Giving up too much weight could hurt you!

It was a cold and dark winter day when Eddie ‘The Fish’ Williams walked into the pool room.

They called him the fish because he had a full time job at the Fulton Fish Market in NYC, and

he always smelled like fish. He wasn’t a great pool player but he did have his moments when

he would get in the zone. On this particular day Eddie had just cashed his paycheck and was

looking for some action. Everyone who knew him was very much aware of Eddie’s gambling

fever. If he wasn’t playing pool for money he would be in the back room involved in a poker

game or playing on one of the many illegal poker machines that were hidden in that same

back room.

Because he was not such a great pool player he would always ask for ‘weight’, meaning a handicap of some kind. Pretty much what they do in APA pool today. If you ranked a six you have to win five games to two if the other player is a ranked a three and so on. He had an incredible gift for finding just the right amount of weight. He would go up against players whom by today’s rating would be considered a ten to his five, and he would more often win then lose. He would pick the best player in the house and challenge him to a game of 8-ball, with him racing to 4 and his opponent would need to win 9 games for one or two hundred bucks a match.

Of course the confidence of the better player would lead him to believe that this was going to be a piece of cake. Unfortunately for the more skilled cueist it would  end up being a nightmare instead;when he suddenly found himself at a score of 3 games to 5 with Eddie on the hill and just one game away from the money. One does not realize that no matter how good you think you are, if you give up too much weight, in the long run it could mean your demise. I think Eddie was the inventor of the APA rating system cause he sure was good at asking for just the right amount of weight. 

Bob (The Shark)