Right on Cue
Todd Shirley is on a Mission to Spread the Gospel of Pool
BY GEORGE SOLTES
PHOTO BY DINAH SATTERWHITE
Late into middle age, around the time of the first COVID lockdowns, islander Todd Shirley received a communication from on high: “The message from God, or the universe, you might say, was it’s time for something new.” Shirley felt certain of the direction he should take. “God,” he said, “called me back to pool.”
It could be said that Shirley was born to play pool. Growing up in San Jose, California, as the child of two avid bowlers, he was brought along from infancy to the Saratoga Lanes Bowling Alley, where his diapers were sometimes changed on the game room pool table. As a teen, he began working as a porter at the bowling alley, where one of the perks was free pool. He quickly became obsessed. “I played it every day after work, all night,” Shirley said. “Sometimes I’d just walk home, get a few hours’ sleep, then go back to work cleaning lanes and bathrooms.”
Along with pool, Shirley found trouble, falling in with “kids doing stupid things.” Fortunately, a mentor came into his life and tipped the balance in favor of excellence over mayhem. Professional pool player Bill Brown, impressed by Shirley’s play, agreed to teach him as long as he gave the game everything he had. By his late teens and early 20s, Shirley was competing in and winning major California tournaments.
The focus he found in pool imbued other areas of his life. He earned a degree in chemistry, got married and had a daughter. He built a career as a chemist and, when his company relocated to Poulsbo in 2001, Shirley came along, ultimately settling with his young family on Bainbridge Island in 2008.
The Great Recession arrived on the island around the same time as Shirley, creating challenges for his livelihood as a chemist. He found work outside the lab in marketing and sales, air quality monitoring and industrial health and safety and, throughout the years, remained passionate about pool. When the pandemic struck, isolating him along with everybody else, he received his nudge from the Almighty and decided to devote himself full time to the game.
For Shirley, pool is about much more than putting balls in pockets. In our modern, screen-obsessed culture, he sees it as an antidote to “sitting on a device in an echo chamber.”
“People have an innate desire to get out and physically do something and physically meet people,” he said. “Relationships with tangible things and real people are how you can explore and grow.”
Shirley is the founder of Lucky Loser Billiards. The name is based on the Japanese phrase “kōun na makeinu,” which refers to someone who overcomes adversity with the help of good fortune. It’s a nod to his Japanese wife, Kazumi, and to the time he spent playing pool in Japan. Daughter Reina designed the logo, which features a grinning red devil above crossed pool cues.
Shirley has certification as a billiards instructor from multiple professional organizations and has used his more than 50 years of pool experience to build his own comprehensive curriculum. He welcomes people of all skill levels and meets them where they are, offering lessons at their homes, at various commercial billiards halls or at his home pool room on Bainbridge Island. He also encourages his students to embrace the “social fabric of pool” by introducing them to local amateur leagues. Shirley estimates that he has instructed more than 200 students to date.
While Shirley views pool as a respite from pervasive technology, he isn’t shy about making use of high-tech teaching tools. He has designed state-of-the-art aiming systems, embraced live streaming and utilization of artificial intelligence for pool analysis and is involved with Illuminated Cueing Arts, a training platform that projects instruction directly onto pool tables.
In the end, though, it comes down to people, connections and Shirley’s belief that anyone’s life can be made better by placing a cue stick in their hands.
“What we’ve done with pool today, is allowed the accessibility to be so wide that whatever your interest, whatever your shape, whatever your diverse set of individual features and interests, we have openings for you,” he said.
“Come join us. You’re gonna have fun,” he added. “We’re gonna make pool an exciting journey for you.”
Learn more at LuckyLoserBilliards.com
