Easier or Harder to win

[Bigshot]

Joe Nielsen won our Icmoa, Illinois state tournament over the past weekend for the third time, two out of the last 3 years, with a 2nd place finish in the year he didn't win. congratulations Joe.

It is a very short race tournament, race to 3 8-ball, double elimination. It always has between 150 & 300 entrants. I would say 80 percent B & c players and 20 percent A players, with 8 - 10 top players.
A lot of people will recognize some of these players who played in the past 3 years, Bob mcGrath, Jesse Bowman, Will Freeman, mike Dunklin, Gary Lutman,
so it gets a decent caliber field.

my question is what does everyone think about a short race tournement? Is it easier or Harder to win? I always thought it would be harder because of a luck factor in a short race, but Joes consistency in winning the tournament is making me question how much the race length affects the outcome.
(sorry, my laptop keyboard is not working great, so all the capital letters are not where they need to be)

 

[WhatsTheSpot]

Over the course of pool history, the better player usually wins, despite the length of the race.

In 8-Ball, and B or C player may never win a game from someone who plays near pro speed.

In 9-Ball it's a little different. A strong player can still hang up a 7 or an 8 and give up a game here or there. But the stronger player is still going to win almost every time.

You have to stack handicaps very heavily before the lesser player starts winning more than once in a while.

 

[Aten]

In 8-Ball, and B or C player may never win a game from someone who plays near pro speed.

On a barbox? I disagree. In a short race (I usually interpret short as 7 games or fewer), anything can happen. Just look at some of the matches at the recent USBTC for instance (not trying to knock anybody, because it certainly takes a lot of skill to go the distance... but the individual sets are largely luck-based imo). There are plenty of other examples (I'm probably one of the worst players around and I've beaten solid AA players in race to 5s before... doesn't mean shit and I'm not trying to make it sound impressive).

 

[Jude Rosenstock]

If you look at it from purely a statistical standpoint, the longer races will always favor the better players. For example, if a player is a 60% favorite to win 1 game versus another player, in the span that they will win 3 times in 5 attempts is 68%.

Race Probability of winning
1 60%
3 68%
5 73%
7 77%
9 80%


This is assuming both players will perform the exact same way regardless of the length of the race. Knowing that human beings are not as easy to predict as statistics are, I would venture to say that the longer the race, the greater these statistics are skewed simply because the better player is going to be more confident.