Efren on Snooker

[RunoutJJ]

In your dreams, Wayne.

If you take UK based players
Darren Appleton
Daryl Peach
Chris Melling
Karl Boyes
Mark Gray
Imran Majid
Jayson Shaw
Raj Hundal
Phil Burford
Ronnie O'Sullivan

The I doubt whether you could muster half a dozen who would stand a chance in a series of head to heads.

Moving down slightly to
Craig Osborne, Richard Jones, Tommy Donlon, Pat Holtz and probably 30 more.
Then you may be able to come up with 200 who would be in with a chance but only because of your bigger overall population.

Well from the stream of the English 9 Ball Tour I saw I will tell you this... I think I saw about one A player in the 3 hours I tuned in. Don't get me wrong all of the players you named are top flight guys but... Well lets just say the stream chat was pretty brutal :groucho:

 

[og pro]

it's like comparing NASCAR to F1.

 

[Pathetic Shark]

Well from the stream of the English 9 Ball Tour I saw I will tell you this... I think I saw about one A player in the 3 hours I tuned in. Don't get me wrong all of the players you named are top flight guys but... Well lets just say the stream chat was pretty brutal :groucho:

Then you were unlucky with who you saw. That event clashed with a major event elsewhere, so most of the big boys weren't there. Luck of the draw who gets on the TV table. GB9 is an open tour, so you get a few lower ranked players, but not many. All but a handful are comfortably A or above.

And you should play on those tables before being too critical of skill levels as they are absolutely brutal.

 

[BeiberLvr]

I love pool, and want the sport to grow in America. However, the argument that a pool player could compete at the highest level in snooker if given enough time, is old.

What's stopping them? If you had a legitimate chance of making much more money, then you would take it without hesitation.

 

[arps]

I love pool, and want the sport to grow in America. However, the argument that a pool player could compete at the highest level in snooker if given enough time, is old.

What's stopping them? If you had a legitimate chance of making much more money, then you would take it without hesitation.

the technical approach in playing snooker is way different than pool. the fundamentals are different as well. switching from pool to snooker (or vice versa) would be a very hard task. efren was just pressured by our government to represent our country in snooker, that's why he pushed himself to learn the sport (in a week) and be good at it. fortunately, he got lucky again. :grin-square:

i love how Darren explained pool and snooker at TAR podcast 36. here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rdsyoumA7s&t=30m34s

 

[arps]

it's like comparing NASCAR to F1.

it's just apples and oranges, i think.

 

[Black-Balled]

I love pool, and want the sport to grow in America. However, the argument that a pool player could compete at the highest level in snooker if given enough time, is old.

What's stopping them? If you had a legitimate chance of making much more money, then you would take it without hesitation.

Without taking on the question of 'could they', I will respond to the 'why don't they'.

Because practically nobody can afford to take years away from their income source to pursue other choices.

 

[SakuJack]

Then you were unlucky with who you saw. That event clashed with a major event elsewhere, so most of the big boys weren't there. Luck of the draw who gets on the TV table. GB9 is an open tour, so you get a few lower ranked players, but not many. All but a handful are comfortably A or above.

And you should play on those tables before being too critical of skill levels as they are absolutely brutal.

I was about to post something similar to this. They're open events, but the standard is surprisingly high - you won't see many players below A standard, and those that are will either be close, or very out of place.

And I've not played in one myself (mainly because I'm not near that level of play) but from what I've heard I'd agree the tables are brutal.

The standard of American pool here is incredibly high, considering what an incredibly niche game it still is in the UK.