Do tighter pockets favor the shotmaker?

MattPoland said:
I just assume it is ridiculously rare to lopsidedly improve your shotmaking and not also bring your cueball control and patterns up too. I’m thinking the weak ball maker with good compensating skills that ends up equivalent in FargoRating/wins is more of a unicorn not worth entertaining. The pros we call great shotmakers (and still live up to it) seem to me that they are better at pretty much all aspects. Filler? Fedor? Shaw?
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I would agree with this if you changed "ridiculously rare" to "rare" and removed "not worth entertaining."

You are describing the concept we call "skill equilibrium."

When you are a 600-rated player and you roughly have the shotmaking of a 600, the safety play of a 600, the speed control of a 600, we say you are in skill equilibrium. Contract this with the 600-rated player who has the shot-making ability of a 650 but who makes strategic decisions commensurate with those of a 550-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.

An aging player with deteriorating fine-motor skills might be out of skill equilibrium. A top young shooter from a small town with limited exposure to top-level competition might be out of skill equilibrium.
 
mikepage said:
I would agree with this if you changed "ridiculously rare" to "rare" and removed "not worth entertaining."

You are describing the concept we call "skill equilibrium."

When you are a 600-rated player and you roughly have the shotmaking of a 600, the safety play of a 600, the speed control of a 600, we say you are in skill equilibrium. Contract this with the 600-rated player who has the shot-making ability of a 650 but who makes strategic decisions commensurate with those of a 550-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.

An aging player with deteriorating fine-motor skills might be out of skill equilibrium. A top young shooter from a small town with limited exposure to top-level competition might be out of skill equilibrium.
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I experienced this last year. 99% of my pool had been on 9’ Diamond tables with the measles cue ball that year. I joined a league that played on brunswicks with a red circle cue ball. Took me a couple of nights to adjust to normal.
 
The announcer George Teyechea might be an example of a player who does not have skill equilibrium. He is rated a 647 so he must shoot as straight as an 850 because he damn sure isn't above a 450 level on patterns, strategy, and shot selection. He can't ever get a call right, and they are usually wildly--wildly--wrong.
 
Bavafongoul said:
Both football and shelf stocking are two awful examples to compare with tighter pockets on a pool table.
There is very little advantage to being bigger, stronger, quicker, faster, taller when it comes playing pool.

[...]
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I failed to convey the point of the analogies. The idea is to find a task with TWO DIMENSIONS contributing to the same goal. Successful "players" can accomplish the task leaning on one more than the other. At pool, we reduce it to "potting" and "moving."

The impact of changing the conditions is, I think, counterintuitive. When we change the conditions of the task (go to a tighter table, increase the size of the defensive players, add a higher shelf), we might THINK we are advantaging the player whose strength matched the change (good at potting, good at plowing through defensive players, good at reaching high shelves) when we perhaps are instead advantaging the player already good at mitigating against that dimension.

Product knowledge and persuasion skills for a car salesperson would make for another good analogy.
 
For baby pool players easier equipment is better.

They have so much to work on there is no need to add a huge, heaping dollop of frustration with tougher pockets. For experienced players, yes, of course tighter pockets help sharpen up your precision, not only in pocketing the ball but in becoming more comfortable with the reduced parameters you have in terms of working the CB for position play. My experience has been that if I'm, say, giving up a big 1pocket spot, I want a tighter table so the guy getting the spot isn't as likely to make so many balls. And even against an experienced player, if I know he's from a room with looser pockets than I'm used to at my room, I consider that a significant advantage.

Lou Figueroa
 
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mikepage said:
I failed to convey the point of the analogies. The idea is to find a task with TWO DIMENSIONS contributing to the same goal. Successful "players" can accomplish the task leaning on one more than the other. At pool, we reduce it to "potting" and "moving."

The impact of changing the conditions is, I think, counterintuitive. When we change the conditions of the task (go to a tighter table, increase the size of the defensive players, add a higher shelf), we might THINK we are advantaging the player whose strength matched the change (good at potting, good at plowing through defensive players, good at reaching high shelves) when we perhaps are instead advantaging the player already good at mitigating against that dimension.

Product knowledge and persuasion skills for a car salesperson would make for another good analogy.
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Great point/post. I never thought of it that way. I'm still working on my shot making, but I'm real good at 2 way shots and leaving the opponent nothing. It comes natural to me. I really enjoy 1P on tighter equipment. It allows me a chance against a much better player (~230 Fargo higher).

The fun part is, the better player will (hopefully) quickly adapt to the conditions and way of thinking. They still have their shot making to rely on, but they will have to figure out the strategy of 1P. When my 8 ball league teammates get on a 1P kick I really like seeing us play 8 ball league games afterward. 2 ways/safe are on the top of our mind and there are 6X the number of pockets to pot balls in. It can be a bloodbath. Especially if we're on 5" buckets.

lfigueroa said:
For experienced players, yes, of course tighter pockets help sharpen up your precision, not only in pocketing the ball but in becoming more comfortable with the reduce parameters you have in terms of working the CB for position play.
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(y)
 
ChrisinNC said:
Tight pocket tables are great practice tables for already skilled players, but not to practice on all the time. However, for lower level players it’s a complete fallacy to think it’s going to help their game to practice on tight pockets. I see it in here all the time. It does absolutely nothing but destroy what little shotmaking confidence they are trying to improve..
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THIS^^^^

My friends don't want to play on my table anymore after it as "improved."


Jeff Livingston
 
straightline said:
Gotta disagree. As a beginner I always went for the snooker table in the back of the room. Did everything wrong but eventually I got shots going into the hole. Somewhere during this period I started using pool balls and kept plowing away. Three or four of us beginners from school would play 8 ball like this. They lost interest when I started to get competent at pool but that's how it is. You like it or you don't like it.
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To clarify, I’m referring to players of the skill level that couldn’t beat the ghost playing BIH throwing 2 balls out on the table. They have no business practicing on 4-1/4” corners.
 
mikepage said:
I would agree with this if you changed "ridiculously rare" to "rare" and removed "not worth entertaining."

You are describing the concept we call "skill equilibrium."

When you are a 600-rated player and you roughly have the shotmaking of a 600, the safety play of a 600, the speed control of a 600, we say you are in skill equilibrium. Contract this with the 600-rated player who has the shot-making ability of a 650 but who makes strategic decisions commensurate with those of a 550-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.

An aging player with deteriorating fine-motor skills might be out of skill equilibrium. A top young shooter from a small town with limited exposure to top-level competition might be out of skill equilibrium.
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When you say “our experience is” do you mean at FargoRate or are you just using the royal we? Have you been measuring skill levels and correlating it to FargoRatings?
 
ChrisinNC said:
To clarify, I’m referring to players of the skill level that couldn’t beat the ghost playing BIH throwing 2 balls out on the table. They have no business practicing on 4-1/4” corners.
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I don't see anything prohibiting beginners from refining or even starting their abilities with tight pockets. It's not just about hitting the pockets. Players should learn the dimensions and vectors of their shots and that no matter how small or distant the goal, the ball will remain the same size and generally enough, continue to roll in the direction it is shot.
 
One way to try to model and analyze this problem is to say that playing only involves two skills: shot making and position play.

Shot making can be characterized by the player's "spread" or the distribution of errors in where they send the object ball. Better shot makers have a smaller/tighter spread. Usually this is assumed to be a bell-shaped curve (gaussian) where most shots are pretty close to the target and large errors are rare.

Position play can be characterized by the length/difficulty of the shots a player leaves for himself. You can assign a difficulty number to each shot by noting the two distances of the shot -- CB to OB and OB to pocket in diamonds -- and multiplying them together. If you make either length twice as long, the shot allows only half the spread. Cut angle adds to the difficulty in a fairly simple way.

In this analysis I'm going to ignore strategy and just look at those two factors. I don't know how to put a number on strategy and various other factors.

Suppose you have two players who are equal with 5-inch pockets but one -- call him SaM -- is a shot maker and one -- PoP -- is a position player. Let's say that they are each 95% to make their shots and Pop has, on average, shots that are only half as hard as Sam's. Sam must have half the spread (twice the accuracy) on where he sends the object ball measured as an angle.

In the end, the spread for each of them measured at the pocket has to be the same. Each of them misses 5% of their shots which are out on the "tails" of the bell curve.

Now, make the pockets tighter. How do the misses change for the two players? The change will be exactly the same because the spread measured at the pocket is the same. If Sam is missing 10% of the time, Pop will also be missing 10% of the time.

Ignoring strategy might bother some, but I don't see how to include it. Note that Sam, the shot maker, may have figured out a good set of strategies for his abilities, like leaving tough shots when he pushes out. Pop may have a set of strategies that is only equal in usefulness -- we don't know. And maybe Sam jumps well.

As far as the shot difficulty measurement, I did the stats on some top players in the 1970s (14.1) in tournaments. Among the ones I clocked, Irving Crane consistently had the easiest shots at somewhere around 3. The other players were like 4 or more on average. Crane was a pretty good shotmaker as well.
 
I think position player have advantage... but he has to be able play better positional shots without cheating the pocket. If he got better position play by using whole pocket he will rattle too many balls even easier shots.
Why I think positional player got advantage is that missing balls will affect more to straight shooter mentally.
 
Poolmanis said:
I think position player have advantage... but he has to be able play better positional shots without cheating the pocket. If he got better position play by using whole pocket he will rattle too many balls even easier shots.
Why I think positional player got advantage is that missing balls will affect more to straight shooter mentally.
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Good position players are at an advantage on any table. They don't spent the game in constant chaos going from one crisses to another. The game is a lot more fun when you play good position.
 
MajorMiscue said:
To answer the original question, tighter pockets favor the better player.
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That is not the original question.

The players are equal. Neither is better. They just have a somewhat different mix of skills. One is a better shotmaker and the other is just enough better at other things to make up for it.

And THEN the table gets tighter.
 
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