Jimmy Wetch

Jimmy Wetch (born April 23, 1968 in St. Paul, Minnesota) is an American professional pool player nicknamed "The Kid".

He was at one time a feared, later becoming an accomplished tournament pro, having won numerous competitions.

At 16, he posted a run of 131 balls, and at 17 he won the 1985 Minnesota State Championship.

Wetch had theretofore been a decent student, but pool had become all he thought about.

He soon dropped out of St. Paul's Humboldt High School, to take up the life of a.

He set off with a family friend, one Joe Saad, who acted as his on the road.

By that time, he had already earned the nickname, "The Kid", given to him by a manager of Minnesota Billiards, one of the pool rooms in which Wetch had cut his teeth.

Wetch kept at the for a number of years.

Joe Saad would back him with thousands of dollars, sometimes accompanying him on his trips, and sometimes not.

Wetch was soon playing matches for huge stakes; Up to $10,000 bet on a single.

In addition to Saad, Wetch was fostered by others such as veteran road player Jack Cooney, a hustler who often went under the assumed name George Carlson and was twenty years Wetch's senior.

"He taught me how to survive out there, to be patient for decent games and to manage my money right."

However, Wetch's love for gambling and for pool did not translate into a love of the hustle.

He did it because it was the only way he knew how to make money doing what he loved, but he never liked "the, the moving, the mismatches, the phony names."

The event that finally took him off the road came in Houston in 1993.

He had made a large score playing high-stakes pool one night.

The following morning while attempting to leave his hotel room with his then-girlfriend, two men shoved the two back into the room and at gunpoint demanded the money he had won.

Not satisfied with the amount of money Wetch handed over, they placed a bag over his head and beat him.

Though he escaped the ordeal with only minor injuries, he promised himself he would only make one more road trip to gather a stake, and then he would quit.

He made that final trip and used the money to open up a pool room with partner David Wagner, Jimmy's Pro Billiards in Columbia Heights, Minnesota.

The following year, in 1994, he took the ultimate step for a road player, shucking aside his anonymity by going pro.

He was ranked fifth in the world by the Pro Billiards Tour (PBT) in 1996.

The son of Jimmy, Sr., the owner of a painting business, and Janice Wetch, a switchboard operator, he has one sibling, Sharon, who is four years his junior.

His early life was characterized by instability.

Wetch's parents divorced when he was nine, remarried when he was 17, and again divorced after a short time.

Wetch would sometimes live with one parent, and sometimes with the other, or both when they were together, and each of his parents moved a number of times, though always in or around the Twin Cities area.

Wetch never went to the same school for more than two years in a row.

"It still probably affects me," said Wetch in a 1999 interview, "To this day I'm not very good at interacting with people."

At a young age, Wetch became fascinated with gambling, so much so that his mother threatened to enter him in Gamblers Anonymous.

He pitched coins, played cards, bet on sports, and even on pinball.

His other gambling pursuits tapered off when he discovered a pool table at 13 while playing cards in a friend's basement.

Wetch was soon hooked, spending as much time as possible in a local pool room called the Rack & Cue, playing eight ball and nine ball for 20 cents a game or more.

He earned free table time by recording high scores on the room's video games.

Wetch's talent was quickly evident: A month after taking up the sport he was already beating his father, who was a decent recreational player.

Pool became his passion.

He would practice his at the kitchen table, attempting to keep his stroke perfectly level by passing it through a hollowed-out cube of pool chalk without touching the sides, and stain his father's towels wiping down the of his cue stick.

Every night after completing his homework, he would head to the pool room to practice.

He was known there for pestering all the better players for tips to improve his game.

By 15 years of age, Wetch had 50 balls at straight pool, calling each shot in advance, as is mandatory in the game.

"'I never felt good about the hustling. No matter how much money I made at it, I knew I didn't want to keep doing it. Frankly, when no one knows how you play, it's like putting a gun to someone's head. It wasn't a matter of whether you were going to win, but how much you were going to win, Early on, you make money everywhere you go. Then it all disappears.' – Wetch, in Billiards Digest (1999)"