Winner Stays On: A One-in-a-Billion Pool Shot
The true story of an extraordinary break
The four of us walked into the back room of a pub in Rye, East Sussex, with our drinks. Riffling through my change for 50p, I went to rack up a game of pool.
“It’s winner stays on,” said a figure in the corner behind us, who, judging by the crumpled dimps and pyramid of grey detritus piled up in his ashtray, must’ve been sucking on at least his dozenth cigarette.
“I just want a quick game with my girlfriend,” I replied.
“Well, you’ll have to beat me first, won’t you?”
Eleanor gave me the nod and put her marker down for the next frame.
Although it was 7 p.m. on a Friday, it was still quiet. He could’ve been waiting hours for a challenger to show up, polishing off two cigs to the pint at his corner perch.
“Winner breaks,” he said through a scowl as I arranged the triangle, giving the black ball its customary spin.
“Old rules or two-shot carries?” I asked.
“Carries.”
It would be.
His lead-off shot left me a couple of easy pots, and I won the game with a minimum of fuss. He blanked my outstretched hand after I sunk the black and skulked back to his lair.
“Winner breaks,” I said to Eleanor as she got up from her stool in the opposite corner.
“Old rules?” she asked.
“Too right.”
Neither of us is much cop at pool. I’ve played for a couple of teams, but as I’m a wayward potter, I’ve always had a safety-first approach. If there’s an easy snooker or a medium tariff pot, I’ll roll it up all day long hoping for a free hit on my next turn. It’s playing to my strengths. The Doug Mountjoy of 8-Ball.
Eleanor is risk-averse away from the pool table, but on it, she reaches food safety inspector levels of caution. She’ll refuse relatively simple pots if there’s half a chance to put her opponent in trouble. If the venue we’re playing in has a tight corner where you need to lift the butt of your cue to take a shot, she’ll put the white there every time. A single rack can take half an hour as the balls all become glued to the cushions.
This match wasn’t quite as attritional, and I won after fluking a red. Emma and Phil should’ve been up to play each other next, but Emma demurred in favour of catching up with Eleanor. We hadn’t all seen each other in a year.
“Besides,” she said. “It’s winner stays on.”
A collection of excitable young lads sporting gelled hair, alcopops and the full range of Lynx deodorant gathered around the edge of the room as Phil racked up.
The eldest of the group by some distance — he would’ve been about 30 — put a marker down. He looked like a rugby union player. Flat face, navy blue Ralph Lauren shirt, and almost certainly called Josh or Will. He had definitely drunk piss from a shoe.
He was also a hive of activity. His phone a cacophony of polyphonic ringtones. A succession of people came to shake his hand before vanishing. He’d disappear off to the toilet or nip outside for a few seconds at a time, too, returning with an ever-bulging wallet.
This became a rack neither Phil nor I wanted to win. We’d be playing against Rye’s favourite drug dealer.
I sneaked over the line.
“Go on,” I said to the East Sussex Escobar. “You have a game against one of your mates. I’m done.”
“No way,” he replied. “I don’t want to play them.”
“Honestly, I don’t mind.”
“No. It’s winner stays on.”
Beating this guy might’ve been detrimental to my health, but I might’ve been powerless to stop it. I’d entered the Two-Pint Zone of Sporting Excellence.
It’s a state of being peculiar to pub pastimes. Whether you’re playing pool, darts, poker, cribbage, bar billiards, skittles, push ha’penny or any other booze-friendly pursuit, The Zone is where a mixture of swashbuckling derring-do and rank incompetence combine to make you — for a fleeting moment — unbeatable.
“Two-shot carries, is it?” he asked while setting up the rack.
“Yeah, okay,” I replied. What’s wrong with these people?
Although I didn’t want to win, I at least wanted a decent break. I could rattle a jaw or two later in the frame if necessary.
I placed the white to the right of the ‘D,’ bridging the cue between the cushion and my middle and fourth fingers — an Inverted Spock, if you will.
After a couple of short practise jabs to find my line, I put so much power into my break-off that it almost short-circuited every fuse in the pub. I’d never hit a ball so cleanly before or since.
The rack exploded.
Red and yellow balls cannoned off each other to all corners of the table like agitated atoms, pocketing one of each. But it was another noise that silenced everyone in the room.
The cue ball, perhaps shocked at being hit with so much force, left the orbit of the pool table. It arced through the air, travelling a full six feet to where our group was sitting and crashed into Eleanor’s vodka and Coke. While she was holding it.
The front half of the glass shattered, spewing shards and Smirnoff this way and that, with the rear side of it corralling the ball into the bottom, where it revved like a washing machine on its spin cycle. In hindsight, I might’ve put a bit too much topspin on.
“Foul,” the guy in the opposite corner called out from behind his ever-growing mountain of ash, as I stood there agape.
“El, are you alright?” I asked once I’d processed what had happened a few seconds later.
“Erm, yeah, I think so,” she replied, still holding the remains of the glass with the ball coming to a stop.
“Do you want another drink?”
“Yeah. I think I’ll need a double.”
In the end, I didn’t need to make sure that I lost. The incident sobered me up, kicking me out of The Zone, and the drug dealer beat me fair and square.”
“Who’s next?” he said while looking around.
“It’s winner stays on.”
