Jean Balukas's father, Albert Balukas, and his business partner, Frank McGown, owned a forty-eight-table pool hall, named the Ovington Lounge, in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, New York. Balukas began playing pool when she four years old. She did not play at her father's pool room. Her first play was on a 4½ by 9 foot pool table in the basement of her childhood home. Her parents bought the table to keep her four brothers out of local pool rooms.