Pool Is for the Hustler, Billiards for the Elite

In the dim light and billowing smoke of the basement billiard hall, an eclectic crowd of bull-necked mafiosi and refined intellectuals, funky teenagers and venerable mastodons fills the big room with the sound of smacking balls.


Drawn by a common passion for the game to the nation's best-known hall, the Russian Pyramid Club, they come for snooker, carom and pool. But Russian billiards, called "chess in action" by its proud players, is the most popular.


Often lasting for hours and with huge, orange-sized balls that barely fit into tiny pockets, Russian billiards seems ready-made for a society that insists on difficulty. It is also a spectacular example of Russia's inclination to giantism.


"Russian billiards is played all over the place," said Georgy Mitasov, chief master of the Russian Federation of Billiards, which operates the 15-table Pyramid Club on Leningradsky Prospekt near metro Dinamo. "So far, American pool has only been introduced in Moscow and Saint Petersburg."


"Billiards had bad times here, but we played it even under Communists," said Mitasov, adding that the federation has members in 43 of Russia's 88 regions and organizes world championships for the sport.


"Russian people simply love the game."


Billiards, brought to Russia by Peter the Great, has always been intertwined with gambling. Anatoly Rozovsky, who at the age of 68 currently pads his tiny pension by hustling games at the Pyramid Club, started earning money at the game in 1944, when he found a billiard table in the basement of a bombed-out Moscow restaurant.


Back then, most of Rozovsky's competition were soldiers from the front lines, only a few miles to the west. He would play for rubles, he said, and, when rubles were worthless, for bottles of vodka that were in turn good for barter.


Rozovsky, who bills himself as an historian of the game, said bad times came in the 1950s. After the war, state-of-the art Russian-made tables became rare and prestigious and so, the Communist Party elite resorted to shady methods to obtain them.


One of the tricks, said Rozovsky, was to stage a fight in a poolroom and then have it closed down as a gambling den. The tables were then requisitioned for party bosses' hangouts and personal dachas.


Ironically, Rozovsky said, it was the 1980 Olympics that hurt the game the most, since it was then that the government made a gigantic effort to sweep all "suspicious" elements out of the city.


So billiard players like Rozovsky had to sneak into one of the few places where pool tables existed -- like the members-only House of Architects or House of Scientists.


Rozovsky said he saw his first foreign pool table in 1990, the day the Pyramid Club opened in the basement of the Central Sports Complex of the Soviet Army.


"I got a lump in my throat when they opened the club, to just know that after all these years there was finally a place where I would not have to lie or cheat to play," he said emotionally.


In 1993, Rozovsky's friend Anatoly Basov opened up Aleko, Moscow's second professional pool hall, located at the AZLK skating rink in Tekstilshchiki.


"There is a very aristocratic, intelligent tradition of billiards in Russia, and it continues today," Basov said. "You can see it in the quality of the tables. I think there is perhaps a higher level of billiard culture in Russia than in other countries."


Seven years ago, Basov teamed up with some friends from the Moskvich automobile factory in a business to make pool tables.


The enterprise joined Basov's skills learned from the old masters -- he restored a table once belonging to Stalin -- and the plant's technology, and now the club is equipped with 17 homemade Russian, snooker and pool tables whichBasov sells for $40,000 apiece.


"Russian billiards is not entertainment like pool -- it's painstaking labor," Basov said. "It was incredibly easy for me to master American pool and snooker after many years of the hardening school of Russian billiards."


In contrast to the fast and aggressive game of American pool, the 16-ball Russian game is mostly defensive, and, as it's incredibly difficult to get the ball in the pocket, it lasts hours, with players spending half their moves hindering the ability of their opponents to make a shot.


"A game of Russian billiards is not very spectacular, not very dynamic," said Ivan Dzyuba, 73, who recalls watching a world championship of Russian billiards in Moscow in the late 1980s.


"In the semifinals, the best Soviet players were playing, and they played three games over seven hours. I said to Dedekayev, who was then the president of the Billiards Federation, 'Listen Yermak Kantemerovich, this game can be put in the Guinness Book of World Records. Look, there are 40 people watching; 20 have fallen asleep.'"


Old-time billiard players generally find American pool and its various European cousins to be lower, less pure incarnations of the original game, which they say more closely resembled Russian billiards. The American and English versions are considered amateurish and overly democratic.


"In fact, preferences depend on the age. Young people play pool, because it's the latest trend and is much easier to play -- it's even known as 'women's billiards,'" said Gennady, a manager at Moscow's Shelter's club who wouldn't give his last name. "More respectable people prefer Russian billiards. You can judge by their appearance: They look more prestigious. Russian billiards can be compared to golf -- millionaires' entertainment. Pool, like football, is for everybody."


However, despite the condescending attitude of devotees of the "pure thing," it is the Russian fascination with gambling that makes American pool increasingly popular.


In the last few years, Moscow has seen an immense growth in the number of poolrooms, which Mitasov estimates at 500. Only a few of them are professional clubs, the majority of the tables are located in bars.


"I like Russian pool alright, but there's no future in it," said Alexander Alfimov, 25, taking a break between two games of pool at the Pyramid Club.


"You can sit and nod off while you're waiting for some sweet piece of meat to come along," Alfimov said. "Only if you are very fast, and manage to get the pigeon before the others do, do you have a chance to make some money on him."


The unemployed Alfimov is now an aspiring pool shark, and when he isn't getting practice from old-timers at the Pyramid Club, he is taking money from novices at some of the dozens of places around Moscow catering to amateur players, like Cafe-Club Billiards, located in a former underground passage near the Expocenter.


American pool is Alfimov's game of choice, he said, because a player can sink everything in 10 minutes and turn a quick profit.


He declined to talk about his earnings.


But the pride and hope of the Russian Federation of Billiards is a waif-like teenager, Zhenya Stalev, 16, who was, in 1995, Russia's champion in American-style pool and, in 1996, a European champion.


Zhenya was first brought to the pool hall by his father when he was 10. Soon after that Zhenya started to play for metro tokens, according to his brother Maksim, then for money, and now he doesn't go to school any more.


Despite Zhenya's brilliance at the American game, some predict players of his generation will eventually turn to the Russian version.


"Young people who play pool now in 15 years will be playing Russian billiards," said Shelter's Gennady.


He might just be right: Zhenya the wunderkind won a second prize at the world championship of Russian billiards held in Athens last November.