didn't. I know if I can do it now, maybe not on a diamond, but I can take it. I put the cue ball, you know, a few inches from the corner pocket and I put an object ball on the second diamond and I put it in that pocket.

He could do that. routinely and I've even seen him go beyond the second diamond and do it. He could make bags that no one else could. I've never seen anything like it. I traveled with Puckett, in fact, she was my first wife, she was his niece and I used to travel quite a bit the first time he came to the cotton palace he thought he would go in there and linger with me and then beat me out of someone I just robbed him and asked me if I would take a road trip. she's gone, it's amazing, I'll never forget this as long as he lives, he couldn't have been more than 17.

We get in this car and it's night and we start going to California and we drive maybe 30 miles and he stops a car on the side of the road and he says, you know, Billy says there are two ways to go the northern route from California and to the southern route and honestly, there wasn't much difference between them, but he says, you know, I just think that maybe we should be on the southern route, so we took a little road, cut off and started on the southern route south and don't you know we go about 40 miles and he stops the car again?

He says you know after thinking about it, I think we have to be on the north route, so we go back to the north route and drive for a while, he stops the car on the side of the road and I say ugly, what is the problem?, he says now, billy, he says, I know you're young and I know you're a good player, but let me explain something to you that says that in every society someone has to be the boss, it says that now you can be the boss if you want and can pick the places and tell us where to go and what to do and all that or I can be the boss I said I could I think I'll let you be the boss and that was satisfactory so we keep driving now I'm tired we've been driving it's midnight and we're in the west of Texas, somewhere in a modest little town.

We are driving through the city. It's around midnight. Older pockets now that he's in his, he's probably 60 years old. And as we were driving through town, he sees this bar on the left side. from the street and with a light on outside and he stops the car and parks it, says billy, go in there and see if there's something going on there, I get out of the car, I go in, sure enough, there's a waiter, there's a guy. at the bar and there's a three and a half by seven bar table with no one playing, so I go in, I look around, I get out, I go to the bathroom, I get out and I get back in the car and I tell Puckett exactly what I saw and he says: good.

He says let me come in and take a look so he goes into the bar and I sit in the back seat and I go to sleep at two o'clock here comes Puckett says come on Billy, come on, he gets in the car and starts driving away. I'm looking forPeople don't realize how exhausting all that fine detail work on your eyes is and it wasn't like that until somewhere in Arizona I realized they could try to fix my eyes, so last year, before I had my eye fixed, I played all year there in Phoenix with basically one eye, but I played pretty well when I started.

I left it for 20 or 30 years, I guess when I came back to the game things had changed a lot, they had gone from the century old balls to the traditional balls that play completely different, at least they have changed from the people I play with. They've gone from, you know, four- and five-eighths-inch pockets in gold crayons to four-inch pockets in diamond tables and you know it was like swimming in a different ocean, I mean, and I'm still struggling with the way that they play the diamond tables. I'm not very forgiving, I just, you know, had to take apart my pool game and try to remake it.

You know, honestly, your videos have been a huge help. Oh, I wish they thought you just have no idea. I tell everyone. I mean, there are many. There is information there that you simply are not going to learn anywhere else. You know that's the truth and I'm not saying I appreciate you sitting here. I say it because I believe it and you know I'm a big promoter and I travel with Taylor, Eddie Taylor, the way he taught me how to bank and it's the way I bank, basically, it's vertically. center of the cue ball and use speed to basically control the angles and you play with it.

I call it an inert cue ball. Now I don't know if people understand that, but it's kind of a dead cue ball that slides in, you know, because it's so much more predictable. one of those banks of tricks that come up in a pocket where the object ball is between the two pockets and very close to the rail, you know, with that sliding cue ball, that inert cue ball, they're really hooks, I mean, it's quite difficult ignore it. one if you know where to hit it and the speed and stroke to use and a lot of benches are easier with that inert cue ball, but then when I got your video and started watching you know I had just been guessing all those years and started to looking at the numbers and seeing where I really had a crosshairs on the rail, it just changed everything uh, I wasn't last year, not this year last year I downplayed Colby's in Phoenix, I played with you.

I know I played with Scott and other good players and my embryo bank percentage was phenomenal. I put it on par with anyone, but I used your system because it's the same system that you basically kept in the end lane, but yeah, you know, it seems like I don't have to impart any English on the object ball because the distance has enough time. so that the object ball goes the right way, so you know, that's what I do nowadays. I plan to practice some tournaments trying to improve my game.