Background
Jean Balukas was born on June 28, 1959, in Brooklyn, New York, to Albert Michael, unusual pool hall owner, and Josephine (Greene) Balukas.
Billiard Champs Jean Balukas and Willie Mosconi, 1973.
6-year-old Jean Balukas performing in an exhibition in Grand Central Station (1966)
Jean Balukas was born on June 28, 1959, in Brooklyn, New York, to Albert Michael, unusual pool hall owner, and Josephine (Greene) Balukas.
Jean Balukas studied at public schools of New York City.
Billiards champion and author Jean Balukas “first came to the attention of the pool world at the age of 9” and “was called the Little Princess”. At that young age, Balukas was already playing in professional pool tournaments against mature women.
In the late 1960s, Jean Balukas played exhibitions with outstanding professional players such as Willie Mosconi (beating Mosconi in 1975 during a competition sponsored by CBS-TV, called the Challenge of the Sexes), Irving Crane, and Rudolph Wanderone, better known as Minnesota Fats. Balukas learned from watching these players and receiving an occasional tip. During the many championship tournaments of the 1970s and 1980s, Paul Balukas, the youngest of Jean’s four brothers, traveled with her, along with her parents and representatives of her managers, the Corley associates. Paul would often act as counselor, adviser, confidant and mentor in everything except pool.
At the close of the 1970s, Balukas found time to write Jean Balukas’s Pocket Billiards: A Young Pool Champion’s Story with Instructions on How to Play the Game, an autobiographical guide and instruction book for an audience of sixth to twelfth graders.
Jean Balukas walked away from the professional pool in the early 1990s, but she never left the game. For the past 20-something years, the all-time great ran Hall of Fame Billiards, her family poolroom in Brooklyn, New York. In 2018, Balukas announced the business was up for sale, 54 years after her father and business partners first opened the doors in 1964.
Jean Balukas was a member of the American Billiard Congress and Women's Professional Billiard Association.
During her career, Balukas has encountered her share of disbelief and scorn by both male and female competitors.
Quotes from others about the person
There are still many men who are not willing to acknowledge that a woman can beat men consistently in a game so masculine in tradition as pool. It can only be said that Jean Balukas passed all the tests she has had to meet.