Nick Varner - Part 3 (From Straight Pool to Mosconi Cup Glory)

Well, you continued to win big events. I guess you fast forward to 1994 and you see an eight ball world championship. This was the Seagate venue, I think we were talking about yesterday.
Yeah, yeah, that was in Toledo, Ohio.
And that's the first time the Pro Tour ever had a world eight ball championship at the time. That was the very first one. And then they started having them every year.
But for quite a while.
So, were you guys not playing much eight ball back then? I mean, were there not any eight ball events? It was pretty much nine ball or straight pool?
No, it was pretty well nine ball, even one pocket.
There wasn't much going on in one pocket. I mean, over the years, I won a few one pocket tournaments. But boy, today, they have really some serious one.
Boy, I wish we'd had that many one pocket tournaments in those days. But this one pocket has really grown in popularity in a lot more tournaments. Mostly, I made a living playing nine ball.
Yeah.
What was your preferred game, just for enjoyment's sake?
Well, when I went to college, I'd never played a game of straight pool and I loved it. I just fell in love with that game. I thought it was so interesting.
Then I got around some of those straight pool players. It was a little different person than the people that played nine ball. They were really high character people in the straight pool.
And I just loved it. I loved you had to think more. It was a pretty complex game.
Like nine ball, you don't have to worry about what you got to shoot next. There is no decision what you have to shoot next because the rules of the game determine what you got to shoot next. The lowest ball on the table.
Straight pool, you can shoot any one of the 14 or 15 out there. A lot of times, you have the pattern place so important in the straight pool, the way you pick the balls is so important, the patterns you pick.
You think some players are just born to see those patterns more than others, or is it just something that comes to you with a lot of repetition and observation and learning?
Well, I don't think you could be born with seeing those patterns.
I think you have to log some time, a lot of time doing the pattern play, because I spent a lot of time playing straight pool, and you know, in straight pool where you hit the cue ball and the break shots is a lot of skill and a lot of knowledge.
And then also, when you those last, if you got the balls all apart at the end, the last four or five balls, you'd like to end up stop, stop, stop, stop. I mean, it usually doesn't quite work out quite that easy.
Usually there's one or two balls where you might have to roll the ball a couple of three feet. But basically, straight pool is a half table game. You're playing on one half of the table where the balls are racked.
And so, yeah, I used to spend hours just throwing four, five, six balls on the table and then figuring out how to end up with that break shot. And boy, when I was in college, I was really working hard on that game.
And there was a lot of good players on my campus. And so we'd discuss that all the time. They were really pool fans.
And I'd say, Joe, how you think I should play this? And because maybe I'm just practicing or something by myself. And how would you play this pattern?
And so you'd get different people's viewpoints. And you tried to learn from that. And the bottom line is, you tried to connect the balls, where the cue ball didn't have to roll too far.
And you're obvious most of the time trying to end up with the right angle. You'd like to end up, well, you got to stop the cue ball. Probably the most important position shot there is, is the stop shot.
Right.
The economy of the cue ball travel is what wins because it minimizes unforced errors. And didn't you tell me that you thought Ray Martin picked the balls about the best of anybody?
He was as good as anybody. Ray Martin, he had such good cue ball control. And I did some exhibitions with him.
And man alive, I was impressed with the patterns that he played. He really kept it simple and he had such a good speed control with the cue ball. And yeah, he was a great straight pool player.
But then in the 80s, the game started to change where it had come nine ball. They're looking for a faster game and simpler game. And so I almost wanted to give up the game when it went from straight pool to nine ball.
And what really made me come out of it is, because most of the straight pool players from New York and New Jersey and Philadelphia, they thought nine ball is a joke game and stuff.
And, but I looked up and Buddy Hall and Mike Sigel are winning almost every tournament. I thought, well, how lucky can this really be with these guys winning every tournament? So I got with the program after that.
And, because I want a lot more nine ball tournaments by miles than anything else. And to a big extent, prize money wise, nine ball was what I made a living at.
What happened before that was that straight pool had been the predominant game for so long. We all invested our whole heart into it.
And there was some top players and Steve Mizerak could be a prime example that didn't convert well to nine ball, despite the fact he could play it great.
He just, his heart wasn't in it because you got to make a ball on the break and you couldn't control some of the things that happened, the variances. And Nick was one of the ones that made the conversion.
Sigel made the conversion and Rempe, to a large extent, made the conversion. But Mizerak got left behind. He just didn't have his heart in it.
It just kind of killed, but he used to dominate straight pool and now he couldn't dominate quite as easily. And it just seemed like more like a carnival game to him. So he didn't really love it like he did the other part of it.
And I think in Mizerak's case, what hurt him, he made so much money.
That he was involved in a lot of business activities, which took him off the pool table and I think that hurt him big time too. Although his mineral approach to nine ball, it wasn't good.
He thought it was a lucky game and I think that kind of hurt him. And I think the way I would sum it up is nine ball and straight pool mentally are two different games. A lot of times you run a hundred balls and you might never be under any pressure.
Every shot might be a hanger. You can make 99 out of a hundred. But that don't happen in nine ball.
Usually you've got a blood tester to every rack. So the pressure is a lot different pressure in nine ball. And I think maybe that's what Mizerak, even though he was a tremendous shot maker.
Cause I remember I played him in a world tournament when I won the first one and his last shot, I had him trapped with on two fouls. And I remember his last shot, it was either a three or four ball combination.
I mean, you might shoot that for a year and never make it. But he says, I'm not going down. Well, he had no safety.
He had no good safety. So he called that shot. I thought, oh my God.
If he would have made that, I might have fainted.
And the most beautiful stroke, and Nick said that, you know, he would just get in stroke himself, watching Mizerak deliver the cue. It was a beautiful thing to watch. And special, you know, all the great players are great.
And then Mizerak was just a hair more special. He won four straight US Open's, 1970 through 1973. So phenomenal talent that never happened ever before or since.
Well, his move, that cue, I watched him get through that cue ball.
It was a beautiful thing to watch. And I don't know what it was about it, but I really always felt good playing him, because I don't know, he just bought out the best in me. And I enjoyed watching him play.
And here's a funny story in Binghamton, well, interesting story anyway. In Binghamton, New York, they had a pro tournament. In fact, the golf pros played at the same time.
And they used to come down and play some of them in our pro am before the tournament started. And anyway, but Mizerak, we're playing and it's close. It's really close at the finish line.
And boy, we were in that process where you used to be able to smoke in the tournaments, but we're in the process where they were making it where you couldn't smoke. So I took up chewing bubble gum, kind of as a substitute.
And I guess I was really going to town on that bubble gum. And I'll never forget what a classy guy Mizerak was, because he comes over and he bends over and whispers to me, he says, could you slow down a little bit on that bubble gum?
Nobody could hear it but me. And I thought that was classy. And a few years later, he started a senior tour.
And when I qualified for it, he carted everybody, wanted to look at their driver's license, the first event you played in. And then he bought me a big basketball that was cut out in the open.
And it was basketball size, and it was filled with bubblegum.
That's great. Well, let's go if we can to some of your Mosconi Cup experience. We're in 1997 now.
Explain to our listeners what the process was back then, when Mosconi Cup first got started, who ran it, how they picked the players, what the competition was like. Just take us through some of that.
Well, back in those days, today is just five players, but back then it was six. Matt's room picked three of them. Then we did have a ranking system on the Pro Tour, so they went off the ranking system.
To guarantee, if you didn't get a free invitation, you had to qualify, you had to be at the top three to get in. And so that's why I only played four years. There was four years I was ranked in the top three, 97, 98, 2001 and 2002.
I was the coach seven times, and three times I was playing, a playing coach. And that is tough, playing and trying to compete. And then as Mark, I know he can understand what I'm talking about.
But you know, a lot of egos in that room. And trying to keep everybody from self-destructing is because that team plays tough action because the pressure is so much more intense than when you're playing a heads up pool match.
Because when, and especially in those days, both teams have the same practice room. So the loser of every match and the winner of every match eventually has to, and usually it's not too long, has to get back to the same room.
And anyway, a lot of times the tempers were pretty short. And you had to be so careful when you had a problem, you had to try to deal with it, even though I questioned some time. I'm good at really did.
But team play, boy, when you lose a match, the next match is so important because losing is just like cancer. And winning is just so momentum.
And boy, when you, my thought in the Moscone Cup, my key thought is the next match is so, so important because you got to stop the bleeding. Because sometime, once you lose a match, you really end up digging a deep hole for yourself.
And so the, and to me, the next match, I think I won a couple of times where they, the Europe saved their best players a little too long.
And when they came to the plate, they were behind and they weren't feeling too comfortable when they got up there. And I always felt I wanted to win that.
My strategy was obvious to win the next match because if you win 11-8 or 11-7, who cares who's left to play? You know? And if it does go hill-hill, you just have to take potluck.
I mean, you know, if the two worst players or if your worst player is up there, he just, I mean, they are all supposed to be pros. I mean, so, you know, they do have some responsibility to try to win.
It seems as though the history of the Moscone Cup has tracked a bit with the history of the Ryder Cup in terms of the early US dominance, then the Europeans sort of come on.
US now is coming back in Ryder Cup a little bit, but boy, Europe had a great stretch. And we've talked about this a lot on our golf podcast with probably 60 different guys that played Ryder Cup, right?
And we always kind of debate about, is the European culture and mindset conducive to team play much more so than the setup we have here in the United States? What do you guys think about that?
Well, I think that they're far harder working and more focused on not the financial aspect, but making a career out of this and treating it like a sport.
I think there might be a different in the mentality of the players today. I think the players I played with, you had to beat people to make a living.
You didn't have at least a big part of our, especially when we got started playing pro, we had to try to scratch out every dollar. And hope we could get to the next tournament. It wasn't like in the beginning.
I think I won four world tournaments before I got much of help. And then I did get some good help in. And, but, you know, when I look at the players that we had on our teams, them guys were tough competitors.
I mean, they didn't like losing and they didn't go over there thinking that, well, there's a first place prize and a second place prize. And the guys I went with, the second place prize was unacceptable to them. They, Mike Rempe, Reed Pierce, Johnny.
I mean, these guys, they didn't come along peacefully. They'd be, what do you call, they'd be screaming the whole way. They were fighting and screaming the whole way.
Even if they got beat, they weren't, I think they were, I think they were better pressure players, really. I think they just played better. The moment wasn't too big for them guys.
And you know, some guys can't fade that heat and the heat's just too hot in the kitchen. But the guys I played with, they were used to having to scratch and fight and to eke out a living. And so, and then I think they worked harder at their games.
I think the guys I played with, they put in a lot more hours on the table. And I think also is having a ranking point system help too, because I still don't understand. People are always talking about what's going to make pool and stuff.
And I still don't understand why this country can have at least 10 tournaments a year with at least 10,000 added. I think that would be very easy for somebody to put together.
And at least they get to play however long, if it's 10 months, they get to play once a month.
So I think that would really help the performance of American players, because there's been years people play that hardly play in a tournament on the team the last few years.
And you got the Europeans, they're probably practicing eight hours every day of their life. You know what I mean? They're working hard.
So, and it was a fight to get on the team where a lot of guys just get invited the last few years. There's guys that's never won a world tournament or US Open that's played on the Moscone Cup seven, eight years in a row.
I got to play four times my whole career.
How do you stay competitive, guys, when we've probably got 5% of the pool halls we used to have 30 years ago in this country? They're all filled with seven-foot tables.
I got to tell you, I don't have a publicly available nine-footer within 50 miles of where I live. How do you grow a crop of young kids to play at an elite level in that kind of an environment?
That is kind of tough. You'll have to be in an area where you're going to have to play. If you're going to compete on that main tour, you're going to have to play a nine-foot table because in Europe, it's mostly nine-foot tables.
In Asia, it's mostly nine-foot tables.
The bar table is a little bit unique to the United States of America, and I think it has to do with the leagues and to get people to play on the leagues because I remember in the pool room business back in the 70s, we had a big teenage business and
is a big dating spot on the weekends where the 16, 17-year-olds come in with a girlfriend. Sometimes, nights, I just watch them play. They'd be lucky to play two games of A-ball in an hour. And I'm thinking, how can this be fun?
And so we tried to do our best and education's a big part of that problem where, you know, one thing about the older generation, some of them, they took all the knowledge to their grave.
You know, that was kind of a little bit of the mentality and the generation or two before me. And where that's changed today, people are pretty happy to share their knowledge. And there's so many people teaching in this country.
I mean, you don't have to go far to get a lesson in instructions readily available. But the nine-foot table, I remember, well, I just talked to a guy today.
At one time, there was 31 nine-foot tables in Owensboro, my hometown, and probably three or four decent pool rooms.
And today, the biggest pool room in town's got four seven-foot and a nine-foot, and another one opened up with the same amount of tables.
And, you know, so, you know, if you're going to compete at seven-foot, it's just not the same game that it is on the nine-foot table. And I've had actually people in my hometown that will argue with me about that. And to me, it's like common sense.
I mean, to me, the same thing. To me, if the best players in the world play on the seven-foot, if they play long enough, you're going to get the same result. Now, on the short run, there'll be a lot more upsets, and it'd be much tougher to dominate.
But to me, it's like that old saying that Scotty Townsend, he wore this T-shirt that said, I've never lost. I've never been beaten. I just ran out of money a few times.
Right.
Oh, that's great.
Well, Mark, you probably have a view about that, too, right, in terms of how the game's developing here in the States?
100%. I've seen it happen in Europe, where we used to play in Taiwan, and they were not very competitive in the world stage, but then Mr.
Tu put together a school and deployed players into that school, and now they're the most dominant crew in the world, other than maybe the Philippines.
You got the Co-brothers there, JL Chang, Li Hai Tao, and on and on, because the focus and emphasis is on that. Plus, there is no such thing as a bar table there, and the same in the Philippines, no bar tables.
Here, we distinguish the sport from the game. The game of pool played on seven footers with a handicap, drink some beers and argue about your handicap, and that's the game of pool, something different, less respectful.
Then there's the sport of pool where you're putting your whole heart into it, and training diligently, and trying to get better, and working at your craft, and it's as broad as chess and checkers, I would say, or mini golf and golf.
It's that broad of a thing, but it all gets painted with the same brush, so people don't understand. They just call it pool. They don't understand.
There's that kind of a distinction in there.
Well, you know, in my part of the country and in the south and even in Texas, the big size table really was eight foot oversize. And that's what I grew up on, the 46 by 92, and my first real taste of a nine foot table.
Well, I take that back in high school. We did have eight, nine foot tables, so that was different. But then my dad's pool room was eight foot oversize at the time.
But there was such a light year of difference. Yeah.
Well, hey, we got about three more world championships to talk about. Let's go back to the one you won in 1999, the World Bank Pool Championship. So you were able to put those skills to good use.
I remember when they had a big tour where, and it was a ball.
And a guy named Kevin Trudeau ran it, called the International Pool Tour, it was about 2005 and 2006, I think. And he had some monster tournaments. And anyway, I think the field was, was it 128 was the fields, I think.
And people were dying to get in them because the money was so huge. They had qualifiers where some of them, you had to pay 2000 getting a qualifier with 32 champions almost, and you had to win it to get in.
So it was tough action, probably similar to if you had the Monday qualify on the PGA Tour, probably a similar system. And I remember I was good friends with Mike Sigel and he's kind of the one that kind of got Trudeau involved with ProPool.
And anyway, Trudeau, he was a real stickler. Everybody had to send and fill out a resume. And I remember Shannon Dalton said, what did you put on your resume?
I said, well, I just barely could get all eight world titles in there. I said, I didn't have any room for anything else. He laughed.
Hey, Nick, talk a little bit about bank pool for developing your skills.
You grew up in bank pool country, and that's what you played there. And then sometimes what you've told me about when you feel like you're a little out of stroke and the benefit of bank pool.
Yeah, bank pool, I was always kind of bored with 15 ball bank because you play so many safeties. Back in those days, the way we played bank is we broke like straight pool the first shot. So it was safety after safety.
And I kind of wanted to pocket a little bit more than that. And, but when I started playing nine ball bank, it was a pretty offensive, not that there's not, I mean, there's defense and nine ball bank without a doubt, but nothing like 15 ball bank.
It's, of course, today, I think a lot of bankers just break them wide open. And so you almost guaranteed a shot after the break if you make one. But, but back in those days, it was a one and stop bank.
And that just didn't help me. But for even Derby City, I seen the power of the nine ball.
Cause a lot of times my routine was I'd go in the cool room and when I started playing full time on the tour, I, when they started having enough tournaments to play full time, that's about 85. And I, a lot of times nobody would play me or anything.
So in the afternoons, or usually there wasn't many people in the pool room. So I'd practice in the afternoon, go to dinner and then come back at night and play those 12, one or two, whatever.
And then, and I try to match up at night, either match up a nine ball game or if nobody's around, it could hardly, a lot of good bank pool players.
I mean, if they played me nine ball, they might be able to run five and out in bank, but they could hardly ever run five balls in nine ball rotation. I mean, that's much a different game.
But there might have been a hundred players that could run five and out in bank pool. So they got to shoot a lot and it was competitive somewhat. So I'd play that nine ball bank.
And I noticed some days I wouldn't be, I keep missing the banks catching the point or and I'm thinking, well, first my thought was I'm having an off night.
And then, and then I got to thinking, well, I'm just like sometime in nine ball, you're on autopilot, you know, you're just flying around the table. And and you have a margin of air, the pocket's usually twice as big as the ball.
And and so if you miss hit it a little bit, a lot of times it doesn't make a difference. So you still run out. I mean, sometimes you get out of line, you're in big trouble.
But you end up on that 50 yard line where you got to come with a tough shot. But what I noticed about bank, when you hit the object ball, you have to match out with your hit on the cue ball.
So you really had to bear down much harder on the aiming process and you couldn't take it for granted. And and and I I noticed that if I played a guy, maybe a guy come in, we'd play for a couple of hours, he'd leave.
Well, you know, I wasn't done for the day, you know, I was just getting warmed up. And and so so and maybe find somebody playing nine ball now. It's just like I was in dead stroke as soon as I started.
I mean, the shots look so easy. Everything when I lined up, it just looked like automatic. It was in it.
I seen the power of playing that nine ball banks and in, but I never was a fan of 15 ball banks. It just put me to sleep. And but most of people, that's what they played back in the seventies and the sixties and even eighties.
Really, when Derby City started in 2000, that really hardly anybody ever played nine ball banks. You played it on the bar table.
It's a good game to play on the seven foot table because to me, nine ball and eight ball just too easy on the seven foot to really get my attention where banks. I got to bear down even on the seven foot table.
I mean, I'm gonna run out a lot more obviously, but.
Yeah, I kind of learned the game from my dad. We would always play two straights in a bank, straight in a bank, two straights in a bank. That was the game we played.
Three, five and eight, we used to call that.
Three, five and eight. You bank the third, fifth and eighth, and yeah, you could run out in that game. And that was a big game around here too.
A lot of people played that game, three, five and eight. That was really popular, probably more popular than bank pool. Was three, five and eight, because you get to shoot so many five of the eight, you get to shoot straight in.
So people could be more competitive at that game.
Yeah. And, and of course also as kids, we used to play a lot of Kelly P. Pool.
Yeah.
Yeah. I never played too much of that to me. I just...
That's a lot of luck, right?
And I was more of a heads up player anyway.
I was never real fond of ring games. Some players, they love them and a lot of them like the payball and the snooker table. Now snooker is pretty popular over in a part of the country.
You grew up in Southern Illinois. Yeah.
We had tables. We had two pool halls in a small town with, and each had snooker tables. Yeah.
Yeah.
Snooker was pretty big over there. And, but that's another game I didn't play too much.
Did you play much? Three cushion?
No, I would have liked to learn. I would have liked to play that. I like that game, but I was so busy trying to make a living.
I just didn't have time to fit it in. Same way with snooker. You know, I just, you know, the money was in nine ball when I was competing, and that's what I had to keep my focus on.
And the only reason I played the nine ball bank was, is to help my tournament performance.
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