Chohan, Tony

Tarjit “Tony” Chohan, better known throughout the pool world as Tony “T-Rex” Chohan, is one of the defining One Pocket players of the modern era—a champion, high-stakes action player, teacher, and 2026 One Pocket Hall of Fame inductee whose career has been shaped as much by resilience and reinvention as by trophies.

Chohan was born June 28, 1981, in Sacramento, California, the oldest of three children in a Sikh family whose parents had emigrated from India in the 1970s. His early life was filled with bicycles, basketball, football, video games, and long days outside with friends and cousins. Pool entered the picture when he was about fourteen, after he and his older cousin Amar Kang began frequenting a nearby poolroom. Kang would become an accomplished player himself and an important influence on Tony’s development.

Their introduction to pool was almost accidental. Tony and Amar had been drawn to a local shopping center by video games such as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II. At Rack-Em Family Billiards in Citrus Heights, the owner invited them to a free Sunday tournament with $15 for first place. The chance to win money for more video games got their attention; soon, the competition itself became the attraction.

From Rack-Em, Chohan gravitated toward Sacramento’s deeper pool culture, especially Great American Billiards, the celebrated action room that later became Hard Times Sacramento. There he absorbed lessons from an older generation of gamblers and champions, including Warren “Monk” Costanza, while watching players negotiate games, move balls, protect leads, and handle pressure. As a teenager, Chohan once stood outside an age-restricted Camel Pro Billiard Tour event in San Francisco until a security guard let him inside long enough to get autographs from Efren Reyes, Johnny Archer, and the late Tony Ellin.

By sixteen, Chohan had won a USPPA handicap event in Reno, part of the lively tournament and action culture surrounding the Sands Regency. Road trips followed, including an early journey to Texas with Kang. Gambling became central to his education. Chohan has joked that, because his basketball shorts had no pockets, he carried his bankroll rolled up in his sock—so experienced gamblers learned to look at his ankles to see whether he was “flush.”

His nickname came from the same poolroom humor. A childhood friend teased him for having “long pockets with short arms”—deep pockets, but reluctance to reach into them—and T-Rex stuck.

One Pocket became the ideal game for Chohan’s imagination. He was attracted to its strategy, its flexibility for matching up players of different speeds, and its constant risk-reward decisions. His style became instantly recognizable: aggressive without being careless, inventive without abandoning percentages, and built around cue-ball control, speed, angle, and an unusual ability to see offensive possibilities where others saw only defense. Chohan’s creativity and willingness to stay in action eventually made him one of the most feared and entertaining money players of his generation.

His major tournament breakthrough came in 2007, when he won the U.S. Open One Pocket Championship. The victory carried extraordinary personal meaning. During his Legends of the Cue interview, Chohan revealed that his grandmother died on the first day of the event. His parents urged him to finish playing, and after winning the championship he immediately flew home to Sacramento for her funeral. It remains the victory with the deepest emotional significance for him.

Two years later, Chohan’s life veered sharply off course. In 2009 he was arrested in Ohio in a drug-trafficking case and spent years incarcerated. In the interview, he refused to portray what happened as simple bad luck, correcting the phrase “wrong place, wrong time” to “wrong choice, wrong time.” He took college courses while incarcerated and kept up with professional pool through publications sent to him. Chohan was released in March 2015.

His return became one of the most remarkable second acts in modern American pool. Within days he was back in serious One Pocket action, initially taking weight from Danny Smith and rapidly regaining his old form. Chohan recalled that within weeks the games had moved toward even and eventually in his favor. He finished fourth at Buffalo’s in 2015 and won the Buffalo’s Pro Classic the following year.

Buffalo’s Billiards in Jefferson, Louisiana, became Chohan’s modern-day home room and one of the great stages of his career. He won its Pro Classic One Pocket title three times—2016, 2021, and 2022—and became closely identified with the room’s late-night action culture. His willingness to play long, high-stakes sets produced memorable battles with Dennis Orcollo, Scott Frost, Alex Pagulayan, Justin Bergman, Shane Van Boening, and others. In 2017, Chohan and Orcollo met in “The BIG One!” at California Billiards in Fremont, with each side posting $50,000 for a race-to-40 One Pocket match.

Chohan’s tournament career reached another peak in his forties. In 2022 he won his second U.S. Open One Pocket Championship, fifteen years after his first, then added another Buffalo’s title and the International Open One Pocket Championship. In 2023 he finally captured the Derby City Classic One Pocket title, defeating Jonathan “Hennessee” Pinegar in a hill-hill final after trailing 2–1. His late-round run included victories over Efren Reyes, John Morra, and Sky Woodward, and he finished second in the Derby City all-around standings.

That later-career success came while Chohan was coping with hidradenitis suppurativa, a chronic inflammatory skin disease that can cause painful lesions and significant physical limitations. He has spoken publicly about the condition, surgery, infection, long recoveries, and the emotional toll of chronic pain. His willingness to discuss the condition candidly has revealed another kind of toughness behind the player spectators see at the table.

In recent years, Chohan has increasingly turned toward teaching. His Game Tight One Pocket project combines written instruction, diagrams, decision-making scenarios, and QR-linked video demonstrations. Its philosophy mirrors the way he has always played: understand risk, pressure, speed, English, and angle rather than simply memorize patterns. After playing much of his career with Southwest cues, Chohan joined the Meucci Cues professional team in 2024.

In May 2026, at Buffalo’s, Chohan was inducted into the One Pocket Hall of Fame. During the ceremony, fellow Hall of Famer Billy Incardona—who had watched and competed against generations of great players—called Tony the greatest American player he had ever seen. The honor placed Chohan formally alongside the legends he once watched from outside tournament rooms and chased for autographs as a teenager.

Asked on Legends of the Cue how he wants to be remembered, Chohan did not mention titles, money, or fame. His answer was simpler:

“Just as that guy that liked to compete.”

It is a fitting summary of T-Rex—an imaginative champion whose life in pool has always been driven by the need to test himself, find the game, and keep competing.