Hong Kong Challenge
Didn't Earl and Efren shoot in the 920 range in the race to 120?
Didn't Earl and Efren shoot in the 920 range in the race to 120?
SVB vs. Nick the Greek, starts in 5 minutes. Free stream.
- Thread starter CreeDo
- Start date
Agree. Different kettle of fish .
Besides break , Ko's safety game ain't too shabby. And I am sure he can run more than4 balls and some packs. LOL Plus I wouldn't bet against player named KO
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I'm here. I didn't keep stats on this match, but I did watch most of it. However, Pool-Trax did do the stats.
SVB's 26 B&R games (53%!!!!) consisted of one 5-pack (no 6's), one 4-pack, two 3-packs, three 2-packs, and five singles.
As iusedtoberich pointed out, Shane's 951 is a Pool-Trax Performance Rating, not an Accu-Stats Total Performance Rating (TPA). And, to my knowledge, Pool-Trax has not published exactly how their rating is calculated. We cannot take the Pool-Trax info and convert it directly to an Accu-Stats TPA.
In the famous "The Color of Money" match between Reyes and Strickland, the Accu-Stats TPA's were .912 for Earl and .911 for Efren. That match consisted of many more games (237) than this SVB/Ekono match (71) and it was 9-ball rather than 10-ball. But I would not be surprised if pt109's speculation is accurate about how high SVB's performance today (yesterday, now, I guess) ranks.
It was just remarkable. And the match averaged just 4 minutes per game (including the break)!
TheThaiger
Banned
Too busy watching proper players playing a proper game a few hours away in Sheffield to bother with a game for little girls in Greece mate.
How are you doing with those 1000 'easy' roll-ups by the way? I think it was Ricky Walden who fell short TWICE in the same match, prompting much musing from the commentators about how 'tricky' they are.
TheThaiger
Banned
I only watched an hour or so but a few thoughts.
1. Everything is relative but Nick has a terrible break. What WAS he thinking?
2. Shane is fast, fluent and good to watch. If other pros won't match his pace of play, make them.
3. The game of American pool is broken and needs abandoning in that format. Whatever the correct formula is, it's not big breaks, 9x4.5' tables and 4.5" (only??) pockets. You may as well watch a man practicing.
Whaaaaaaaaaaa?
They all have composure if they are winning. NIck had it even though he was getting trounced-Yeah he got mad once-Big deal.
I see many "professors" of pool here and i would like to just say few things for Nick and make you reconsider your thoughts.
1. Nick was the host of the tournament prior to challenge and responsible for the hospitality of ALL foreign players. From Wednesday he was walking around with 2 phones in hand to arrange the relaxed transfer of players from airport and i think he went to pick couple of them.
2. At the same time he was playing in the tournament from day 1 and he made to final which ended at 2 in the morning of Monday.
Do you really think that he was 100% ready physically and mentally to play someone like Shane who, by the way, finished the tournament at Sunday afternoon and had all the time to get a good rest. Pool is not a hobby. It is a sport.Thank you for your time reading this.
Costas
1. Nick was the host of the tournament prior to challenge and responsible for the hospitality of ALL foreign players. From Wednesday he was walking around with 2 phones in hand to arrange the relaxed transfer of players from airport and i think he went to pick couple of them.
2. At the same time he was playing in the tournament from day 1 and he made to final which ended at 2 in the morning of Monday.
Do you really think that he was 100% ready physically and mentally to play someone like Shane who, by the way, finished the tournament at Sunday afternoon and had all the time to get a good rest. Pool is not a hobby. It is a sport.Thank you for your time reading this.
Costas
I agree that those are significant things to overcome. To be fair, Shane being 5,000 miles from home, 7 hours out of his normal time zone, sleeping in a strange bed, and playing a great player in his home room where Shane had practically zero support are also significant things to overcome.
Aaron
add unfamiliar food to that.
Congrats to Nick for stepping up and playing. I'm sure he was a little off his game, but when you're playing a race to 50 and your opponent breaks and runs 26, anyone would be in trouble.
Joe has it right, Nick's rating for that match was 850, which is pretty solid.
A lot of us couldn't do that even with ball in hand after the break.
Nick's break is actually beautiful, he hits so squarely and his cue ball bounces straight back.
I dunno why it was dry so many times, guess he hasn't figured out how to adjust like shane has.
But he can hit hard, with accuracy, and park the cue ball like a champion.
Shane scratched 4 times, Nick never fouled on the break once.
I think their numbers would be closer in 9b where hitting squarely + magic rack = always make a ball,
whereas in 10b you can hit it seemingly perfectly and still come up dry somehow.
A lot of us couldn't do that even with ball in hand after the break.
Nick's break is actually beautiful, he hits so squarely and his cue ball bounces straight back.
I dunno why it was dry so many times, guess he hasn't figured out how to adjust like shane has.
But he can hit hard, with accuracy, and park the cue ball like a champion.
Shane scratched 4 times, Nick never fouled on the break once.
I think their numbers would be closer in 9b where hitting squarely + magic rack = always make a ball,
whereas in 10b you can hit it seemingly perfectly and still come up dry somehow.
Nick plays bad patterns in and out of balls, that hurt him a lot early on hooking himself. And that's a problem that just keeps on giving....... It's way more of a difference of just the dry breaks alone. Frankly, it's amazing that he plays as well as he does playing such bad patterns.
I felt privileged to be able to see the match. well, all but 45 minutes. I saw the first 30 minutes, then skipped 45 minutes and then watched the rest of the match. I would have guessed that shane was shooting higher than 950. before the match began I knew that svb breaks 10 ball better than anyone on the planet. other than shot making, which nick is certainly capable of doing, it is all about the break so the advantage immediately goes to svb. I saw his 2 matches with kazakis and must say that a different svb showed up yesterday. he seemed more focused and may be that was because there was $$$ on the line. I do not understand why nick would not try a different cb position on the break when consistently his placement every time was not working? when the score got to svb 15 and leading, it seemed svb looked a lot like earl, with the speed of play and the cb on a string. when svb got to 30 games, then he started really letting his stroke out and it seemed as though he was in one of his 6 to 8 hour practice sessions. a couple of times he tried banking and missed and I do not think he would have tried those shots in a short race tournament. I have seen 90% of earl's matches on stream and svb looked a lot like him yesterday and while nick shot okay, I think he can shoot better than what he showed us yesterday but he reached the point he knew he was doomed. having watched the matches there over the weekend I was certainly impressed with the level of play from the greeks! I want to thank terry, bob, and "greekpool" for one hell of a FREE stream and allowing us to see some great pool matches. :woot::dance::clapping::happydance:
I totally respect all the arguments on my sayings regardless if i agree or disagree. I will publicly thank Nick for bringing all these big guns of pool here in Greece and definitely Shane for accepting Nick's invitation and gave to all Greek players the opportunity to enjoy this magnificent player. Greek pool is definitely a winner out of this.
Glad someone else noticed/mentioned this. It really is amazing that he gets out as often as he does considering how many times he lands on the wrong side of the ball, often taking a bad route to get there.
Aaron
I agree.
And this speaks to this misconception that it's "all the break." I'm not discounting Shane's advantage of the break, but Shane also has better run out skills, kicking skills, defensive skill than most as well.
The few times he made pattern "errors" looked like he was in complete casual mode.
Freddie <~~~ thought the Greeks played pretty amazing in the tourney
I agree. The Greek players showed a lot of talent. Good event. Thanks to all responsible for making it happen.
Anyone down playing the way Shane played yesterday is simply an idiot. Thaiger certainly belongs in that category as well as some of the contingent standing up for Nick, talking about the table being easy, etc...etc...
What we witnessed yesterday was someone breaking and running 26 TIMES in a race to 50 and shooting .951 at 10-BALL, not 9-ball, which would be great in itself, but 10-BALL.
NOBODY on this planet would have gotten within 10 games of Shane yesterday, period. You guys can talk about Ko, and all of these other champions, but they can all sit in their chair and watch Shane run rack after rack just like Nick did. Besides overrunning position a few times and a few misses late, Nick played pretty damn good. He just didn't get to play a lot.
I asked Darren Appleton to comment on this long debate we've had on AZ about Shane's domination in long race 10-ball and how he's dominated American pool for the last few years. Not to mention that nobody in the world will gamble with him. Here are Darren's exact comments
"Shane right now in long race 10-ball is the man to beat. He certainly inspired me to practice harder, esp. on my break, until I do that I got no chance against him playing 10-ball. I've got the ultimate respect for him because he loves pool and works so hard . He deserves whatever he achieves"
What we witnessed yesterday was someone breaking and running 26 TIMES in a race to 50 and shooting .951 at 10-BALL, not 9-ball, which would be great in itself, but 10-BALL.
NOBODY on this planet would have gotten within 10 games of Shane yesterday, period. You guys can talk about Ko, and all of these other champions, but they can all sit in their chair and watch Shane run rack after rack just like Nick did. Besides overrunning position a few times and a few misses late, Nick played pretty damn good. He just didn't get to play a lot.
I asked Darren Appleton to comment on this long debate we've had on AZ about Shane's domination in long race 10-ball and how he's dominated American pool for the last few years. Not to mention that nobody in the world will gamble with him. Here are Darren's exact comments
"Shane right now in long race 10-ball is the man to beat. He certainly inspired me to practice harder, esp. on my break, until I do that I got no chance against him playing 10-ball. I've got the ultimate respect for him because he loves pool and works so hard . He deserves whatever he achieves"