'The man is a shark': Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper admits President Obama beat him at pool TWICE

Hickenlooper was the one who challenged Obama to a game of pool last Tuesday night at Wynkoop Brewing Co. not knowing how good Obama was at the game. 'He was making long shots with a difficult angle. I didn¿t know people in Hawaii played that much pool,' he said on Sunday

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper said Sunday that President Barack Obama beat him at pool not once but twice when the two ran into each other at a bar in Denver last week.

Hickenlooper told reporters at the National Governors Association meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, yesterday that he 'felt pretty good' about his odds of winning the game when he challenged Obama, but the president turned out to be a much better player than he expected.

'He was making long shots with a difficult angle. I didn’t know people in Hawaii played that much pool. Evidently they do,' Hickenlooper said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

'The man is a shark.'

After pictures of Obama playing pool and drinking a beer with Hickenlooper were published, the president took flack for taking time out of his schedule to have a boys night out in Denver while adamantly refusing to make a pit stop at the border during his swing through Texas in the two days that followed.

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Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper admitted to reporters at the National Governors Association convention yesterday that 'he felt pretty good' going into his pool game with President Barack Obama last week and was shocked that the president beat him not once but twice

Obama had already boasted about beating the Democratic Governor in pool at a fundraiser the following day in Denver but said nothing about playing - and winning - against the state's chief executive more than once.

'I walked over to Hickenlooper’s old joint. Hickenlooper was there. He challenged me to pool,' Obama told donors, referring to Wynkoop Brewing Co., a bar Hickenlooper used to own.

'You can ask him how that went,' Obama continued.

'I took his lunch money.'

Reporters who caught the men's first game and Obama's big win said neither of the elected leaders played well the first half of the game. 

'And then, literally before my eyes he ran like four balls,' Hickenlooper said yesterday, recounting the his defeat at the hands of the president.

Obama smoked the Colorado Governor, sinking the eight ball when Hickenlooper still had five balls on the table.

'I take a little longer to warm up,' Hickenlooper said at the time.

After reporters were escorted out of the room, Hickenlooper says the men played a second game, double or nothing, for $20, and Obama won that game, too.

'I was playing as hard as I could possibly play,' the newly minted National Governor's Association chairman said on the last day of the organization's conference.

'I still had four balls on the table when he nailed the eight ball.'

'I’m not a bad pool player,' he opined.

After the game, Obama began to walk away with the $20 pot, Hickenlooper said, but the president doubled back and returned the money.

'Find a good charity,' the president reportedly told him.

 

Obama was in Colorado at the time to attend a luncheon benefiting the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and incumbent Senator Mark Udall, who is up for reelection this year.

The president also gave a speech on the economy and met with a local supporter who had written him a letter before traveling to Texas for similar events.

He did not, however, visit the U.S.-Mexico border to take stock of what he himself has called a 'humanitarian crisis' during his trip to the Lone Star state, upsetting Texas politicians, including a congressman from his own political party.

'He's so close to the border,' Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar said last week.

'And let me say this: when I saw, and I hate to use the word bizarre, but under the circumstances, when he is shown playing pool in Colorado, drinking a beer, and he can't even go 242 miles to the Texas border?' he continued.

Cuellar said he 'very very upset' that Obama made time for a photo op with Hickenlooper but wouldn't go see the illegal immigrant children being held in detention facilities in southern Texas.