Gill, Lamb, Bacon and Hogg in this passage?

The guy was being a dick. You'd not commonly get a reaction such as that. We usually play winner stays on, too. Some people try to force you to gamble, or to claim if you don't you've surrendered the table. No one has ever been able to enforce that with me. I had a "friend" who used to sneer in a childish way when he beat me at pool. I didn't mind, we were just havin' a few beers, shootin' some pool. We were in a bar not far from home once, and there was a lawyer type there (the snotty kind, the "i'm a lawyer and you're not" kind--i believe he had just passed the bar exam a few months earlier). Mr. Lawyer comes up and puts his quarter on the table (so signify his challenge), and i then wiped my buddy off the table in short order, and looked at Mr. Snotty Lawyer. He puts the money in the slot, racks the balls and then asks if i want to put five dollars on the game, so i said, why not ten? He agreed. As it was "my" table, i broke the rack, but, unfortunately, missed sinking a ball by a hair's breadth. We were playing eight ball, which means that the object is to sink your seven balls (either "solid" or "stripe," depending on what you sank first), and then to sink the eight ball. One must "call" the eight ball, i.e., say what pocket you will sink it in, and call any rails, meaning if you bounce the eight ball or the cue ball off a rail, it only counts if you announce that in advance.

So he steps up, sinks a solid, lines up his next shot, and misses. I told him, OK, fine, but in this bar, you call all your shots. He turned to protest to the bartender who cut him off by telling him, yeah, that's the house rule. I proceeded to sink six in a row, and then stupidly missed my last ball. He sank two more, and i sank my last ball, and then sank the eight ball with a spinner down the rail, for which i had to lean on the table with the cue stick behind my back to get at the cue ball (you can't touch any other ball). He paid up, and i asked if he was ready for another, but he decided he wanted to go get his dinner.

So my "friend" asked me why i played so well against the guy, and why i had suddenly wiped him out like that, when normally he could beat me four times out of five. I told him i really despised that son of a bitch, and really wanted to humiliate him. I then pointed out that he, himself, was just a minor annoyance, and not worth the effort. That gave him pause.

We play different rules over here, you don't nominate pockets, but you have to stick to one colour. If you hit an opposing colour, your opponent gets a free shot, so people sometimes play snookers. You're quite right though, it does bring out the worst in people. I've met some real dickheads playing poole.

In bars or pool halls which wish to maintain a reputation for a high order of play, calling your shots is required for every game you play, no matter what the game is. In "straight pool," in which you can sink any ball you want in any order, you have to call all your shots, and one plays to a set limit, such as 50 balls. I grew up playing straight pool with my two brothers, both of whom were good enough that no one who knew them would gamble with them.

So as their reputation boomed, suckers vanished?