Sadistic Genie

Top Athletes in any sports have bad days. Thing like sleep, or lack of effect personal performance. Stress, bad news, good news, and many other thing effect performance.

Why because we’re human, not machines.
 
Tin Man said:
The other half of the days you will hook yourself with ball in hand, go off the table on the break, rattle anything more than a foot from the pocket, the contact point will shift back and forth like eye floaters and it will feel like your stroke has 12 hinges moving side to side. Would you accept that?
Click to expand...
That sounds like my normal game 100% of the time, already, so sure I'll take that 50% deal!
 
Nice thread.

When I was in high school, I actually played on the golf team. On the bad days, my coach always said the same thing, specifically "bad golf is part of golf, but try to get the most out of your game even when you're playing bad golf." He was right, of course, and his observation is just as applicable to pool. Playing poorly is part of the game, but those who succeed know how to handle all the ebbs and flows of performance without losing their competitive intensity.
 
This forum sure provides a bunch of good sh…. er, stuff to gnaw on. Thanks much for commiserating with me in my journey.
 
Hey, Demetrius, I was watching one of you videos with Dr Dave. It appears you are lining up with your left eye over the cue. I am right handed/left eye dominant and my vision center seems to be the center of my left eye. When I try to get low on the cue the alignment of my arm suffers and my stroke gets crooked. Do you have any advice to help with this? Thank you.
 
Tin Man said:
Mike Page from Fargo Rate did some analysis to bust the myth that top players are more consistent than others. Below is a must see 3 minute video explaining this.

So if inconsistency is a universal experience, the cause of the problem is our humanity, not our sighting.

Click to expand...
Yes, yes! Great thread Demetrius! It’s all about accepting the sign wave and simply moving it to right.
 
One of the interesting things about pool and Fargo Ratings is that, if I understand correctly, a 100 point difference represents a 2:1 advantage. But, unlike many other (lesser) sports, we are measuring likelihood of winning, or relative performance, not absolute performance. If a rating of 700 corresponded to an average golf score of 72, an 800 might be a 68 and a 600 might be a 75. So the odds are shifting much more than the actual performance. A +/- 50 swing and the 2:1 advantage can be the result of very few mistake at the top levels. I have watched many matches where a hill-hill race to 10 was decided by one guy missing 3 shots in the match vs the opponent missing one. This roughly represents 96.3% (78-81) against 97.7% Has anyone compared Fargo ratings to the Accustats averages? I know my estimate omitted balls on break, safeties and early 9s so their numbers were often around .900.
 
Two more things.

One, I recorded a podcast yesterday in which Josh and I take this a bit further and explain the benefits to performance from a more realistic picture of your pool game and the road ahead. Below.

Secondly, I thought about it more and realized something. When I'm on my bad days I may perform like a 650, but it's not like a normal 650. I play like a 700 for 8 shots and then I play like a 100 when the heat is on! :ROFLMAO:

 
Tin Man said:
Two more things.

One, I recorded a podcast yesterday in which Josh and I take this a bit further and explain the benefits to performance from a more realistic picture of your pool game and the road ahead. Below.

Secondly, I thought about it more and realized something. When I'm on my bad days I may perform like a 650, but it's not like a normal 650. I play like a 700 for 8 shots and then I play like a 100 when the heat is on! :ROFLMAO:

Click to expand...
I enjoyed the discussion you had with Josh. I know what my new AZ screen name is going to be…”Goobly Gook Guy” lol. Just call me G3. Just want to tell you I agree 100% with Josh’s assessment of you as an instructor. You guys had me rolling much of the time and at my age that alone is great stuff. I’ll try to join in and listen to more of your podcast if I’m tech savvy enough. Thanks guys!
 
Last edited:
Tin Man said:
Two more things.

One, I recorded a podcast yesterday in which Josh and I take this a bit further and explain the benefits to performance from a more realistic picture of your pool game and the road ahead. Below.

Secondly, I thought about it more and realized something. When I'm on my bad days I may perform like a 650, but it's not like a normal 650. I play like a 700 for 8 shots and then I play like a 100 when the heat is on! :ROFLMAO:

Click to expand...
I haven't listened to the whole thing but that "shoot this shot until you miss 1000 times" bit is honestly brilliant!
 
I think players use the question “How do I get more consistent?” as a crutch to avoid the question “Which of my fundamentals are underdeveloped and costing me games?” It implies you already have what you need and there’s just one silver bullet to lock it all in place. It just doesn’t do justice to all the layers of skills that combine to complete your game as a total package.

I agree you can go day to day ranging from entering flow states to getting the yips and you have to learn to fade your own ego on both ends. I just prefer to orient the conversation back to weaknesses and developing specific capabilities.
 
MattPoland said:
I think players use the question “How do I get more consistent?” as a crutch to avoid the question “Which of my fundamentals are underdeveloped and costing me games?” It implies you already have what you need and there’s just one silver bullet to lock it all in place. It just doesn’t do justice to all the layers of skills that combine to complete your game as a total package.

I agree you can go day to day ranging from entering flow states to getting the yips and you have to learn to fade your own ego on both ends. I just prefer to orient the conversation back to weaknesses and developing specific capabilities.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I’d just add that for many players fundamentals aren’t the weak link at all. So many people obsess about fundamentals so much, yet these same players have massive leaks in their patterns and cue ball that they neglect. I think it’s a lot more fun to chase the dream of shooting like SVB than it is to learn to shave 2” off your cue ball scatter.
 
Lawnboy77 said:
I enjoyed the discussion you had with Josh. I know what my new AZ screen name is going to be…”Goobly Gook Guy” lol. Just call me G3. Just want to tell you I agree 100% with Josh’s assessment of you as an instructor. You guys had me rolling much of the time and at my age that alone is great stuff. I’ll try to join in and listen to more of your podcast if I’m tech savvy enough. Thanks guys!
Click to expand...
Thank you for the kind words. Im glad I made you smile. We have a lot of great people in our pool community. It’s a pleasure to share the journey!
 
Tin Man said:
When you embrace your worst game then all is better. Go to your match prepared to be helpless, disconnected, incompetent, off balance, nervous, and frustrated. Be prepared to work your tail off and come short. Be prepared to face ugly layouts and fall short. If you can accept that then you're in good shape. You have nothing left to fear, no image to protect, and you can just go about your business of trying hard and enjoying the challenge.

Guess what? If you do that session after session the good sessions will come. You don't deserve it. You can't bottle it. But you will have your time in the sun.

I hear some of you now. "You need to be confident!" "You get what you expect!" "Fake it until you make it!" Yeah right. I AM confident. I am confident in my PROCESSES, confident that I will try my best on every shot, keep my attitude positive. But we don't control outcomes and trying to control something we can't leads to frustration and fear. And expectations are all ego driven result thinking. No good. CJ Wiley had a great post a few months ago about how he visualized having lost every match before he played it. This is perfect. It's about SURRENDER. You surrender control and then give it your all.

The simple fact is there is no approach that leads to consistent quality play. The best approach is to accept it, do the best every session you can, and enjoy the good and the bad. When you play to have fun you win as soon as you put your cue together. You will give yourself the most opportunities to play great by not choking your game, and you will enjoy the whole journey more as well.
Click to expand...

Tin Man,

Your "scatter" idea and "sadistic genie" idea make explicit and give vocabulary to things that people may have thought of before, but not sort of in the organized way you do. I appreciate your insight into pool.

Making yourself comfortable with the idea that you have a range of play is certainly a good exercise. Accepting that your matches will likely be full of challenges is also something that is necessary (in my view and it sounds like your view as well) to help gird yourself up for when your opponent keeps rolling good on you--hooking you when he misses, or only leaving you jacked up on a ball after a miss, etc. Maybe they are doing construction in the tournament venue, or like one time at the Derby where my opponent showed up with a cheering section.

However, as Grady Matthews would say, I think it is "fraught with peril" to "visualize losing" before the match. I would respectfully suggest, that our brains have a way of helping us to bring about things we visualize. I can't tell you how many times I have looked at a shot and thought something like, "It sure looks like if I send my cue ball 3 rails, I might scratch off the back of the 7 ball in the side pocket." I then think to myself, "There is no way you play so good to predict a 3 rail carom scratch, shoot the shot." Of course, you know how this ends, my cue ball goes three rails and scratches off the back of the 7, and I start to think about the merits of running into traffic.

Just my 0.02

kollegedave
 
Tin Man said:
Agreed. I’d just add that for many players fundamentals aren’t the weak link at all. So many people obsess about fundamentals so much, yet these same players have massive leaks in their patterns and cue ball that they neglect. I think it’s a lot more fun to chase the dream of shooting like SVB than it is to learn to shave 2” off your cue ball scatter.
Click to expand...

I agree with you there. I often communicate “fundamentals” as the overall tree of skills that complete a player’s game and lump in patterns and cueball control as I do so . But I don’t object to defining some of the physical and mental aspects separately.
 
kollegedave said:
it is "fraught with peril" to "visualize losing" before the match
Click to expand...
It seems like everything I've heard suggests visualizing a positive outcome and hopefully that will give you a boost in confidence that gets you across the goal. Perhaps the visualize losing is not about confidence, but, instead is about detachment. By accepting the negative outcome, we won't get flustered when struggling, thereby exacerbating the problem. Personally I've struggled a lot playing weaker players because I'm not blowing them off the table. Conversely, when playing stronger players, I often punch above my weight class because I am not attached to the outcome, I probably can't beat this guy so if I can stay in the game at all I'm doing well. So I don't think it's the same type of visualization, one is hyping yourself up to do well, the other is pre-accepting a poor performance so when the game goes poorly you have "accepted" the result instead of carrying that weight.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top