In 8 Ball, It Was Often Fun To Disagree With Andy The Greek!

Here, let me tell you an 8 ball story…

A very good friend of mine, who has since passed away, once gave me a hard time about a ‘safety valve’ I had chosen in a game I was playing. Andy the Greek was a heavy-set man with a thick accent and a penchant for helping people with their shot choices even when they didn’t want the help. He was talkative, hilarious, boisterous, and recklessly flashy when he shot pool. And he was a pretty decent player to boot.

One night, like so many others, a few of us were gathered around a couple tables, playing eight ball into the wee hours. The Greek had pulled off a few unlikely wins by sheer audacity alone, and had spent a few games trying to ‘help’ me understand how to play pool according to the methodology behind his own shot-choices.

I was just digging into a rack after Andy had broken and made nothing. I had dissected the rack like I usually do before stepping up to shoot. I needed to shoot group A and get into position on group B in such a way that I could break out a trouble ball in group C. Group C consisted of the trouble ball and two ‘safety valves’ (one of which I still remember was the 14) and all of them were settled near the 8 ball for easy pickings, if I could get that far.

All the hard stuff was in the first two groups I had chosen. I had managed through group A but landed a bit wonky into group B. So I stepped back to re-analyze, decided my strategy was still viable but that I needed to change up my tactics just a bit to get on the break-out shot I wanted for the trouble ball. While I was chewing over new choices for my ‘safety valves’ I hear the Greek pipe up, “Shoot the 14! Shoot the 14!” rolling his T’s and R’s together something wicked, in his excitement.

Andy had some great idea about snapping in the 14 with some serious juice on it to have it come whipping around a few rails back towards group B, and he was happily trying to tell me about it when I ...
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