Take a tour of local pool halls

The tables are usually green. Except at Pink E's, where they're a garish pink, or PT's Pub, where they're a stately burgundy.

The cues can be straight and clean, or worn and warped. Sometimes the cue is smooth and pristine; other times it's nicked and scarred. The felt can be spongy and soft, or firm, tattered and scratched. The clientele can be well-coiffed or scraggly. A guy with a denim vest, leather cap and pocket knife hooked to his belt can find himself locked in competition with a tie-clad professional with pressed slacks and a cellular telephone.

But the game, for centuries, remains the same. Chalk it up to tradition.

"It's played by families, by couples, just about everybody at some point has become involved in pool," said John Lewis, league and program director for the Billiards Congress of America, the nation's largest sanctioning body for pool players. "It's one of the most popular of all sports."

Lewis recites statistics bolstering his claim. According to BCA estimates, around 40 million people from ages 6 and up play pool at least once per year. Official North American membership in the BCA exceeds 50,000.

The sport enjoyed a surge in popularity after the Paul Newman-Tom Cruise ode to eight ball, "The Color of Money," was released in 1986.

"We've been riding that wave for years," Lewis said. "That movie did a lot for cue sports."

And for the next several days Las Vegas will be the center of the pool-playing universe as the 23rd Annual BCA North American 8-Ball Championships overtakes the Riviera hotel-casino beginning Friday and running through May 23.

More than 5,000 sharks will compete in 17 divisions on 240 coin-operated tables for $625,000 in prize money. Also, the world's top professional male and female players arrive Monday for the BCA Open Nine Ball Championships at the Riviera and compete through May 22.

The top 64 men and women compete for $160,000 in prize money, with ESPN providing tape-delayed coverage Friday and Saturday.

"Very few sports are as universally popular as cue sports," Lewis said. "It's gone through plenty of peaks and valleys over the years, but it's still a very popular activity and it has been over an entire century. Leagues are growing every year and we're still on a pretty healthy plateau."

Locally, players of any skill can find a cozy venue to hone their pool-playing craft. Neighborhood joints such as PT's, with its 17 Las Vegas outlets (all of which feature at least two tables) cater to moderate-to-serious players.

The more traditional, hard-core pool halls include the 36-table Cue Club on East Sahara, Cue-Topia on the corner of Twain and Swenson (co-owned by two-time Women's Professional Billiards Association world champion Mary Guarino and her husband, Frank), the Crystal Palace on the corner of Bonanza and Eastern (whose owner, Frank Torres, is a world-renowned billiards player), and Pool Sharks on the corner of Decatur and Twain, operated by local pool legend Lou Boutera.

Then there's the cotton-candy climate at Pink E's.

Pretty in pink

If the ambience at the Cue Club is earthy and rustic enough to evoke the very spirit of Willie Mosconi and Minnesota Fats, Pink E's (across from the Rio hotel on West Flamingo) invites the Cruise-Brad Pitt-"Beverly Hills 90210" element.

"It's a rock 'n' roll club with pool tables," Mark Estes, manager at Pink E's and one of the city's best eight- and nine-ball practitioners, said. "Serious players don't like playing on pink tables."

Still, with 53 tables (including a few with green-felt surfaces for stubborn traditionalists), Pink E's is the largest pool club in Las Vegas.

"We're very busy on the weekends and we have good business on Mondays, when Monday Night Football and our wet T-shirt contests are going," Estes said. "We try to get away from the typical neighborhood bar or pool hall. We've got a real clean, safe place with nice equipment."

On a recent Monday evening, Jim Black and his girlfriend, Anna Maria Hart, both longtime Las Vegans, happened into the pink palace for a few friendly games of eight ball.

"We kind of came down here on a lark, a whim," said Black, who conceded he hadn't picked up a pool cue in about a year before knocking off the rust at Pink E's. "It's a good place to come on a date and have a little fun. This isn't a cutthroat competition here."

Said Hart: "We like the look of the place and it just seems like fun. The pool is just kind of an excuse to get out of the house."

Pink E's opened in May 1995 and, primarily because of the tables, has been a success.

"Any time you have pool tables, people eventually will play them," Mike Smith, Pink E's general manager, said. "But truthfully, serious players don't play here."

Rather, they carry their cues into places such as the Cue Club.

An eye for pool

While Pink E's is the largest club in town, the Cue Club is the largest club for serious players. The spacious, 36-table club includes several regulation (9-by-4 1 /2-foot) tables, regulation billiards and snooker tables and a sea of "small" tables, the 7-by-3 1 /2-foot tables most popular in bars and pool halls.

So busy with league and tournament activity is the Cue Club that it has incorporated a full-time position for organizing its various competitions. Bruce Prince, a short, excitable chap who shouts when he speaks, happily fills that role. Prince estimates that he runs more than 300 league and tournament competitions per year.

"The best players in town play here," Prince said. "We have a lot of road players, or what people call 'hustlers' come in here an it can get very tense and very competitive."

Next week the Cue Club hosts the highest-paying tournament in the city, the culmination of an eight-week eight ball tournament in which 32 players compete for $2,600 in prize money.

The winner gets $1,300.

"That will be very stressful," Prince said. "Playing for that kind of money is not for the meek."

One of the Cue Club's regular and highest-skilled players is Greg Kuhl. He said he became involved in competitive pool because "I was too lazy to work and too busy to steal."

Kuhl was drawn by the strategy and mental challenge of pool -- a chess game on felt is how he describes the sport -- as well as the money that could be made.

"It was competitive enough to catch my interest," he said. "And I soon discovered that you could win money in lots of different forms of competition."

Although Prince and Cue Club manager Marion Julian decline to provide specific numbers, reports of games played for $20,000 and even more have surfaced at the Cue Club. The hot table, No. 7, is where the really heavy action unfolds amid a dense layer of smoke and classic rock 'n' roll tunes.

"People will play for $10,000 without even blinking," Cue Club regular Craig Salinetro said. "For some, it's how they make their living. Hey, $10,000 for a night's work is a pretty good gig, I think."

Salinetro describes himself as a mid-range player, better than the average recreational player but not in the class of Kuhl and some of the other Cue Club masters.

"I play mostly for the relaxation," he said. "It's a release, a way to ease tension. It's a way to have fun with some good people. That's why I'm here."

Salinetro certainly isn't in it to make money. Over the past several weeks he's spent more than $100 on tournament entry fees and has won a grand total of $25 in competition.

"I look at it as paying for lessons," he said with a grin. "If I come in here and play all night for $10 against great players, I've not only had a lot of fun but I've learned a lot and become a better player."

Salinetro also relayed a few lesser-known pool facts:

-- Tables are always perfectly rectangular and twice as long as they are wide, no matter what the size.

-- On coin-operated tables, the cue is slightly larger and heavier than numbered balls, allowing for the cue to be returned to the head of the table on a scratch. On tables that aren't coin operated, the cue is the same size and weight and thus more difficult to control.

-- Cues range in cost from $100 to $10,000. On player at a recent Cue Club tournament used a $5,000 cue and finished third out of 16 players.

-- Larger tables almost always have more tightly wound (and faster) felt and slightly smaller pockets than small tables.

"It's a gentleman's game, and I don't think people realize that," Salinetro said. "You don't see poor sportsmanship or trash talking, none of that. It's a well-mannered game where you shake hands when it's over."

But it has changed -- evolved for the better -- over the years.

"The biggest change I've seen is the ladies," Julian said. "The women have become more and more active and are approaching the skill level of the men."

Expanding horizons

Cue-Topia co-owner Mary Guarino is something of a pioneer in the sport, playing on the women's professional tour for nearly 20 years.

"When I first started, when a woman walked into a pool room, everyone would look at you funny," Guarino said. "Now, 40 percent of our clientele is women."

Guarino was an aspiring college basketball player until knee injuries ended that dream. She tried bowling ("too boring") until finding a niche in pool.

"I had good eye-hand coordination anyway, and I became good at it quickly," Guarino said. "It's a very strategic game, which I like. You use timing and dexterity, and you have to focus not only on the shot in front of you but two or three shots down the line."

The most difficult fundamental to master is controlling the cue ball, Guarino said.

"You can go into any neighborhood pool hall and find people who can make shots," she said. "The way you win is controlling the cue ball and setting up your next shot."

Guarino said it would be soon, possibly even a few years, that women would be able to compete on even footing with men.

"With the exception of the break, there is no advantage to strength in pool," she said. "The gap between men and women used to be huge. But it's pretty close now."

It might even be that pool -- in its most popular form, 8-ball -- could be an Olympic sport.

"We've received official recognition from the IOC (the International Olympic Committee) and that's the first step," Lewis said. "It's possible, not likely but possible, that we could be a medal sport in the 2004 Olympic Games."

Smirk if you like, but if ever there were a sport unaffected by Olympian controversies (blood doping, steroid abuse, etc.), 8-ball would be it.

But Olympic dreams don't impress league and tournament players like Salinetro.

"I play because I really enjoy it," he said. "I come in here to get away from out there."

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