Another factor is that Europeans often play cuesports that are more difficult than pool. Snooker, a game requiring better cueing skills than pool, has had a place in the emergence of many top European players, Mika Immonen among them. Those that started with snooker and developed some proficiency in it often have an advantage when it comes to pocketing the balls. In fact, even women's snooker has now produced three hall of famers in pool in Kelly Fisher, Allison Fisher and Karen Corr, In the UK, English 8-ball, which is played on the kind of pockets that are more associated with snooker, has also been a factor. Appleton, Shaw, Melling and Selby all began with English 8-ball and have been four of pool's straightest shooters. Russian Pyramid has also figured in producing some awfully straight shooters, as sharpshooters Gorst, Chinakhov and Stalev all began with that game.
These are some ways in which the European pool scene is, indeed, more conducive to the development of champions than the American system.