Predator Wisconsin 10 Ball

[VVP]

One big difference between Karim and KT in my opinion is that KT had some plan where I believe he was hoping to recoup everything he had invested and a lot more. I think if Karim could break event on this tour, he would be a happy man. Karim is part of our industry and part of what he is doing is to help build the game. Sure, he wants to make money but that isn't the only thing he is trying to do.

I don't believe KT saw pool as anything other than another way he could make money.

From listening to podcasts with Ozzy and Karim as guests I don't think CSI and Predator see this series as a money making venture. I believe it more of a commercial for them (of course they didn't say this) while promoting pool (of course they said this ) a win-win situation for them. There is good reason for it to be provided free on YouTube because they realize that they can reach a large international audience. I heard a commentator mentioned that Predators are very popular in the Philippines, for example, so it's not just an American audience they (mostly Predator) are looking for.

 

[kling&allen]

The Jasmine / Bustamante match was pretty good. I won't spoil the ending:

 

[sjm]

Some of the top pros are avoiding this tour because they feel the format removes some of their competitive edge over weaker players and can lead to more variance in results.

I think the format makes upsets even less likely than in standard race to 9 tournaments.

Yes, sometimes the 700 Fargo will manage to get into a shootout with an 800, but they've got very tough action in that shootout against the elite, so the path to victory isn't easy at all.

I think that, for an elite, straight shooting professional, they've got very strong action in this kind of format. That's why there are almost no major Cinderella stories in these events, and I think it will stay that way.

The format and the payout structure make the deck stacked heavily in favor, not against, the most elite cueists. Even though the most elite may not make money at every event, they will horde prize money in this event series relative to most other events.

 

[ctyhntr]

Except for the Ref's haircut.

Matchroom and the pro players doesn't an issue. He's refereeing for them next week at Milton Keynes.

 

[azhousepro]

The Jasmine / Bustamante match was pretty good. I won't spoil the ending:

That was good. I would have been hard pressed to choose a favorite in that one before they started. Wasn't much separating them at the end either.

 

[Poolplaya9]

I drove over to watch this. It was my first time watching pros in real life besides when I went to Tin Man's MN Pool Boot Camp. I was there from 11 am to 4:45. I feel a little weird about it because while it was awesome to watch the last set of the Gorst vs. Kaci match all the other matches I watched were subpar compared to watching the super elite on youtube.

They were good matches but I was surprised by the amount of misses I saw. There was a game during the Appleton vs. Konrad J. match where it took 5 shots on the 10 ball before it went it. None of them were safes.

I could also direct you to videos where Appleton and Konrad play sets of near perfect pool.

A few things you have to remember here in my opinion. First, while professionals play at a level a lot closer to perfect a lot more of the time than amateurs do, they also have their ups and downs just like everybody else. They're human and can also have their off moments, matches, days, or longer. Second, on youtube, a big portion of the matches you will tend to see will be finals, and semi-finals, and quarter-finals and the like. The players in those matches tended to get to the end stages of that tournament because they were playing well that tournament. The earlier stages of almost all tournaments are full of dud matches where at least one of the players is a lower level player, or higher level player who is off their game. And finally, the better a player you become, the more you will be able to appreciate just how sickeningly good the pros are, and just how much better than you they are, and the chasm between you almost seems to widen rather than decrease. And of course there is a whole lot more to playing than how often they miss as well, but they don't generally miss all that often either.

 

[Poolplaya9]

An American tour that doesn't attract America's most elite players and in which Americans have little success won't attract much viewership or attention and, if that happens, both CSI and Predator will likely walk away from the project whenever their first contract runs out. Your suggestion that they'll necessarily stay the course because they have deep pockets is one that I often heard during the IPT days. I argued it then and will repeat it now: That's not how astute businessmen, to use your terminology, operate. In fact, it's just the opposite, for it is the astute businessman that walks away from a losing venture faster than anybody else. Trudeau abandoned ship after a year back in 2006-7.

In my opinion what happened with Trudeau was a different animal entirely. The finer details escape me now, but the way I recall it Trudeau's entire business plan was to court the online gambling industry to bankroll the entire thing with their advertising dollars in exchange for the advertising opportunity. It was a very binary type plan based solely on that from the get go. Then, after just a few events, online gambling was made illegal in America, and that completely killed any chance for Trudeau's plan to work as online gambling obviously now has zero incentive to want to contribute advertising dollars to a place where online gambling has been made illegal and cannot take place, and so Trudeau then wisely shut it down immediately since that had been the one and only viable plan the way he saw it.

Addressing some of your other comments more generally, I totally agree that a good businessman knows when to abandon a sinking ship, but a good businessman also doesn't abandon a business that still has a good opportunity to work. He has to be able to discern between one that is sinking, and one that just isn't up to full power yet. All good businessmen know that it is very common, even among businesses that ultimately become very successful, to struggle for the first few years and even operate in the red in many cases. The kiss of death is bailing too early, or too late either one. Easy, huh?

There is obviously some room for debate on just how much dollars say CSI/Predator/Fargo, or Matchroom, should pump into their vision, and for just how long, but I think most reasonable and knowledgeable business people would say that to give a pool tour/series of events an honest and reasonable chance would take minimum of a couple years and possibly more depending on the all the particulars you see as you go along, and that instant dramatic success simply can't be expected for something like this.

 

[Poolplaya9]

I think the format makes upsets even less likely than in standard race to 9 tournaments.

Yes, sometimes the 700 Fargo will manage to get into a shootout with an 800, but they've got very tough action in that shootout against the elite, so the path to victory isn't easy at all.

I think that, for an elite, straight shooting professional, they've got very strong action in this kind of format. That's why there are almost no major Cinderella stories in these events, and I think it will stay that way.

The format and the payout structure make the deck stacked heavily in favor, not against, the most elite cueists. Even though the most elite may not make money at every event, they will horde prize money in this event series relative to most other events.

Many are speculating this makes upsets a lot more likely than races to 9, and you are speculating it makes them a little less likely than races to 9, but there isn't really a need to speculate since we have the answer. Mike has done the analysis and as of now the data says the format is about as likely to create upsets as a race to 8, at least the way I understand it. He has a video on it on his youtube channel, and a number of posts stating same.

 

[sjm]

Speaking more generally, I totally agree that a good businessman knows when to abandon a sinking ship, but a good businessman also doesn't abandon a business that still has a good opportunity to work. He has to be able to discern between one that is sinking, and one that just isn't up to full power yet. All good businessmen know that it is very common, even among businesses that ultimately become very successful, to struggle for the first few years and even operate in the red in many cases. The kiss of death is bailing too early, or too late either one. Easy, huh?

Very well said.

Those who roll the dice on pool in America need to know when to invest, how long to wait before proclaiming a struggling business a loser, and when and how to recoup and redirect funds associated with underperforming investments. In this respect, they are no different than any other business proprietors, and the best of them will get these decisions right with astounding consistency. CSI and Predator are both blessed with strong executives at the helm, which bodes well for the future.

 

[Island Drive]

That's why I've said before and have proof, nows the Best time to open up a large building with proper ceiling height/modern HVAC/well lit/with a LARGE parking lot/modern facility for Half the price of everything else in life right now. I had my motorhome close friend rent a huge bldg with, high ceilings to do winter reroofing's/repairs, not mobile much anymore now, $500 a mth. Includes office area. bathroom, heat.

 

[Black-Balled]

I'm with you on this, but I think there's another issue beyond the format and it's the super top-heavy payout structure. Expenses per event (travel + lodging + entry fees + other expenses) tend to be about $1,000 per player for an America-based competitor.

At the Arizona Open in January, the only players that cashed for more than $1,000 were those finishing in the top 8. The 48 players that didn't reach Stage 2 got nothing. Those finishing 9/16 got $1,000 and broke about even. If only 8 players in a field of 64 make money net of expense, it's very weak action for all but the elite. The prize fund at the Arizona Open was $75,000 and $67,000 (roughly 90%) of it was paid to the top 8. Over the years, I've tended to favor top heavy payout structures, but this takes things too far. In all my years around pro pool, the only more "top heavy" payout structure I've seen came at the winner-take-all Challenge of Champions events.

The main reason the best American players should play is to support the best new tour in America in many years. If the top Americans stay on the sidelines while Asia continues to struggle with COVID, they will be relying on Europe to keep these fields elite and this tour alive. It really shouldn't come down to that, but it might.

Prior to 2022, American-based events offered just a few really big ($15,000+) paydays: 1) the US Open 9-ball, 2) Derby City, and 3) the International. This new tour, by adding five high prize events, has brought us from three potential big paydays to eight in America. This tour was intended to offer a big opportunity for American players to make an income from pool without flying overseas. If the top Americans choose not to try to capitalize on that opportunity, the opportunity may vanish one day, and they will have themselves to blame.

CSI and Predator have really stepped up to the plate with this new event series. Hopefully, somewhere down the road, the most elite players will take notice and support them to the max.

Great stuff as always, Stu.

Predator Group would be a fine case study for any business school. It took a smallish aspect of a niche game and has Benn able to parlay its successes into a position of market leader.

Point being: USA has enjoyed much of Predator's efforts on its own turf and in case it has gone unnoticed, Predator isn't done growing. It has stepped up it's aggressive pursuit of the world marked with many high profile events in other countries.

Predator has the ball and if it doesn't see acceptable ROI here, it has the wherewithal to take that ball elsewhere.

It love to know Karim Belhaj's ten year plan...and I think I'd love to work there and support Predator's continued growth.

 

[Black-Balled]

That's why I've said before and have proof, nows the Best time to open up a large building with proper ceiling height/modern HVAC/well lit/with a LARGE parking lot/modern facility for Half the price of everything else in life right now. I had my motorhome close friend rent a huge bldg with, high ceilings to do winter reroofing's/repairs, not mobile much anymore now, $500 a mth. Includes office area. bathroom, heat.

It is always a good time to get things at half price.

 

[sjm]

Great stuff as always, Stu.

Predator Group would be a fine case study for any business school. It took a smallish aspect of a niche game and has Benn able to parlay its successes into a position of market leader.

Point being: USA has enjoyed much of Predator's efforts on its own turf and in case it has gone unnoticed, Predator isn't done growing. It has stepped up it's aggressive pursuit of the world marked with many high profile events in other countries.

Predator has the ball and if it doesn't see acceptable ROI here, it has the wherewithal to take that ball elsewhere.

It love to know Karim Belhaj's ten year plan...and I think I'd love to work there and support Predator's continued growth.

Predator is a credit to our sport and has been for a long time. They make great products and have been great benefactors of pro pool for years.

They didn't exist yet when I was doing my MBA some 40 years ago, however, so they weren't yet a case study. I'm sure their story, as you suggest, is one worthy of study.

 

[sjm]

Many are speculating this makes upsets a lot more likely than races to 9, and you are speculating it makes them a little less likely than races to 9, but there isn't really a need to speculate since we have the answer. Mike has done the analysis and as of now the data says the format is about as likely to create upsets as a race to 8, at least the way I understand it. He has a video on it on his youtube channel, and a number of posts stating same.

Well, I'd never try to contradict Mike, but these events are pretty new. Do we have even close to enough data to judge accurately what the odds of a player winning a shootout are when they compete against someone whose Fargo is 100 points higher?

Fargo is perfect for determining how often each player will sweep two sets and how often they would split sets to force a shootout, but my sense of things is that we've not seen enough shootouts to be able to have a really good handle on how Fargo differences translate to shootout win probabilities.

That said, the early returns are in and Mike has studied the results to date. These results do mean something, but I think the jury is still out here.

 

[mikepage]

Great stuff as always, Stu.

Predator Group would be a fine case study for any business school. It took a smallish aspect of a niche game and has Benn able to parlay its successes into a position of market leader.

Point being: USA has enjoyed much of Predator's efforts on its own turf and in case it has gone unnoticed, Predator isn't done growing. It has stepped up it's aggressive pursuit of the world marked with many high profile events in other countries.

Predator has the ball and if it doesn't see acceptable ROI here, it has the wherewithal to take that ball elsewhere.

It love to know Karim Belhaj's ten year plan...and I think I'd love to work there and support Predator's continued growth.

I'm at Wisconsin, and I spoke to Karim and Ozzy and others yesterday. Let's look a a couple changes last year to this year and this year to next year.

Last year to this: Prize $$ just about doubled in each event
Last year to this: Events that were not filling last year are full this year
Last year to this: Event 3--LV Open next month--now $100K purse, now over 100 signed up including more than half of world top 30 by FR
Last year to this: World 10-Ball (following Event 3 in Vegas) from 64 to 128 players - purse up to $200K
Last year to this: Coordination with WPBA (Women), who have 4 events with PBS format this year
Last year to this: New event coming to Canada this summer with I think $100K added between men and women
Last year to this: Austria Open (open event and Women's event) on track for Fall. German Open?? coming
Last year to this: Michigan event from 64 to 128 players

This year to next: Event 3--LV Open--will go from 128 to 256 players
This year to next: World 10-Ball to quarter million purse

There is a lot of long view going on.

Some would like events that both get the world's best to travel around the globe AND for which a 750-rated player has positive expectation. Yes, there are examples of this. But they have been one-off events that go for big numbers of participants with a lot of lower-rated players willing to enter because it's THE big event. In other words that model for a special event that relies on the event being a single once-a-year big deal is not the right one for a tour.

If we have a tour, though, one that's high quality and well grounded and not based on pie-in-the-sky predictions about the future, then we will see REGIONAL efforts to fund trips for, say, 700+ rated players showing commitment. That's kind of the easy part.

 

[Joe_Jaguar]

coming up at 11:00 on the stream is Mika vs Daz and then at 1:00 is Omar vs the Yapp.

 

[mikepage]

Well, I'd never try to contradict Mike, but these events are pretty new. Do we have even close to enough data to judge accurately what the odds of a player winning a shootout are when they compete against someone whose Fargo is 100 points higher?

We're not in a position to answer that question and won't be even after we have a bunch more of the data from these events. Here's why.

Suppose you were interested in the average weight of male adults in Albany NY. That's easy. You set your scale down and as several hundred adult men pass you you politely ask them to step on the scale. Then you add the weights and divide by the number of people.

That's fine, until you realize the only place you can set up is in the junk-food aisle of the grocery store...or in the fresh produce aisle...

That's the situation we are in. If every pair of players 100 points apart did a shootout, we'd be fine. But that's not the case. Instead, every 100-point-apart pair we see doing a shootout just split two races to 4. That means we preferentially get pairs where the low player is a little underrated, the high player is a little overrated, the low-player got a good breakfast, the high-player's dog just died or lost the rent money in the casino. So until we find another way to get those data, we won't have a good analysis of this

Fargo is perfect for determining how often each player will sweep two sets and how often they would split sets to force a shootout, but my sense of things is that we've not seen enough shootouts to be able to have a really good handle on how Fargo differences translate to shootout win probabilities.

Given the above, what we are able to do is fold in the shootout with the two sets and examine how often the higher-rated player wins the whole match when they are 100 points apart.

That said, the early returns are in and Mike has studied the results to date. These results do mean something, but I think the jury is still out here.

Yeah, we'll keep analyzing. Given that, it's not clear to me what outcome is most desirable.

I would say if we want to crown the world champion--like at World 10-Ball Championships, then we want the match format to be as discriminating as possible. We would do races to 50 if we could.

But if we're talking about events in a tour, I think we don't actually want those long races even if time and engagement wasn't an issue.

 

[sjm]

I'm at Wisconsin, and I spoke to Karim and Ozzy and others yesterday. Let's look a a couple changes last year to this year and this year to next year.

Last year to this: Prize $$ just about doubled in each event
Last year to this: Events that were not filling last year are full this year
Last year to this: Event 3--LV Open next month--now $100K purse, now over 100 signed up including more than half of world top 30 by FR
Last year to this: World 10-Ball (following Event 3 in Vegas) from 64 to 128 players - purse up to $200K
Last year to this: Coordination with WPBA (Women), who have 4 events with PBS format this year
Last year to this: New event coming to Canada this summer with I think $100K added between men and women
Last year to this: Austria Open (open event and Women's event) on track for Fall. German Open?? coming
Last year to this: Michigan event from 64 to 128 players

This year to next: Event 3--LV Open--will go from 128 to 256 players
This year to next: World 10-Ball to quarter million purse

There is a lot of long view going on.

Some would like events that both get the world's best to travel around the globe AND for which a 750-rated player has positive expectation. Yes, there are examples of this. But they have been one-off events that go for big numbers of participants with a lot of lower-rated players willing to enter because it's THE big event. In other words that model for a special event that relies on the event being a single once-a-year big deal is not the right one for a tour.

If we have a tour, though, one that's high quality and well grounded and not based on pie-in-the-sky predictions about the future, then we will see REGIONAL efforts to fund trips for, say, 700+ rated players showing commitment. That's kind of the easy part.

A nice, thoughtful post. Thanks, Mike.

 

[sjm]

We're not in a position to answer that question and won't be even after we have a bunch more of the data from these events. Here's why.

Suppose you were interested in the average weight of male adults in Albany NY. That's easy. You set your scale down and as several hundred adult men pass you you politely ask them to step on the scale. Then you add the weights and divide by the number of people.

That's fine, until you realize the only place you can set up is in the junk-food aisle of the grocery store...or in the fresh produce aisle...

That's the situation we are in. If every pair of players 100 points apart did a shootout, we'd be fine. But that's not the case. Instead, every 100-point-apart pair we see doing a shootout just split two races to 4. That means we preferentially get pairs where the low player is a little underrated, the high player is a little overrated, the low-player got a good breakfast, the high-player's dog just died or lost the rent money in the casino. So until we find another way to get those data, we won't have a good analysis of this


Given the above, what we are able to do is fold in the shootout with the two sets and examine how often the higher-rated player wins the whole match when they are 100 points apart.



Yeah, we'll keep analyzing. Given that, it's not clear to me what outcome is most desirable.

I would say if we want to crown the world champion--like at World 10-Ball Championships, then we want the match format to be as discriminating as possible. We would do races to 50 if we could.

But if we're talking about events in a tour, I think we don't actually want those long races even if time and engagement wasn't an issue.

I sense we see this the same way, Mike. Thanks for these insights.

 

[Nostroke]

That's why I've said before and have proof, nows the Best time to open up a large building with proper ceiling height/modern HVAC/well lit/with a LARGE parking lot/modern facility for Half the price of everything else in life right now. I had my motorhome close friend rent a huge bldg with, high ceilings to do winter reroofing's/repairs, not mobile much anymore now, $500 a mth. Includes office area. bathroom, heat.

Where is that-Haiti?