maha said:

my real test is when to each put up their own money and play a long race for it on neutral conditions.
that brings out the best and worst in them.

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Not my real test. Stamina has nothing to do with pool greatness. If two players play a $100,000 race to 13 once a day, day after day, you'll find out who is the better player within a couple of weeks, not which player can play on and on and on and on.

Of course, these days nobody bets their own. It is largely myth that the top guys usually bet their own in the 1980s, too. For a big stake, give a player a choice between betting their own or risking nothing but getting 30% of the profits if they win and they'll rarely choose the first option. It is true today, and it was always true.

The myths grow larger with time. I recall the night of Jack Cooney's induction into the one pocket hall of fame several years ago. One speaker commented that he admired Jack for betting his own. The next speaker spoke of how often he was Jack's stake-horse.

Of course, there's no better test of pedigree than putting all the great players in the same place at the same time and see who's the last man standing. To win at the majors, there's no getting comfortable with any opponent. You have to beat a multitude of tough opponents, each having a different style and each having different strengths and weaknesses, and you might play each of them on a different table. That's a much tougher assignment than gradually wearing down a single opponent.

If we go by action results, Jack Cooney is probably the best player of all time, but it's not about money won, it's about regularly dismissing the most elite players in the biggest spots. If it were about the money, the tycoon with a Fargo of 520 who won 10,000,000 gambling with another tycoon having a Fargo of 520 would dominate the pages of AZB for having won more than four times the money that Efren made in his entire career.

JPB2 said:

Sick of these comparisons, even if this one is ai Yes, a great snooker player can shift to 9 ball relatively well. They play rotation at the end of a snooker game and the snooker players are very good. But how do they do in one pocket or banks? How do they do in 3 cushion? What? They don’t play English billiards anymore?

Yesterday something came up on Facebook. John Schmidt got sick of the “ snooker snobs.”He offered to play Ronnie straight pool for healthy 6 figures. He’s not the greatest pool player, not young, and doesn’t compete much. Won’t happen. And JS even though he said he has a 146 and other centuries knows he can’t beat the snooker guys at snooker. He said it himself. I think his point was to respect the respective games.

Snooker is a good game but it isn’t the be-all, end- all of cue sports. I respect it. Even though they call making balls “ potting” which I find hideous. Spreading that terminology to pool is worse still, but the game is still something to respect. But the people who tout snooker the most make me not want to respect it.

So how many snooker players come close on defense and strategy in one pocket? How bad is the beat down in a round robin between the top 12 snooker players and the top12 one pocket players?

So yes, you can pick the discipline- 9 ball- that has the easiest transition and say how well the snooker guys would do. And?

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Just play 10-ball where you call your pocket, and the break is harder, its a completely different game.
I don't get these comparisons, two very different games. If it was that easy for a snooker players, there would have been more going into american pool.

You could also say, why isn't there more snooker players playing english 8-ball? which should be easier, as its half the size. But again, for the most part, its a specialist game.
There is one exception to this, mark selby won the world english 8-ball in 2006 i believe.

for what its worth an AI generated search on ronnie o'sullivan pool record and comments on his pool game
....................................
Ronnie O'Sullivan has played American pool (specifically 9-ball and 8-ball) on a limited basis, but he has not competed professionally in pool events. His record in pool is based on occasional appearances in amateur or exhibition settings.

• Mosconi Cup (9-Ball): Played in 1996 and 1997 at ages 21 and 22. His record was 2 wins and 3 losses in singles, and 2 wins and 2 losses in doubles.
• IPT 8-Ball (North American Open, Las Vegas, 2006): At age 30, he won 5 of 13 matches and had a 50% game win rate with a break-and-run percentage of about 14%—indicating limited consistency at the professional level.

While O'Sullivan is widely regarded as one of the greatest cueists in history due to his snooker mastery, pool players and experts agree he is not a top-tier professional pool player. His strengths in snooker—precision, cue ball control, and long-distance potting—are less dominant in pool, where break-building, safety play, and tactical shot selection are more critical.

As noted in discussions:

• "He plays pool well, to put it simply... but he has been mediocre."
• "He would get killed playing rotations against any top 10 caliber American guy."
• "There is nothing he does better than the top pool players already do."

In short, O'Sullivan has no official professional pool match record, and his appearances suggest he would be competitive only against lower-tier players—not the elite in American pool.

Sick of these comparisons, even if this one is ai Yes, a great snooker player can shift to 9 ball relatively well. They play rotation at the end of a snooker game and the snooker players are very good. But how do they do in one pocket or banks? How do they do in 3 cushion? What? They don’t play English billiards anymore?

Yesterday something came up on Facebook. John Schmidt got sick of the “ snooker snobs.”He offered to play Ronnie straight pool for healthy 6 figures. He’s not the greatest pool player, not young, and doesn’t compete much. Won’t happen. And JS even though he said he has a 146 and other centuries knows he can’t beat the snooker guys at snooker. He said it himself. I think his point was to respect the respective games.

Snooker is a good game but it isn’t the be-all, end- all of cue sports. I respect it. Even though they call making balls “ potting” which I find hideous. Spreading that terminology to pool is worse still, but the game is still something to respect. But the people who tout snooker the most make me not want to respect it.

So how many snooker players come close on defense and strategy in one pocket? How bad is the beat down in a round robin between the top 12 snooker players and the top12 one pocket players?

So yes, you can pick the discipline- 9 ball- that has the easiest transition and say how well the snooker guys would do. And?

One common issue with these comparisons is how a single frame of snooker vs. pool is defined. This leads to statements like “top snooker players could hang with top pool players and win matches.” That is factually true, but it doesn’t speak about the skill required to play, instead, it reflects how much more luck is involved in a single frame of pool compared to snooker.

When comparing games, you should consider how much luck is built into each unit of play, which in case of pool/snooker is one frame. Take poker as an example: anyone can beat money from the best players in the world in a single session. That doesn’t mean poker requires less skill than some other game, it just shows how much luck plays a role in individual hand, and even individual sessions. Play long enough, and the more skilled players will win more.

A frame of 9-ball also contains a decent amount of luck. Not as much as poker, but enough that an amateur can beat a top player. A frame of snooker is different though, the nature of how one frame is defined leads to much less luck and therefore a low-level amateur will practically never win against a professional. This difference doesn’t reflect the skill required to play each game, but rather how much luck affects each frame. This goes the other way too, put the current best snooker players in the world in a race-to-100 against the current best pool players, their chance of winning the entire set is 0%.

Of course this all depends on the definition of skill and the definition of what it means for a game to require more or less skill than some other. But just thought I'd bring this perspective up since I've seen similar discussions ignoring these issues way too often.