Pool players converge for world’s largest tournament at Westgate

It is billed as “The World’s Largest Pool Tournament,” so noted by Guinness World Records in 2010. These are the facts — some official, some not so — that make this week’s American Poolplayers Association World Pool Championships at the Westgate bigger than Minnesota Fats:

— Days: Eight.

— Players: 12,800.

— Tables: 327.

— Purse: $1.2 million.

— Championships: 9-Ball, 8-Ball, Ladies 8-Ball, Jack & Jill, Masters. Plus MiniMania events, wheelchair events, trick-shot artist events and dozens of exhibitor booths stretching down corridors to the iconic Benihana hibachi — about the only place at the Westgate where tables aren’t covered by green felt this week.

— Square feet of felt: The dimensions of a regulation Valley Cougar pool table are 3½ feet x 7 feet. You do the math.

— Trucks used to transport pool tables from Fort Collins, Colorado, to Las Vegas: You can fit 40 tables in a truck, so what, about eight or nine?

— Bars: Seven.

— Kegs of beers consumed: Too many to count.

— Cigarettes smoked: Zero, at least in the Westgate’s temporary pool halls. A city ordinance prevents smoking in a temporary pool hall. The outdoor gangway between the Westgate and the Las Vegas Convention Center is another matter. The surgeon general is nowhere to be found in that gangway.

— Nods to Fast Eddie Felson, Jackie Gleason, Paul Newman, Tom Cruise and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio’s character in “The Color of Money”: Around 28 or 29 during the three hours I was there. (There also was a mention of John Turturro, who played Julian.)

— Eight-balls in the side pocket: 334,128 (Not counting the practice tables).

— Sleeping women stretched out on multiple chairs in the spectator area during a MiniMania event at 9:35 a.m. Wednesday: One.

Just about everybody’s in for pool at the Westgate this week.

Ordinary Joes, Josephines

“You have everyday people that are here,” Jason Bowman, marketing director of the APA, said about the level of team competition. “Firefighters, housewives, truck drivers — just a combination of all walks of life that happen to enjoy the sport of pool.

“About 40 million people a year pick up a cue stick and play pool; we have 250,000 players around the country that do that weekly with us in our APA leagues … for entertainment, for enjoyment, for camaraderie. This is just kind of the culmination of that activity.”

Bowman started to wave his hand toward the tables, where the clickety-clack of billiard balls was making a familiar and much magnified sound. But the expanse of tables was so wide he quickly thought better of it, for fear of stretching ligaments in his waving hand.

For every recreational pool player who was sinking an eight-ball in the side pocket, there were a dozen or more strolling to and from the Westgate ballrooms, carrying pool cues in cases like clarinets or Tommy Guns.

I was introduced to Robert Hall of Huntsville, Alabama, a multi-time masters champion who has done everything there is to do in recreational pool, with the exception of making a cameo in the classic “Bad to the Bone” MTV video with George Thorogood and Bo Diddley.

Pool shootin’ boy

If there is a Bizarro World pool hall, then Robert Hall is its Eddie Felson. He neither smokes nor drinks. He has never hustled anybody on a pool table, or so he says. He has a degree in mechanical engineering from Florida State; he says he comes to this ginormous event at the Westgate for entertainment, for enjoyment, for camaraderie.

“Love all the competition, the staff, a lot of people from all over the country that I’ve gotten to know over the years,” said Hall, who has one pool table at home, another 24 at Bumper Billiards, a hall he owns in Huntsville where smoking is permitted.

Remember that old Jim Croce song about playing pool for big money on 42nd Street? Outta South Alabama came a country boy, a pool shootin’ boy named Willie McCoy. Back home they called him Slim.

Robert Hall says that’s not him. He’s left-handed. Besides, Huntsville is in northern Alabama, not far from the Tennessee border.

“It’s just a lot of fun to play in the Minis, the Masters, and if my eight- or nine-ball team makes it (to the later rounds), that’s even better,” he says.

That’s Robert Hall’s story at the World Pool Championships. And he insists he has never hustled anybody, though I’m not sure Fats or Willie Mosconi would believe it.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.