fargo and the ghost

[Bob Jewett]

Some 10 ball ghost for you. I played it to 7 but had a little extra time, so played a few more racks. Starting around 27 min after the race to 7 I start talking while playing (how I started playing pool, how clueless I am re. Fargo, etc ).

FYI: The table is a Min (Korean company), corner pockets about 4.25/4.3 inches, reclothed about 6 months ago so playing quite nicely atm.

Thanks for posting. As for your Fargo, I'd guess mid-700s which means you should do OK in pro events. If you have a reason to go to the UK, you might consider the UK Open (9-ball) which is scheduled for the second half of May. You will have to wear shoes, though.

 

[Shuddy]

You will have to wear shoes, though.

Hahaha. Seriously though, still having a fairly traditional snooker stance, albeit a little more relaxed, the lower pool tables are pretty hard on my back, and I’ve sometimes wondered if suddenly having to wear shoes would affect me

 

[skogstokig]

Some 10 ball ghost for you. I played it to 7 but had a little extra time, so played a few more racks. Starting around 27 min after the race to 7 I start talking while playing (how I started playing pool, how clueless I am re. Fargo, etc ).

FYI: The table is a Min (Korean company), corner pockets about 4.25/4.3 inches, reclothed about 6 months ago so playing quite nicely atm.

nice shooting. in the 6th rack i would seriously consider drawing into the 8-ball off the 2-ball. bit of a gamble, but then again my nickname is swedish for "completely mental".

are there billiard clubs on your island? koreans seem to love three cushion

 

[The_JV]

Some 10 ball ghost for you. I played it to 7 but had a little extra time, so played a few more racks. Starting around 27 min after the race to 7 I start talking while playing (how I started playing pool, how clueless I am re. Fargo, etc ).

FYI: The table is a Min (Korean company), corner pockets about 4.25/4.3 inches, reclothed about 6 months ago so playing quite nicely atm.

Solid shooting... I'd suggest bumping it up to Pro-Ghost. It's a far more humbling version.

 

[The_JV]

Thanks for posting. As for your Fargo, I'd guess mid-700s which means you should do OK in pro events. If you have a reason to go to the UK, you might consider the UK Open (9-ball) which is scheduled for the second half of May. You will have to wear shoes, though.

Mid-700s....? Really...? ...not meaning to be a jackass, but that's awfully strong. 750 puts him in the top 30 in the USA

 

[Hoogaar]

Some 10 ball ghost for you. I played it to 7 but had a little extra time, so played a few more racks. Starting around 27 min after the race to 7 I start talking while playing (how I started playing pool, how clueless I am re. Fargo, etc ).

FYI: The table is a Min (Korean company), corner pockets about 4.25/4.3 inches, reclothed about 6 months ago so playing quite nicely atm.

Wow! That's awesome. I'd be surprised if you're not solidly in the 700s Fargo. And I laughed when you said something to the effect of "break is shit" - that was the most impressive thing to me. You break like a monster! I would pay good money to be able to break 10 ball like that.

Anyway, great shooting!

 

[Bob Jewett]

Mid-700s....? Really...? ...not meaning to be a jackass, but that's awfully strong. 750 puts him in the top 30 in the USA

Of course practice alone on your home table is hardly a real test, but he beat the 10-ball ghost 9-6 with relatively small pockets. He might have had two more games but for carelessness with the side pocket. As for the US top 30, that's not as hard as it used to be.

 

[kling&allen]

Hahaha. Seriously though, still having a fairly traditional snooker stance, albeit a little more relaxed, the lower pool tables are pretty hard on my back, and I’ve sometimes wondered if suddenly having to wear shoes would affect me

I assume you played a lot of pool / snooker before relocating to a remote Korean island? What's your daily training regimen look like?

 

[The_JV]

Of course practice alone on your home table is hardly a real test, but he beat the 10-ball ghost 9-6 with relatively small pockets. He might have had two more games but for carelessness with the side pocket. As for the US top 30, that's not as hard as it used to be.

Fair enough but the BIH ghost isn't comparible to the pro version, which I believe to be a realistic test to real world action. I have a video of a 7-0 win over the 10b ghost and I'm no 750, regardless of the current state of affairs in the USA.

 

[Shuddy]

Of course practice alone on your home table is hardly a real test, but he beat the 10-ball ghost 9-6 with relatively small pockets. He might have had two more games but for carelessness with the side pocket. As for the US top 30, that's not as hard as it used to be.

I think it was 10-5 in the end , but yeah, that’s exactly why this discussion is interesting for me, and it’s an impossible question to answer; can you gauge someone’s Fargo from watching them hit balls?

There’s obviously a whole bunch of skills that are less likely to be exhibited while playing the ghost; kicking, banking, safeties, jumps, mental fortitude, etc. And then there’s the grind of actually playing enough competitive matches to establish a robust Fargo (Robustness! I’ve been reading about Fargo )

I assume you played a lot of pool / snooker before relocating to a remote Korean island? What's your daily training regimen look like?

I played snooker but had never really played US pool, and not 9 ball or 10 ball, and unfortunately only discovered 14.1 around the start of 2020. I think in that video I start talking about how I started playing pool around the 30 minute mark. I don’t really have a practice regimen as such. I just try to maintain confidence in my cue action with table time. Occasionally my cue action gets a bit sloppy, and I can feel something that needs tweaking, so I’ll line up a bunch of balls across the middle of the table and play long stuns into the corners, just to diagnose and fix any little hiccups. There’s a few shots that come up often in rotation that don’t appear in 8 ball, and certainly in snooker, so I’ll sometimes spend 15 minutes practicing one of those when it occurs to me.

It’s amazing how even after 10 years of not playing snooker, I’ll still play a more difficult positional shot to get on a ball in a side pocket rather than play a simple stop shot to play a ball in the corner, when on a US pool table it should often times be the complete opposite.

Wow! That's awesome. I'd be surprised if you're not solidly in the 700s Fargo. And I laughed when you said something to the effect of "break is shit" - that was the most impressive thing to me. You break like a monster! I would pay good money to be able to break 10 ball like that.

Anyway, great shooting!

Hahaha, right, it did occur to me that while I was complaining about my break, a lot of balls were falling in pockets. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, as I suspect a lot of pool players are. With my 10 ball break, I’m being critical of what I intended as compared to what actually happened. I think I only hit the balls full two or three times, and I’m not sure I ever had enough top on the cueball to actually park it in the middle of the table. It was usually flying around off two or three cushions

nice shooting. in the 6th rack i would seriously consider drawing into the 8-ball off the 2-ball. bit of a gamble, but then again my nickname is swedish for "completely mental".

are there billiard clubs on your island? koreans seem to love three cushion

Yeah, there’s a lot of carom (3 cushion and 4 ball) clubs everywhere in Korea. 3 cushion gets a lot of TV time, with channels dedicated to it. On Youtube you can usually find the pro leagues being streamed live.

 

[mikepage]

[...] and it’s an impossible question to answer; can you gauge someone’s Fargo from watching them hit balls?

There’s obviously a whole bunch of skills that are less likely to be exhibited while playing the ghost; kicking, banking, safeties, jumps, mental fortitude, etc. [...]

We have a concept called "skill equilibrium."

Go to 100 poolrooms and from each select four players, a 400, a 500, a 600, and a 700. So now you've got 100 players rated 400, 100 players rated 500, 100 players rated 600, and 100 players rated 700.

Now subject them to a series of pool-related tests:
shotmaking,
speed control,
banking,
kicking,
patterns,
safety play,
mental fortitude,
ability to judge a legal hit,
speed at counting the number of balls remaining on the table,
ability to work with a lathe.
ability to judge the diameter of a shaft

The results for all of them will be average scores that increase with increased rating. Some of these things don't impact game-win tendency (what a rating is measuring). For those things that DO impact game-winning, the correspondence is even better. A lot of this comes from the average number of hours each has spent at the pool table. Perhaps,

700 10,000 hours
600 2,500 hours
500 700 hours
400 200 hours

It's likely not that playing a lot CREATES mental fortitude (or GRIT as Angela Duckworth would call it.) But those hours are a filter for it. People who lack it are less likely to stick to ANY complex activity for thousands of hours. So it is like your soup cooling down because the faster soup molecules are more likely to leave.

When you are a 650-rated player and you roughly have the shotmaking of a 650, the safety play of a 650, the speed control of a 650, we say you are in skill equilibrium. Contract this with the 650-rated player who has the shot-making ability of a 700 but who makes strategic decisions commensurate with those of a 500-rated player (go for the out too much, miss two-way opportunities, choose wonky patterns.). Though we all have someone who comes to mind here, this really isn't very usual.

Our experience is most players are roughly in skill equilibrium. When you think of a snooker player starting to play rotation games or a player going from a 9-foot to a 7-foot table or from a 7-foot to a 9-foot table, players are out of skill equilibrium. But the next 50-100 hours with the new game or new environment tends to reestablish it because the things you are temporarily bad at in the new environment tend to improve faster as you play, bringing you toward skill equilibrium.

If you took a player like, e.g., Aloysius Yapp (let's assume he doesn't play one pocket at all) and you had him play four 1-pocket races to 4 ( 1 each against Alex, Dennis, Chohan, and Frost) each day for a month, he'd get killed in the first week. But I think he wouldn't get killed in the last week.

 

[Bob Jewett]

... When you are a 650-rated player and you roughly have the shotmaking of a 650, the safety play of a 650, the speed control of a 650, we say you are in skill equilibrium. Contract this with the 650-rated player who has the shot-making ability of a 700 but who makes strategic decisions commensurate with those of a 500-rated player (go for the out too much, miss two-way opportunities, choose wonky patterns.). Though we all have someone who comes to mind here, this really isn't very usual. ...

The best example of imbalance I've seen is a student who could make nearly any shot but who was not interested in position play. Last ball near the pocket and eight ball at the other end of the table? Shoot the ball in and look around for the next shot. Slice the eight along the far end rail for the win. I think he was an APA 5 solely on shot-making ability. He was not interested in learning how to make the cue ball get near the next ball.

 

[phreaticus]

I think it was 10-5 in the end , but yeah, that’s exactly why this discussion is interesting for me, and it’s an impossible question to answer; can you gauge someone’s Fargo from watching them hit balls?

There’s obviously a whole bunch of skills that are less likely to be exhibited while playing the ghost; kicking, banking, safeties, jumps, mental fortitude, etc. And then there’s the grind of actually playing enough competitive matches to establish a robust Fargo (Robustness! I’ve been reading about Fargo )



I played snooker but had never really played US pool, and not 9 ball or 10 ball, and unfortunately only discovered 14.1 around the start of 2020. I think in that video I start talking about how I started playing pool around the 30 minute mark. I don’t really have a practice regimen as such. I just try to maintain confidence in my cue action with table time. Occasionally my cue action gets a bit sloppy, and I can feel something that needs tweaking, so I’ll line up a bunch of balls across the middle of the table and play long stuns into the corners, just to diagnose and fix any little hiccups. There’s a few shots that come up often in rotation that don’t appear in 8 ball, and certainly in snooker, so I’ll sometimes spend 15 minutes practicing one of those when it occurs to me.

It’s amazing how even after 10 years of not playing snooker, I’ll still play a more difficult positional shot to get on a ball in a side pocket rather than play a simple stop shot to play a ball in the corner, when on a US pool table it should often times be the complete opposite.



Hahaha, right, it did occur to me that while I was complaining about my break, a lot of balls were falling in pockets. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, as I suspect a lot of pool players are. With my 10 ball break, I’m being critical of what I intended as compared to what actually happened. I think I only hit the balls full two or three times, and I’m not sure I ever had enough top on the cueball to actually park it in the middle of the table. It was usually flying around off two or three cushions


Yeah, there’s a lot of carom (3 cushion and 4 ball) clubs everywhere in Korea. 3 cushion gets a lot of TV time, with channels dedicated to it. On Youtube you can usually find the pro leagues being streamed live.

Hey Shuddy, you play great and look fun to hang out with. I spent 6 mo on/off in Seoul working and used to bounce down to Jeju every weekend to go diving. I’m in Asia a lot, If i’m ever back in your neighborhood and can find your island, it would be cool to hook up.

 

[BlueRaider]

The best example of imbalance I've seen is a student who could make nearly any shot but who was not interested in position play. Last ball near the pocket and eight ball at the other end of the table? Shoot the ball in and look around for the next shot. Slice the eight along the far end rail for the win. I think he was an APA 5 solely on shot-making ability. He was not interested in learning how to make the cue ball get near the next ball.

That sounds exactly like the bar box heroes you can occasionally find in dives across the country. And when they try their hand at league, they always top out as SL 5s. If the balls are laying good they look great at the table. They often have thundering breaks, too. But the instant they need to really move the cue ball around to get into a narrow positional window, you realize how limited they actually are.

 

[Rodney]

So I finally beat the ghost a set. I usually play till 7 but I played till I lost focus and won 10-4. I have a hard time concentrating playing by myself for too long and end up digging an easy shot. t my skill level I think I should be beating the ghost more than 50% of the time. Right now I’m at about 2%. I’ll start keeping track from now on so I can get a realistic %.

 

[Shuddy]

Hey Shuddy, you play great and look fun to hang out with. I spent 6 mo on/off in Seoul working and used to bounce down to Jeju every weekend to go diving. I’m in Asia a lot, If i’m ever back in your neighborhood and can find your island, it would be cool to hook up.

Oh, wow! That’s awesome man! Not many people have even heard of Jeju, let alone visited regularly. It would be amazing to have a visitor. I know the chances are slim, but I’ll DM you my number just in case you do find yourself in my neighborhood one day.

 

[evergruven]

Some 10 ball ghost for you. I played it to 7 but had a little extra time, so played a few more racks. Starting around 27 min after the race to 7 I start talking while playing (how I started playing pool, how clueless I am re. Fargo, etc ).

FYI: The table is a Min (Korean company), corner pockets about 4.25/4.3 inches, reclothed about 6 months ago so playing quite nicely atm.

nice shooting, shuddy! I didn't watch all the way through, but from what I saw, you make those pockets look bigger than they are.
question: I noticed on a kick and a bank, you pulled out a (shorter?) wood cue- was that just because quarters are close, or ?

 

[dquarasr]

Some 10 ball ghost for you. I played it to 7 but had a little extra time, so played a few more racks. Starting around 27 min after the race to 7 I start talking while playing (how I started playing pool, how clueless I am re. Fargo, etc ).

FYI: The table is a Min (Korean company), corner pockets about 4.25/4.3 inches, reclothed about 6 months ago so playing quite nicely atm.

Ok, you’re pretty good, but can you play with shoes on?

Edit: I see Bob already beat me to noticing this.

 

[skogstokig]

I think it was 10-5 in the end , but yeah, that’s exactly why this discussion is interesting for me, and it’s an impossible question to answer; can you gauge someone’s Fargo from watching them hit balls?

There’s obviously a whole bunch of skills that are less likely to be exhibited while playing the ghost; kicking, banking, safeties, jumps, mental fortitude, etc. And then there’s the grind of actually playing enough competitive matches to establish a robust Fargo (Robustness! I’ve been reading about Fargo )



I played snooker but had never really played US pool, and not 9 ball or 10 ball, and unfortunately only discovered 14.1 around the start of 2020. I think in that video I start talking about how I started playing pool around the 30 minute mark. I don’t really have a practice regimen as such. I just try to maintain confidence in my cue action with table time. Occasionally my cue action gets a bit sloppy, and I can feel something that needs tweaking, so I’ll line up a bunch of balls across the middle of the table and play long stuns into the corners, just to diagnose and fix any little hiccups. There’s a few shots that come up often in rotation that don’t appear in 8 ball, and certainly in snooker, so I’ll sometimes spend 15 minutes practicing one of those when it occurs to me.

It’s amazing how even after 10 years of not playing snooker, I’ll still play a more difficult positional shot to get on a ball in a side pocket rather than play a simple stop shot to play a ball in the corner, when on a US pool table it should often times be the complete opposite.



Hahaha, right, it did occur to me that while I was complaining about my break, a lot of balls were falling in pockets. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, as I suspect a lot of pool players are. With my 10 ball break, I’m being critical of what I intended as compared to what actually happened. I think I only hit the balls full two or three times, and I’m not sure I ever had enough top on the cueball to actually park it in the middle of the table. It was usually flying around off two or three cushions


Yeah, there’s a lot of carom (3 cushion and 4 ball) clubs everywhere in Korea. 3 cushion gets a lot of TV time, with channels dedicated to it. On Youtube you can usually find the pro leagues being streamed live.

if you competed in snooker you have a clue about your mental fortitude. amateur snooker tournaments can be just as grueling as pool tournaments.

 

[g-string]

Nice shooting, and your break is great