Karen Corr in the finals 14.1 American National Championships.

voiceofreason said:
or hardly ever
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Which is evident by the fact that JB started this very thread.

If it was not a rare occurrence for a woman to get into the finals of a mens event then it wouldn't have been noteworthy enough to post a thread on.

Congrats to Karen, I am not going to pretend that what she did is common place or something to be expected, she hung with the men and made it to a final and that is a huge accomplishment for her that few women manage to do.
 
Klopek said:
No, you posted a profanity laden judgement of your very own. That kind of language has no place on a public forum, you could have simply called the guy out instead of going on a rant that only a fool could abide.

You really need to look in the mirror.
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Yes I did. And you the called me a cock in your message. I guess for you those who agreed with me are also fools.

Point being when you go out of your way to be a jerk then it's uncalled for.

The fact that sometimes the very best women have high finishes when competing with the best men is not the same as saying that they hardly ever are able to be competitive.

The very best women would be highly competitive IF they played more often with the men and were ALLOWED to play more often with the men.

I for one am FOR a rule that says if a woman chooses to compete with the men and is competittive, i.e. she consistently finishes in the top quarter of the brackets, then she gives up the right to compete in the women's only tournaments. I still think there is a need for women's events but no need for dscrimination in men's events. Any open tournament should be open to all levels of players and genders.

Just as we would applaud a high finish by a male B player who played exceptionally well against pros we should applaud and encourage women who do well. We want women and lower skilled players to be MORE competitive and try to play against "better" players rather than denigrate them and dissuade them.

That's what I meant about going OUT of your way to be an ASSHOLE.

I don't go out of my way to be one, it comes easily from lots of practice. I go out of my way to be nice when people deserve it and sometimes even when they don't.
 
Karen Corr is a superb player and a fine lady. She has collected virtually every scalp worth collecting over the years in the Northeast.

She may even beat Darren one day. Nobody will be too shocked.

Well played, Karen, and, of course, congrats to Darren.
 
Seth C. said:
First, I must say that the three quotes that bdorman offers at the end of his posts are all terrific:

"The more I practice, the luckier I get. --- Gary Player

I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. --- Abraham Lincoln

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. --- Voltaire"

Almost any quote of Voltaire is bound to be insightful and thought provoking, and the other two quotes, well known as they are, are valuable to read over and over.

As for the question of what level of success women can have in competing with men in pool, I would offer only the suggestion that those who are open to thinking about it (as opposed to those who have formed their opinions and are no longer in thinking mode) give some consideration to the fact that far, far fewer girls/women play pool than do boys/men. So, the experience to date regarding the frequency and quality of play of women in men's events doesn't really say that much about how women would fare against men were an equal number of women (and the same mix of women as men, in terms of coordination, athleticism, etc.) to play, and were they exposed to the same teaching, competition, etc. to which men are exposed.
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You seem to be ignoring the idea that the things that make women women are likely the same things that result in them not as frequently being exposed to the same teaching, competition, etc. to which men are exposed. A more interesting bit of research would be to figure out how many men and women play pool on a *regular* basis...say at least a certain number of hours per week. Then look at the percentage of men that are "A" players and the percentage of women that are "A" players. We should expect based on your reasoning that the percentages would be the same. (In other words # of A player women over number of women playing, etc.) I strongly doubt the percentages would be the same. There are likely many reasons for this, but whatever those reasons are does not change the data. It would be very interesting for sure though.

KMRUNOUT
 
Seth C. said:
give some consideration to the fact that far, far fewer girls/women play pool than do boys/men. So, the experience to date regarding the frequency and quality of play of women in men's events doesn't really say that much about how women would fare against men were an equal number of women (and the same mix of women as men, in terms of coordination, athleticism, etc.) to play, and were they exposed to the same teaching, competition, etc. to which men are exposed.
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KMRUNOUT said:
You seem to be ignoring the idea that the things that make women women are likely the same things that result in them not as frequently being exposed to the same teaching, competition, etc. to which men are exposed. A more interesting bit of research would be to figure out how many men and women play pool on a *regular* basis...say at least a certain number of hours per week. Then look at the percentage of men that are "A" players and the percentage of women that are "A" players. We should expect based on your reasoning that the percentages would be the same. (In other words # of A player women over number of women playing, etc.) I strongly doubt the percentages would be the same. There are likely many reasons for this, but whatever those reasons are does not change the data. It would be very interesting for sure though.

KMRUNOUT
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Here is an "experiment" that would totally take any and all of the commonly used excuses out of the equation, including the most common ones of "not as many women play pool", and "it is only the break that could keep women from being equal to men" as well as all the rest of the excuses you hear to explain the talent disparity (and for the record I think those things do account for some of the disparity).

Select fifty 5 year old boys completely at random. Select fifty 5 year old girls completely at random. Put them in a sports training school, such as they have in China and other countries, where they live on campus, away from their parents. Every day they have to train in pool for 8 hours a day, with the best instructors available (same instructors for each group). To eliminate the break as a factor, they are only trained in a game where the break is not a factor (straight pool, or playing the 9 ball ghost with ball in hand after the break, or using the "no conflict" rules for breaking where you shoot again after the break whether you made something or not, or whatever other game you feel the break is a non factor).

Train them like this for 13 years, and when they are 18 years old match them up against each other in daily competitions repeatedly, or have them play 200 sets of race to fifteen against the 9 ball ghost, or see what their average or high straight pool runs are when starting with a ball in hand break, or whatever method works best to figure out how they rank against each other for whatever game they were being trained in for all those years.

So the question is, out of all 100 students at age 18, how do you think they would rank? If men and women are truly equal in capabilities/abilities, then you would expect to see 5 boys in the top 10, and 5 girls in the top ten, and same with the bottom 10. You would expect to see 25 girls and 25 boys in the top half of the rankings, and same for the bottom half of the rankings. In fact for the whole rankings of the 100 students, you would essentially expect to see boy girl boy girl boy girl alternating back and forth from the best who was ranked number one, all the way to the worst player ranked number 100.

So what is everyone else's predictions if you are really being completely honest and not just trying to be politically correct etc? My prediction is something along the lines of the top being most if not all boys, the bottom 10 being most if not all girls, maybe 5-6 girls in the #70 through #89 ranking, maybe 10-11 girls being in the #51 through #69 ranking, and the majority of the girls (35 girls or so) being in the bottom half of the rankings/abilities.

It is not an insult to women, it just is what it is. It doesn't make them any less, just different. Evolution/biology have made men and women best at very different things, and the things that evolution/biology concentrated on to make women best for are small in number (although big in importance).

Kudos to Karen for a great tournament. She is one of the best ladies in both skill and character and earned every bit of her resulting finish.
 
victorl said:
An interesting study on gender and ability in chess... brings up a lot to think about.

http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2007/01/30/participation-explains-differe/#more
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If the differences were just due to participation numbers as that article seems to try to suggest, you would still expect that here and there you would find a woman that dominated all the men. The Willie Mosconi of straight pool would have been a woman, or maybe the Garry Kasparov of chess would have been a woman, or somewhere, anywhere, at some time, the person dominating would be a woman. You would see something like that on occasion, yet you never do, and certainly not with the frequency that is anywhere even close to commensurate with their participation level. If only 10% as many women participated in an activity, then there would only be a 10% chance that a woman was best at that activity, which essentially means that 10% of the time a woman should be at the top of the rankings for said activity. Yet that isn't what occurs, at all.

Not to mention that even in the activities that are absolutely dominated in participation by women, such as cooking as just one example, the very best in the world are still men. If men and women were equal in abilities you should see performance that is commensurate with participation, but that isn't what you see, ever. As much as we may hate the idea, there can be but one explanation. We can choose to deal with reality, or try to fool ourselves with a fairy tale. I prefer to deal with truth and reality, as much as I may hate that truth and reality, as it always works out better.
 
Poolplaya9 said:
If the differences were just due to participation numbers as that article seems to try to suggest, you would still expect that here and there you would find a woman that dominated all the men. The Willie Mosconi of straight pool would have been a woman, or maybe the Garry Kasparov of chess would have been a woman, or somewhere, anywhere, at some time, the person dominating would be a woman. You would see something like that on occasion, yet you never do, and certainly not with the frequency that is anywhere even close to commensurate with their participation level. If only 10% as many women participated in an activity, then there would only be a 10% chance that a woman was best at that activity, which essentially means that 10% of the time a woman should be at the top of the rankings for said activity. Yet that isn't what occurs, at all.

Not to mention that even in the activities that are absolutely dominated in participation by women, such as cooking as just one example, the very best in the world are still men. If men and women were equal in abilities you should see performance that is commensurate with participation, but that isn't what you see, ever. As much as we may hate the idea, there can be but one explanation. We can choose to deal with reality, or try to fool ourselves with a fairy tale. I prefer to deal with truth and reality, as much as I may hate that truth and reality, as it always works out better.
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That's where environment comes in. IF women were treated absolutely equally then you're right, statistically there should probably be a woman who was the best of the best for a while, just like any man has streaks where they are the best of the best for a while.

But put the women into a hostile environment then they don't get the same encouragement, the same backing, the same opportunities. And in fact that's what women have faced over the years, much less now of course, but back in the day absolutely they faced discrimination and prejudice. Even up through the 80s many felt that a woman's place was in the kitchen.

The fact is women have to fight harder to earn a respected spot in pool. That's all there is to it.

When they win it's lucky, or the guy was sharked by playing a woman, or he had a bad day....when they lose it was nothing more than what was expected.

Allison touched on this in an interview years ago and it remains somewhat true today. Women are still seen as inferior on the pool table. I guess even I shouldn't have made a big deal out of Karen's placement. I wouldn't have started this thread if Kevin Clark (an unknown) had finished in the same spot.

But since I know Kelly Fisher and Val Finnie and Allison and Ilona Berhardt and their stories and struggles to make it in a sport where they should be treated like equals but aren't, I still celebrate it when a woman has a good result against the men.

I wish that this were true of more American women who seem to be falling farther behind. We are much more enlightened now and even though some women are still treated unequally I feel that more than ever they are accepted as poolplayers first and women second so now they can get the same training and the same treatment as the guys.

I personally hate it when a woman wants to gamble and she plays the "I am a girl" card though trying to get weight. I have said in the spirit of pool room barking that if she wants weight she should go eat some ice cream.....all's fair when matching up right ;-)
 
Poolplaya9 said:
If the differences were just due to participation numbers as that article seems to try to suggest, you would still expect that here and there you would find a woman that dominated all the men. The Willie Mosconi of straight pool would have been a woman, or maybe the Garry Kasparov of chess would have been a woman, or somewhere, anywhere, at some time, the person dominating would be a woman. You would see something like that on occasion, yet you never do, and certainly not with the frequency that is anywhere even close to commensurate with their participation level. If only 10% as many women participated in an activity, then there would only be a 10% chance that a woman was best at that activity, which essentially means that 10% of the time a woman should be at the top of the rankings for said activity. Yet that isn't what occurs, at all.

Not to mention that even in the activities that are absolutely dominated in participation by women, such as cooking as just one example, the very best in the world are still men. If men and women were equal in abilities you should see performance that is commensurate with participation, but that isn't what you see, ever. As much as we may hate the idea, there can be but one explanation. We can choose to deal with reality, or try to fool ourselves with a fairy tale. I prefer to deal with truth and reality, as much as I may hate that truth and reality, as it always works out better.
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Just went to read the blog.

So basically the major finding was that where equal numbers of boys and girls play competitive chess the skill levels are the same on average.

This is pretty much the mass makes class concept.

In the vast majority of zip codes the number of boys who play competitive chess way outnumbers the girls. So statistically there would be way less chance of a woman emerging that makes it to Kasporov level just as most men don't make it either.

Three women grandmasters, the Polgar sisters, were trained from as young as three by their father who wanted to prove nurture trumps nature. And at least in his daughter's case he did prove it by producing three world class chess players.
 
JB Cases said:
That's where environment comes in. IF women were treated absolutely equally then you're right, statistically there should probably be a woman who was the best of the best for a while, just like any man has streaks where they are the best of the best for a while.

But put the women into a hostile environment then they don't get the same encouragement, the same backing, the same opportunities.
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As mentioned previously, I agree that all those things are a factor. But they are only factor for and only explain a small portion of the disparity. Even with those things taken into consideration, a woman should still have at some point in something, anything, anywhere, at any time, been the Willie Mosconi or Garry Kasparov. The biggest factor in the disparity in performances is in the respective abilities and potential.

Related to the example I used earlier, you can take 50 women and 50 men at random (which eliminates the participation variable), and treat them all the same (eliminating the environment factor), train them all the same (eliminating the training factor), everything all the same (eliminating all variables and factors except their sex), and the top performing person out of that 100 is always going to be a man, and the men are always going to be better on average too.

It is just seen as such an ugly reality that many people choose to pretend it isn't so and somehow think that that makes the world a better place than just openly accepting and dealing with the truth and reality. There is no shame in the truth.
 
Poolplaya9 said:
As mentioned previously, I agree that all those things are a factor. But they are only factor for and only explain a small portion of the disparity. Even with those things taken into consideration, a woman should still have at some point in something, anything, anywhere, at any time, been the Willie Mosconi or Garry Kasparov. The biggest factor in the disparity in performances is in the respective abilities and potential.

Related to the example I used earlier, you can take 50 women and 50 men at random (which eliminates the participation variable), and treat them all the same (eliminating the environment factor), train them all the same (eliminating the training factor), everything all the same (eliminating all variables and factors except their sex), and the top performing person out of that 100 is always going to be a man, and the men are always going to be better on average too.

It is just seen as such an ugly reality that many people choose to pretend it isn't so and somehow think that that makes the world a better place than just openly accepting and dealing with the truth and reality. There is no shame in the truth.
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Words like "always" in discussions about human performance seem to always be shattered when humans find a way to prove those who were so certain limits had been reached.

I think that your experiment would show an evenly distributed ability among men and women. Assuming that from the age of five the girls and boys were TREATED exactly the same, no barbies and no GI Joes, no makeup and no toy guns, then there is no psychological reason to think that they wouldn't be able to develop equal abilities at pool.

Now perhaps there are biological reasons? Testosterone makes people more aggressive and men have more of it. Does being more aggressive translate to better pool skills? I don't know and neither does anyone else as far as I know.

No such study is likely to ever be done but I'd be pretty confident in betting on an equal distribution in skill and that women would be well represented in the top 10. I think that the odds that a woman would be the number one player would be more to chance than to biology.

Since we are likely to never know I ok with disagreeing though and just clapping whenever a woman does good in the "man's world" of pool.
 
JB Cases said:
So statistically there would be way less chance of a woman emerging that makes it to Kasporov level just as most men don't make it either.
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Agreed. But still, at some point, somewhere, in some thing, anything, a woman should have been the Willie Mosconi or Garry Kasparov, and you should actually see it a number of times when you are talking many decades of many activities.

JB Cases said:
Three women grandmasters, the Polgar sisters, were trained from as young as three by their father who wanted to prove nurture trumps nature. And at least in his daughter's case he did prove it by producing three world class chess players.
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I am actually pretty familiar with that case. Because of the small sample size, what that gives some evidence for and seems to indicate (but not anywhere close to conclusively), is that great intellectual abilities can be taught with tons of work and time with willing participants who are equally willing to put in the many years of exceptionally intense training. What that does not in any way even indicate or give any evidence whatsoever to is that the girls were able to play chess at the same level as his sons would have been able to if they had been three boys instead of three girls. It doesn't say anything at all about the relative potential of different sexes.
 
My wife could be a world class pool player, but we don't have room in the kitchen for a table.















And I'm not married.
 
JB Cases said:
I think that your experiment would show an evenly distributed ability among men and women. Assuming that from the age of five the girls and boys were TREATED exactly the same, no barbies and no GI Joes, no makeup and no toy guns, then there is no psychological reason to think that they wouldn't be able to develop equal abilities at pool.
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If everything were exactly the same, including the treatment, you would still see a significant disparity, albeit less than it is now.

JB Cases said:
Now perhaps there are biological reasons? Testosterone makes people more aggressive and men have more of it. Does being more aggressive translate to better pool skills? I don't know and neither does anyone else as far as I know.
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It is absolutely a biological reason. Biologically women were made as nurturers and communicators and supporters, which made them best suited and superior in child rearing abilities (particularly with younger children) and better being able to get along with the other women and children in a relatively confined areas such as the cave/village/camp. Biologically men were made to be aggressive and competitive, which made them best suited for everything else to include hunting, protecting, all manner of problem solving, essentially anything outside of child rearing and superior ability to get along with others.

In no way am I saying that women can't be really good at about anything they really want to, or that men can't be really good at child rearing and getting along with others etc, only that biologically we each have our gifts (all of which are important) and in most things women simply aren't going to be quite as good on average because everything in their biological makeup was designed to have them excel at a very small but exceptionally important set of skills.

JB Cases said:
No such study is likely to ever be done but I'd be pretty confident in betting on an equal distribution in skill and that women would be well represented in the top 10. I think that the odds that a woman would be the number one player would be more to chance than to biology.
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If a test was ever performed that could truly isolate sex as the only variable, I would unload everything I owned that in most things you would see a noticeable performance difference. There would be no equal distribution. Biology made each sex better equipped for different things.

JB Cases said:
Since we are likely to never know I ok with disagreeing though and just clapping whenever a woman does good in the "man's world" of pool.
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We already know. I don't believe there is anyone that truly believes in their heart that on average men and women are equally capable in all things (and as pointed out the women are better at some things). Many just don't want to admit it. But I likewise am ok with agreeing to disagree on it because I will never get someone to admit it if they don't want to.
 
Poolplaya9 said:
Agreed. But still, at some point, somewhere, in some thing, anything, a woman should have been the Willie Mosconi or Garry Kasparov, and you should actually see it a number of times when you are talking many decades of many activities.


I am actually pretty familiar with that case. Because of the small sample size, what that gives some evidence for and seems to indicate (but not anywhere close to conclusively), is that great intellectual abilities can be taught with tons of work and time with willing participants who are equally willing to put in the many years of exceptionally intense training. What that does not in any way even indicate or give any evidence whatsoever to is that the girls were able to play chess at the same level as his sons would have been able to if they had been three boys instead of three girls. It doesn't say anything at all about the relative potential of different sexes.
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So do you think that if Polgar had had three sets of twins, each a boy and a girl then the boys would have all ended up higher ranked than the girls assuming each had the same exact upbringing as the three girls had?

I guess what I am hearing you say is that men are simply smarter? Because chess could be played with zero physical interaction and often is. So if chess is not enough of a proof that women could compete equally when all else is equal then I don't know what would be proof outside of your isolation experiment. And if in that experiment a woman were to achieve the top rank then what? Would you say that it was an anomaly or the sample size wasn't great enough?

If anything the odds should have been stacked AGAINST the Polgar sisters getting to world class status if one thinks that high intelligence is required. The odds that any three humans should have the requisite brainpower to reach grandmaster status in Chess when there have been only a couple thousand of them throughout history should be astronomically against it. So either Polgar lucked out by having three exceptionally brilliant children or he engineered it by choosing a scientist wife AND was committed to training them from the earliest possible age that he could.

Perhaps someone should repeat the experiment somewhere where kids don't get a good education and have no intellectual environment, say Africa. Go find three little African boys and three little African girls and train them intensively to play chess and see where they end up in 20 years.

Anyway, again happy to disagree. Regardless of what we think, humanity marches on and in 20 years I am sure we will know just how to precisely change our neurochemistry to make ourselves as smart or as competitive as we want to be.
 
More disturbing should be....

That the American National Championships top two places went to an Irishwoman and a Englishman.

Shame on you Americans for not grabbing this title and holding onto it. Darren and Karen are both world class players but lets see some REAL dedication in the USA again and send them packing :-)
 
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