Billy Incardona - Part 4 (Legends, Hustlers, and the Making of a Champion Mind)
In this fourth installment of our six-part deep dive into the extraordinary life of pool legend Billy Incardona, we step inside the smoky rooms, backroom barns, and broadcast booths that shaped one of the game’s sharpest minds and most colorful storytellers.
Joined by hosts Mike Gonzalez, Mark Wilson, and Allison Fisher, Billy brings to life the unforgettable characters and moments that defined his years as both player and commentator. He recalls the brilliance and blunt honesty of fellow legends like Grady Mathews and Danny DiLiberto, whose quick wit and unfiltered banter made the commentary booth as entertaining as the matches themselves.
The stories then move to the felt — and to a hidden marijuana farm in South Carolina — where a young Earl “the Pearl” Strickland faced off against world champion Mike Sigel in a grueling, three-day money match for large stakes. With a front-row seat to one of the sport’s most legendary encounters, Billy paints a vivid picture of raw talent, nerves, and competitive fire, explaining how this match foreshadowed Strickland’s rise to greatness.
And just when you think the tales can’t get wilder, Billy shifts to Las Vegas, where the legendary gambler and card savant Stu Ungar takes the stage — a genius of gin rummy and 3-time WSOP winner whose brilliance was matched only by his self-destruction. Through Billy’s eyes, we see the razor-thin line between genius and ruin that runs through so many icons of the cue and card rooms alike.
A master storyteller at the height of his recall, Billy Incardona once again proves why his voice — and his stories — are an irreplaceable part of pool’s rich and unruly history.
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Music by Lyrium.
About
"Legends of the Cue" is a pool history podcast featuring interviews with Pool Hall of Fame members, winners of major championships and other people of influence in and around pocket billiards. We also plan to highlight memorable pool brands, events and venues. Focusing on the positive aspects of the sport, we aim to create and provide an engaging and timeless repository of content that listeners can enjoy now and forever. Co-hosted by WPA and BCA Hall of Fame member Allison Fisher, Mosconi Cup player and captain Mark Wilson, our podcast focuses on telling the life stories of pool's greatest, in their voices. Join Allison, Mark and Mike Gonzalez for “Legends of the Cue.”
Pool Professional
Billy “Pittsburgh Billy” Incardona is one of pocket billiards’ rare, enduring hybrids: a feared action player with a surgeon’s understanding of one-pocket, a nine-ball force from the era when road men wrote their own rules, and, later, the unmistakable broadcast voice who helped teach the modern world how champions actually think. Born December 2, 1943, and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Incardona’s story is inseparable from the gritty romance of American poolrooms, places where talent mattered, nerve mattered more, and reputation was currency you guarded as carefully as the cash in your pocket.
On our Legends of the Cue six-part series, Billy takes listeners back to the origin point: a kid’s fascination that becomes an obsession, and then becomes a life. He describes those early days in Pittsburgh, learning at places like the YMCA, soaking up patterns and angles, and quickly discovering that pool wasn’t only a game of balls and pockets, but a game of people: who’s watching, who’s talking, who’s under pressure, and who’s pretending not to be. That “people-reading” skill becomes one of his defining traits. Billy wasn’t just learning how to run racks, he was learning how to "match up", how to hide speed, and how to control the emotional temperature of a room.
Pittsburgh in those years was fertile soil for that kind of education. The city produced tough players and sharp minds, and Billy grew up in an environment where pool culture was both competitive and intensely social, where you could learn a world-class lesson simply by keeping your mou…Read More