Players of the past and their Fargo...

sjm said:
I'm an old schooler, but I just can't convince myself that the best of the last generation were as good as the best of this one.

Yes, Sigel, Varner and Earl would have won some titles if they had played in this era.

The depth of fields today greatly eclipses those of even ten years ago and comparing the depth of fields today to the 1980's and 1990s is silly.

Winning majors is soooo difficult today and yet there is a guy who, at 26 years old, has a resume of major titles that is simply mind-blowing, one that eclipses the resume of over 95% of those already in the BCA Hall of Fame.

Let me be the first on this forum to suggest that Josh Filler is the best player of all time.
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I'm not far behind you. I just think you have to wait a little longer to see if Filler can sustain it, sort of like the great tennis players of this generation have been doing. Up until now the top players seem to have a very short window where they are very hot. Appleton, SVB, and Shaw all appeared on top of the world for a bit before they came back down to earth (at least a bit).

I totally agree with you when it comes to overall skill. Although I don't think it's fair to compare without assuming the previous greats would've been capable of elevating their games if the environment required it.
 
BasementDweller said:
I'm not far behind you. I just think you have to wait a little longer to see if Filler can sustain it, sort of like the great tennis players of this generation have been doing. Up until now the top players seem to have a very short window where they are very hot. Appleton, SVB, and Shaw all appeared on top of the world for a bit before they came back down to earth (at least a bit).

I totally agree with you when it comes to overall skill. Although I don't think it's fair to compare without assuming the previous greats would've been capable of elevating their games if the environment required it.
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Filler has sustained it for almost eight years now, so let's not look upon him as if he were a newbie. He has brought it every year and few players ever have stayed at the top for as long as Josh already has. At very least, he's already in the conversation with Sigel, Mosconi, Reyes and Greenleaf.
 
sjm said:
Filler has sustained it for almost eight years now, so let's not look upon him as if he were a newbie. He has brought it every year and few players ever have stayed at the top for as long as Josh already has. At very least, he's already in the conversation with Sigel, Mosconi, Reyes and Greenleaf.
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I'm probably just guilty of letting time get away from me. Almost a decade already. Wow.

Time please slow down 😞
 
I'm really surprised to see the Jim Rempe love on here. One person thought 820. That's really really strong. So people that have seen him play, is he a solid notch above Woodward? In his prime of course.
 
sjm said:
Filler has sustained it for almost eight years now, so let's not look upon him as if he were a newbie. He has brought it every year and few players ever have stayed at the top for as long as Josh already has. At very least, he's already in the conversation with Sigel, Mosconi, Reyes and Greenleaf.
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For a strong player at an early age the expectation should be on having a long career.
Yes Filler is distinguished and a world champion and worth of the Hall of Fame, however age and experience are still needed for all the off the table responsibilities of being a pro pool player, brand ambassador and representative of the German Sports Federation.

In terms of his social media Filler is a newbie.
 
Isn't Fargo scaled to the entire playing mass? One big then and now is the defense here was possibly flawed; Pinoy invasion as proof of concept.
 
justnum said:
For a strong player at an early age the expectation should be on having a long career.
Yes Filler is distinguished and a world champion and worth of the Hall of Fame, however age and experience are still needed for all the off the table responsibilities of being a pro pool player, brand ambassador and representative of the German Sports Federation.

In terms of his social media Filler is a newbie.
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Yes, that's reasonable. As a player, he has reached the highest possible level of achievement, and has demonstrated sustained excellence, but as a brand ambassador, he's still developing.
 
poolnut7879 said:
25 years ago I asked Parica at what age he played his best pool. He said when he was 17.
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There was a time when all the Filipino players considered him the best by far...by the time he was getting videoed, he'd already declined. Most of his top form never got recorded.

As for comparing generations, take Earl. He is a 773 today--and he still plays in a lot of tournaments. Not a stretch to assume him at 840+ in his prime, and his prime lasted quite a while.
 
sjm said:
Yes, that's reasonable. As a player, he has reached the highest possible level of achievement, and has demonstrated sustained excellence, but as a brand ambassador, he's still developing.
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That feedback balances out the fact that he is an amazing world champion and it will be fun to see how long he controls the streak.
Germans have a history of running the wrong way with an idea.

As critics or journalists of the sport, it serves the players to read feedback critical to their development to serve the industry.
 
Bob Jewett said:
I think it would be interesting to gather up all the old results available from the 1970s on and enter them into FargoRate. It could at least assign ratings to the veteran players. Would the connection hold across several decades?
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I think you’d have to be careful about when you tied them together so it would need to be players whose prime overlapped and only use results from their prime.

SVB is key because he was in good form at an early age and has stayed there for a long time. Which ties him to Johnny Archer, Earl (maybe), Efren, and also a lot of pros like Dennis Hatch and Rodney Morrison who played on the Camel pro tour with a lot of the top players like Earl in his prime as well as Sigel, Matlock, Mccready, etc…
 
hlymnstr14 said:
I'm really surprised to see the Jim Rempe love on here. One person thought 820. That's really really strong. So people that have seen him play, is he a solid notch above Woodward? In his prime of course.
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there are quite a few videos of rempe out there. he definitely stood out in terms of fundamentals, his was super solid. it wouldn't be remarkable today, but i'm glad my first instructional videos were of rempe because some of his peers were jumpy and twitchy af.

iirc rempe even tried the snooker tour, and won the english 8-ball WC, both of which require good fundamentals.
 
West Point 1987 said:
As for comparing generations, take Earl. He is a 773 today--and he still plays in a lot of tournaments. Not a stretch to assume him at 840+ in his prime, and his prime lasted quite a while
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Yeah, I think the top players of today have an edge over Earl, even in his prime. There was not the same level of training when he was coming up. Plus, he never got to watch Earl and see how the game should be played. When he caught that gear, he was a fearsome and intimidating as any competitor in any game, ever. Running 10 racks for a million? How many world Championships? US Open wins? And even today, I don't think many guys feel relieved if they've drawn him in the first round. The man is a beast, and if we're focused on 9 ball, the GOAT.

Varner has a year or two where he was unstoppable, also.
 
xradarx said:
Knock, knock, who’s there?
A gimmick here, a gimmick there, a gimmick everywhere.
Put the top 30 pros who commonly are playing on children size bb’s against selected lesser skilled opponents to guarantee that they are likely to just blast into the later rounds of championships before playing equivalently skilled players into a round robin World Championship on true 4-1/2’x9’ or 5’x10’ tables, and see how many of them can win a few before ordaining them as the best ever.
I don’t even think I need to reference the names of the real World Champions who never even played one championship series on a barbox(gimmick) table.
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Thank you for all that knowledge!
 
The matter of who invested the most of their own personal money into pool is still a large mystery.

The German government is good at it, however whether or not it is their money is another question.

I always hear the name Dr Fedak at many USA events.
 
West Point 1987 said:
As for comparing generations, take Earl. He is a 773 today--and he still plays in a lot of tournaments. Not a stretch to assume him at 840+ in his prime, and his prime lasted quite a while.
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I think Earl (and others) will be a good starting point for trying to backfill Fargo ratings, and therefore, assess historical skill. We don't know what 80's/90's Earl's Fargo was, but we know what 2024 Earl's Fargo is. In 20 years, we will know what 60yo Shane's Fargo is and 45yo Filler etc. So as time moves on we will get a good idea for the general aging curve of a player's Fargo and (presumably) skill. With that it should be possible to then estimate where Earl/Archer/others were in their primes--with fairly wide margins for error, of course, given that different people will succumb to the effects of age differently.
 
hlymnstr14 said:
I'm really surprised to see the Jim Rempe love on here. One person thought 820. That's really really strong. So people that have seen him play, is he a solid notch above Woodward? In his prime of course.
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Rempe probably played his best in the 70s and early 80s. During that time, I don't believe he would be an underdog to anyone. He played everything well. While Woodward doesn't "have" to lose to anybody, he would be an underdog to a prime Rempe. In straight pool, Rempe would bitch slap him.
 
xradarx said:
Knock, knock, who’s there?
A gimmick here, a gimmick there, a gimmick everywhere.
Put the top 30 pros who commonly are playing on children size bb’s against selected lesser skilled opponents to guarantee that they are likely to just blast into the later rounds of championships before playing equivalently skilled players into a round robin World Championship on true 4-1/2’x9’ or 5’x10’ tables, and see how many of them can win a few before ordaining them as the best ever.
I don’t even think I need to reference the names of the real World Champions who never even played one championship series on a barbox(gimmick) table.
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Haha, that's cute, you think table size makes a difference comparing one players skill to another players skill.
 
fjk said:
Rempe probably played his best in the 70s and early 80s. During that time, I don't believe he would be an underdog to anyone. He played everything well. While Woodward doesn't "have" to lose to anybody, he would be an underdog to a prime Rempe. In straight pool, Rempe would bitch slap him.
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Wow. Lol.
 
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