How they choose to spin it is of no concern to me.
SJM at the 2022 International Open
- Thread starter sjm
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Badpenguin
Well-known member
Word around the various social media campfires is that SVB advocates for Earl. My (delusional?) hope is that SVB and Earl can feed off of each other in a positive way. Have they ever played together on a Mosconi Cup team?
Shane and Earl have been on 3 MC teams together -- 2007, 2008, and 2013. They played as a doubles team in only two matches:
2007 -- lost 0-6 vs. Peach and Souquet
2013 -- won 6-5 vs. Appleton and Immonen
If I might dig down a little deeper here:
In an interview with Reed Pierce and Kim Davenport conducted during the tournament, Earl Strickland complained about slow play. There's no need to consider his motivations for complaint and Earl is right.
It is doing damage to our sport. It renders certain matches played without a shot clock completely unwatchable. I know of just one tournament director that rules with an iron had when it comes to maintenance of the tournament schedule and that's Joss Tour director Mike Zuglan, who pays attention to the scores of all matches in progress and gets in the face of players that are falling behind, demanding they speed things up. Those of us who attend Turning Stone, the only event that almost never falls behind schedule, know that this practice generally works.
At least, we have evolved to the point that all arena table matches at significant events are played with the shot clock, so those who watch on TV/stream are spared the lethargic pace too often found even at the majors. Even for those who watch on stream, however, there are consequences of slow play, as match times indicated in the schedule or brackets are not adhered to with any consistency.
I'm sure that even the event producers would favor the use of a shot clock in every match, but the reality is that finding enough people to administer the shot clocks in every match, even at the majors, is a near impossible task unless you pay and train them. Pro pool's finances just won't accommodate that until the sport grows a little more, so we'll have to be patient.
I like the way the WPBA handled slow play some twenty years ago. There were just a couple of shot clock operators available. Every match started without a shot clock. A race to nine was scheduled to be completed in two hours, but unless eight racks or more had been completed by the one-hour mark, a match went on the shot clock, with the shot clock operator using a stopwatch. This had the additional effect of motivating slower players to make an effort to keep things moving in the first hour of a match.
Sadly, the game's finances will dictate whether greater regulation of the speed of play is possible.
Check your PMWell, I feel like Jeremy Jones is a fairly reasonable guy and wouldn't outwardly lie about being directly influenced/told to pick someone, as he said "it my final decision". By the way when you say "they" who are you referring to specifically, Barry Hearn?
I actually saw a Facebook post where Ruijsink, I think it was, confirmed he didn’t have a choice. But I’d like to think there is some choice now. Especially as it’s too easy for that to come out so why don’t they just say 6 picks based on rankings and 4 more picked by Matchroom just to stir the pot. At least upfront we’d probably accept it
Matchroom will do what it must to grow our sport and we should all be OK with it. If they choose to influence the picks, it's with the growth of our sport in mind, so I'll trust their judgment.
Believe nothing of what you hear and 1/2 of what you see.
Some guzzle the kool-aid, some sip it slowly, some spit it out.
People will take a life for a dollar while others will sell their souls for pennies.
Business is business, they don't give a shit about you, me, the scarecrow. They are in business
to make money, pure and simple, business is business, it's just business.
I watch this Mosconi bullcrap, the picks, who is in charge, and scratch my head at the attention it receives.
It's a show, a production, it's business, don't turn your back when money is on the line.
I appreciate the work involved to bring us great pool but I am not drinking the kool-aid.
I love pool, we all love pool.
They can take the orange 4 ball and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.
That should open it wide enough for the purple 5 to slide right in joyfully.
Some guzzle the kool-aid, some sip it slowly, some spit it out.
People will take a life for a dollar while others will sell their souls for pennies.
Business is business, they don't give a shit about you, me, the scarecrow. They are in business
to make money, pure and simple, business is business, it's just business.
I watch this Mosconi bullcrap, the picks, who is in charge, and scratch my head at the attention it receives.
It's a show, a production, it's business, don't turn your back when money is on the line.
I appreciate the work involved to bring us great pool but I am not drinking the kool-aid.
I love pool, we all love pool.
They can take the orange 4 ball and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.
That should open it wide enough for the purple 5 to slide right in joyfully.
Difficult question, but I think it is chiefly because slow play is being tolerated more than it ever has been in the past.
Nearly all pro players have shown that they can play great pool even when the shot clock is in use. Even Souquet, one of the poster boys for slow play, won many an event in which he had to play the late rounds on the shot clock. That said, if you give the pros as much time as they like to plan a shot, slow players will abuse the privilege more today than in the past.
I really don't think players are being taught/trained to play slowly, but I could possibly be mistaken about this.
The blame for the growth in slow play, in my view, lies with the event directors/producers/referees, who don't, as a rule, do enough to limit it.
There's no doubt in my mind that the racking template is yet another reason matches are dragging on more than back in the day. Yes, the occasional racking argument is avoided, but the process of template removal time and time again adds about 5-10 minutes to every match.
They could get the equivalent of a template rack by tapping/training the table which I believe they do on the Eurotour. There would not be a removal issue
. In fact Matchroom has tapped/trained tables at times when using the triangle, I suppose for the visuals but also to avoid dead nine balls.
The template does not get a tight rack unless you are careful and take your time. It's not instantaneous. Sometimes, when multiple balls end up in the rack area, it easily takes 20-30 seconds to remove it.
Then you're likely not attending the major tourneys.
After most breaks, there is often a ball, and sometimes more than one ball in the rack area obstructing removal of the template. When this happened at the International, where twelve of the thirteen tables had area referees only, the player nearly always called for the area referee to remove the template. If the referee was available, they were generally present in thirty seconds, but if they were racking at another table or making a ruling at another table, there was a delay.
Once present, they used their ball marker to note the position of the ball(s) that will be removed to make template removal possible. After they remove the template, they replace the ball(s) removed and play can resume.
Rest assured that this process wastes a lot of time.