A Brief History of Pool Hustling: Trick Shots

Series Summary

Trick shots in the game of pool are often associated with hustling, or sharking. During the mid-20th century pool halls were often given an unfair reputation as dangerous, seedy dens of sin (especially after the 1961 Paul Newman film “The Hustler”) where people would lose their money to unscrupulous pool sharks. But interest in the game has seen a rebirth of sorts in recent years, and most pool halls and billiard parlors today are clean, classy establishments where people of all walks of life go to have fun playing the game they love. Of course this doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun showing off a few trick shots with your friends or family.

In this series of free video lessons, expert Richard Buccola demonstrates some basic trick shots that are so easy even a beginner could pull them off. Richard also offers advice on pool hall etiquette, and why trying to hustle someone is a bad idea. While these tricks might not win you any pool games, they’ll probably win you a few friends at your local pool hall.

Video Transcript

"On behalf of expertvillage.com my name is Richard Buccola and today I’m going to teach you some trick pool shots. Hi I’m here at Doyle’s Corner in Astoria Queens, New York and we’re going to talk a little bit about pool tricks and about hustling and about the game of pool. Years ago there was actually a movie “The Hustler” and it wisen a lot of people up as to what people were doing as far as you know what was happening in the pool halls, at that time I don’t think there were any bar tables at this point, if there were they were in some places I guess but most of the old pool was played in the pool hall and there were all types of characters and you know different types of schemes to get people to loose their money and until this movie came out I think I wisen a lot of people up and pool actually got a bad stigma about it where it was associated with low lives or drags and what I’m going to do is actually tell you nowadays it’s actually kind of sheik and there’s a lot of pool halls and when I come back I want to talk to you about trick shots."