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Book Notes: Running the Table

By Jeffrey Standen

Running the Table: The Legend of Kid Delicious, the Last Great American Pool Hustler, by L. Jon Wertheim (Houghton Mifflin 2007).

So what's wrong with this picture? A young man, just a kid really, has trouble with traditional schooling and suffers from severe mood swings, chronic obesity and depression. But he finds he has a skill, an extraordinary talent really, to shoot pool at a professional level. His talent breeds interest and lifts him out of his suffering and gives him cause to live. Building on local success, he travels the countryside playing pool against all comers, earning money that allows him to support himself, while making friends and learning strategies to deal with his mental illnesses. He even earns a memorable moniker, "Kid Delicious."

Success story, right? Troubled young American overcomes obstacles to attain self-sufficiency. The problem is that, thanks to the widespread American prohibition on gambling, Kid Delicious' climb out of the doldrums involved a long string of criminal actions. Betting on a contest, even one in which one is a participant, remains illegal. Why?

1. I'd characterize this title as a safari book, or Category Three, for those of you carefully scoring according to my overall breakdown of all sports books. The classic of this genre is the reporter who follows a team up-close for a season, or maybe even "participates" in some minimal way, as did George Plimpton famously in Paper Lion or Jack McCallum more recently. Author Jon Wertheim's narrative encompasses several years. Wertheim obviously did not follow this young man around, and instead had to reconstruct events through witness interviews and the like. The author's literal and chronological distance from his subject and the events of that subject's life is the strength of this book. It's also the problem. What makes the story interesting is less the chronology of events and more the ambiance of the pool room, the mechanics of the hustle, and the colorful and at times pathetic cast of characters that pass through the Kid's life. Wertheim's distance makes him relate this aspect in historical, matter-of-fact terms that don't adequately convey the tension in the smoke-filled pool hall. The market is ripe for a player with Wertheim's sensitivity and eye for detail to write the true insider account.

2. And tension in the pool hall there is. Imagine shooting pool for all your savings and as your sole source of income. As is your desperate opponent. Side-bets galore, all in cash, the implicit threat of cheating and subsequent violence always just one wrong word away from the table action. We're not talking high-living athletes on guaranteed contracts trying to decide which Bentley they'll motor over to the stadium; these pool players make tomorrow's rent today. What reckless daring, what a strong constitution, what courage. Like most people, I'd love to play professional sports. Also like most people, I could never put my entire life's savings on the line in any bet where my opponent stood a significant chance of winning. To me it is a weird personality strength/defect that allows (mostly) men to have that huge preference for risk. And it's fascinating for the rest of us to watch these wild swings in fortune that depend on the tumbling of a billiard ball.

3. Often we lament the sad lifestyle of the problem gambler, and equate this particular addiction with drug or alcohol abuse. Yet is it correct to lump these addictions together? We have to recognize the contribution our laws make to the impoverishment of the "problem gambler." These are people who have a unique skill: they have an apparently bottomless tolerance for risk. In a world in which large bets were legal, people who are willing to take big risks would make money from their unique talent. Anyone who has played poker knows that a player who is willing to risk his whole stack, even on a slim advantage, can win pots others would lose. Not only does the widespread legal prohibition on gambling preclude risk-takers from profiting from their comparative advantage, it also (conveniently) protects the rest of us from losing money. Gambling is illegal, generally speaking, and so for these risk-takers to make money from their skill they are driven underground, to the dingy and dangerous late-night cash games far from official eyes.

4. Some gamblers can make money legally. The law allows speculation in the stock market, in so-called derivative instruments, and in certain commodities futures. Some of these investments are nothing more than a bet. Some derivatives, for example, allow speculators to wager on fluctuations in the value of foreign currencies and movements in indexes: it is doubtful that many investors who make these bets know what they are doing. (See Frank Partnoy's insightful inside account of the world of derivatives trading here.) Access to the legal markets for large bets is limited to the comparatively few. Obviously some risk-taker living out of the trunk of his car is not going to to be speculating on the rise of the Mexican peso. Why not allow betting markets for the middle class? We can go to Las Vegas or Atlantic City and bet hundreds of dollars on the turn of a card or the fall of a roulette ball; why not allow pool sharks to bet on their practiced skill?

5. What's remarkable is how well this underground economy runs itself. Pool sharks new to the game hit the road, traveling from town to town, on the lookout for competitors who are willing to lay thousands of dollars on the line playing against traveling players of unknown acumen. The shark will try to hide his talent, setting up the opponent for the big score, and then leave town (in a hurry) after the victory. Word travels fast, and the shark's ability to get games diminishes as his identity spreads. Eventually the shark's run is complete, and he's left to turn to professional pool, with its meager payouts, and to occasional high-stakes matches against players of equal skill. Gone is the easy money from overmatched suckers. Gone is the nice income. Why shouldn't suckers be allowed to lose their money? It's just like the stock market: one sells, another buys; someone made the wrong bet. The loser learns to be a winner, or finds something else to do.

6. The pool hustlers will play and wager despite the legal prohibition on gambling. It's the rest of us, the suckers, who fear the law and withdraw, relegating the sharks to the back roads and dank halls in search of a game. The prohibition limits the market to the few, the committed, the addicts. It drives the unaddicted, the easy marks and clueless suckers, out of the game. Our protection of the addicts makes them play against other addicts, shark against shark. Even very good players will struggle when the competition gets this stiff. The law doesn't protect against problem gamblers. It protects the rest of us, and relegates pool sharks to a hard life on the road.

Full post as published by The Sports Law Professor on November 25, 2007 (boomark / email).