Cornbread Red: Pool's Greatest Money Player

Rating:
Summary: A priceless portrait of "pool's greatest money player"
Review: "Cornbread Red" is the biography of Billy Joe Burge, one of America's best known pool gamblers. It isn't always a glamorous story, and much of Red's life couldn't be considered wholesome, but he undeniably earned his place in the history of pool.

Henning traces Burge's life from the small Kentucky town in which he started playing pool, to a few road trips in which he honed his game, to his tenure as carnival worker in which learned to read and "work" people, and on to one of the hottest gambling spots in the US. Whether it was in a small pool room behind a barber shop, or under the lights of Las Vegas, Red was there giving people a run for their money.

Although Red knew how to control the table, the heat of the gamble or the looseness of the gamblers' fraternity sometimes got the better of him. At a few points in the book, I cringed as Red allowed tens of thousands of dollars in recent winnings slip between his fingers. But Red's world isn't the one we live in, where such a loss would put us on the streets; Red had a talent for setting up matches and a support network that kept him on his feet. As Henning makes clear, these talents aren't to be underestimated. Red made his living and distinguished himself in a world that most of us have neither the skill nor the guts to enter.

This book could've easily been written as a condemnation of gambling. Red made some bad decisions along the way, as would anybody who lived in a world where people bet thousands of dollars on anything from one-handed pool games to cigarette tossing contests. Henning chooses, however, to focus on the grit that typified Red's experience. In fact, honest grit is what this book is about. It doesn't have the excitement, panache, and detail of "Playing Off the Rail" or "Willie's Game," but it paints a vivid picture of the everyday money player's experience.

Rating:
Summary: good historic read
Review: Take a journey into a different time with this mini-biography of sorts about the famous pool hustler. A very entertaining read, this book gives the reader perspective on how things were 15-65 years ago while telling this great hustler's life story. It covers how he got started in the game as a boy and continues up through and beyond married life. Both the highs and lows of this pool hustler's life are told in an intersting way.

This book is a good pool story that's well written by a pool player for pool players. Reading stories like this makes me want to be a better pool player. It certainly provides a some motivation to go practice.