As far as music goes.....no . Have I ever played a rack like a pro.....?
Just about every time I play. People on here know me and know that
I can play. I can beat ANYBODY in a given set. That does not mean I
do not lose.
My point is that I don't like it when people see great players and say (or think) "well, he has natural talent. That's why he's so good."
One of the things I have always LOVED about pool is that, generally, the abilities it requires seem to be in the possession of MOST, or at least MANY people. It requires basic hand-eye coordination that most healthy people possess.
AND it requires no ultra-expert instruction. Great musicians, for example, have almost always received instructions from other great musicians. They actually form and table "ancestries." Great musicians will claim being a student of so and so, who was a student of so and so, etc. Extremely valuable tricks and insights, collected and honed by the most exquisitely talented people, and then handed down are practically REQUIRED to play at a top concert level of performance.
But that's NOT TRUE of pool. Pool is a game of TRAINING (and not talent, and not instruction). If you are DETERMINED and CAPABLE and are willing to focus on TRAINING yourself you can, in theory, get down on the table and put in the effort to be pretty damn good. That's the thing I like about pool more than anything: the one who plays is YOU. If you made a great shot it's 100% your achievement.
I really do dislike the idea of people feeling they can get it all by somebody "instructing them." I don't really think it's true (it's PRACTICE that makes you as good as you are), and I think it misses the spirit of the game--as a test of WILLS, almost, and not because the winner took "some lesson."
And a premptory point here: People will point out to me this player and that, and say "You don't think he has TALENT?!?!"
Here's what I think: The filter that got the vast majority of high-level players playing in the game was not TALENT, it was simply that they had enough FASCINATION with the game to play just about every minute of every day. Just think of the TINY PERCENTAGE of people willing JUST TO DO THAT. There could be LOTS of people walking the streets that have TEN TIMES the hand-eye coordination, etc., that Efren Reyes...but how many of them were raised sleeping on a pool table, and spending their entire day in a pool hall for their entire childhoods?
Pool is 95% a game of training and dedication to personal mastery.