Highest average straight pool points per inning lifetime?

L.S. Dennis

L.S. Dennis

Well-known member
I was watching a Miz/Butera accustats straight pool match with Billy commentating, and at one point he said that Mizerak had the highest average of points per inning than anyone else in straight pool history. Its this correct? More than Mosconi, Greenleaf and all the rest? No question that the Miz was a great player but... Anyone able to verify this?
 
L.S. Dennis said:
I was watching a Miz/Butera accustats straight pool match with Billy commentating, and at one point he said that Mizerak had the highest average of points per inning than anyone else in straight pool history. Its this correct? More than Mosconi, Greenleaf and all the rest? No question that the Miz was a great player but... Anyone able to verify this?
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Never seen/heard of that stat being in the mix.
 
Sounds like a claim made that can neither be proven, nor disproven.

Restricting it to tourney data available is doable but I rarely see innings in addition to score... methinks.
 
Black-Balled said:
Sounds like a claim made that can neither be proven, nor disproven.

Restricting it to tourney data available is doable but I rarely see innings in addition to score... methinks.
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To quote my good Korean buddy, "Exzachry" ;) Never seen inning stats before. Sounds like a 'Billy-stat', something he just pulled out of his ass.
 
L.S. Dennis said:
I was watching a Miz/Butera accustats straight pool match with Billy commentating, and at one point he said that Mizerak had the highest average of points per inning than anyone else in straight pool history. Its this correct? More than Mosconi, Greenleaf and all the rest? No question that the Miz was a great player but... Anyone able to verify this?
Click to expand...
I believe what was said was, The Miz had the highest points per inning in the US Open / I believe it was 11 per inning. Sounds crazy but counting all the safeties it really kills the average. Hope this helps
 
I`m not sure who would have been keeping career stats like that back then. I have heard it regarding an individual tournament.
 
gerard soriano said:
I believe what was said was, The Miz had the highest points per inning in the US Open / I believe it was 11 per inning. Sounds crazy but counting all the safeties it really kills the average. Hope this helps
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If I remember correctly when Billy came out with that comment someone else in the booth with him mentioned something like "more than Mosconi?" since Mosconi never played in any modern US Open so I think that would eliminate the Us Open idea.
 
The stat is meaningless because of safties, even if someone really did keep stats.

If the stat was: avg ball run on an offensive start, that would be a nice one to compare.
 
Old stats don’t matter anyway, with the size of the pockets we play with today it’s like comparing pickle ball to tennis
 
The great Charlie Ursitti painstakingly compiled data on 14.1 through the golden years. His PDFs of this data can be found online if someone wanted to dig through them for this comparison. From roughly scanning the data for the 1920s (my favorite era), the tournament winners looked to average 5 or 6 balls per inning.

[Edited with updated analysis]

I fed Charlie's data into ChatGPT to do an analysis. It says:

For 1920s:

1) average BPI for top 5 players was 4.56
2) Ralph Greenleaf had the top average BPI throughout the decade at 5.697

For 1940s:

1) the average BPI for the top 5 players was 8.78
2) Mosconi averages 10.37 throughout the decade (Greenleaf managed 7.58)

For the 1950s:

1) average BPI for the top 5 was 10.767
2) Mosconi's average BPI was 18.54, the top of the decade

For 1970s:

1) average BPI for top 5 was 12.216
2) Steve Mizerak had the top average through the decade at 14.41

Note: I don't 100% trust ChatGPT's calculations here, as I think it's missing some data from Charlie's PDFs. But it looks generally accurate based on the 5 minutes I was willing to double check. As others have pointed out, there were radical changes in equipment starting in the 1940s (better cloth, rails, smaller tables, better balls, uniform equipment at tournaments, etc.) so I don't view this as an accurate way to compare Mizerak to Mosconi. But it does show that BPI correlates with winning lots of championships.

1717261029932.png
 
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kling&allen said:
The great Charlie Ursitti painstakingly compiled data on 14.1 through the golden years. His PDFs of this data can be found online if someone wanted to dig through them for this comparison. From roughly scanning the data for the 1920s (my favorite era), the tournament winners looked to average 5 or 6 balls per inning.

[Edited with updated analysis]

I fed Charlie's data into ChatGPT to do an analysis. It says:

For 1920s:

1) average BPI for top 5 players was 4.56
2) Ralph Greenleaf had the top average BPI throughout the decade at 5.697

For 1940s:

1) the average BPI for the top 5 players was 8.78
2) Mosconi averages 10.37 throughout the decade (Greenleaf managed 7.58)

For the 1950s:

1) average BPI for the top 5 was 10.767
2) Mosconi's average BPI was 18.54, the top of the decade

For 1970s:

1) average BPI for top 5 was 12.216
2) Steve Mizerak had the top average through the decade at 14.41

Note: I don't 100% trust ChatGPT's calculations here, as I think it's missing some data from Charlie's PDFs. But it looks generally accurate based on the 5 minutes I was willing to double check. As others have pointed out, there were radical changes in equipment starting in the 1940s (better cloth, rails, smaller tables, better balls, uniform equipment at tournaments, etc.) so I don't view this as an accurate way to compare Mizerak to Mosconi. But it does show that BPI correlates with winning lots of championships.

View attachment 760849
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Great work, this brings a lot more clarity to this issue!
 
garczar said:
To quote my good Korean buddy, "Exzachry" ;) Never seen inning stats before. Sounds like a 'Billy-stat', something he just pulled out of his ass.
Click to expand...
Balls per inning used to be an absolutely standard stat for straight pool. The scores were recorded on scoresheets, not score wheels or beads. The scoresheets had a place where the score for each inning would be entered. Tournament results for 14.1 routinely showed BPI average for all players. This is from the 1974 BCA rulebook

1717262512800.png
 
Bob Jewett said:
Balls per inning used to be an absolutely standard stat for straight pool. The scores were recorded on scoresheets, not score wheels or beads. The scoresheets had a place where the score for each inning would be entered. Tournament results for 14.1 routinely showed BPI average for all players. This is from the 1974 BCA rulebook

View attachment 760855
Click to expand...

Charlie's data matches that scan you provided--just pointing out that his data has proven 100% reliable anytime I've double checked it (as I did for my Greenleaf book).

1717263391105.png
 
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kling&allen said:
For 1920s:

1) average BPI for top 5 players was 4.56
2) Ralph Greenleaf had the top average BPI throughout the decade at 5.697

For 1940s:

1) the average BPI for the top 5 players was 8.78
2) Mosconi averages 10.37 throughout the decade (Greenleaf managed 7.58)

For the 1950s:

1) average BPI for the top 5 was 10.767
2) Mosconi's average BPI was 18.54, the top of the decade

For 1970s:

1) average BPI for top 5 was 12.216
2) Steve Mizerak had the top average through the decade at 14.41
Click to expand...
Any chance 14.1 fell out of favor due to the lengthening of BPI ??

Seems to me it should have become more popular not less.
 
MitchAlsup said:
Any chance 14.1 fell out of favor due to the lengthening of BPI ??

Seems to me it should have become more popular not less.
Click to expand...

I think 8ball and 9ball are a lot quicker for bar players to pickup and play, even against better players, than 14.1 (our typical bar banger insult). And they can played on smaller and more profitable tables. As big pool halls declined, so did 14.1.
 
For more than 10 years, I have been posting Points per Inning (Balls per Inning) and Points per Attempted Scoring Inning (i.e., excludes innings with no attempt to score a point) for the streamed matches I have tracked in the major 14.1 events.

Here are the threads for the most recent event, the 2023 American Straight Pool Championship:
 
AtLarge said:
For more than 10 years, I have been posting Points per Inning (Balls per Inning) and Points per Attempted Scoring Inning (i.e., excludes innings with no attempt to score a point) for the streamed matches I have tracked in the major 14.1 events.
Click to expand...

I'm curious if the average BPI for the top 5 players in any given recent tournament is more than 12. I'm betting the answer is yes.
 
And i thought baseball had meaningless stats. All that matters is who wins. I must confess tho in that i've probably watched a grand total of maybe 2hrs of it in my life. Was never popular in the areas i played. I played a little, my BPI is probably in neg. #'s. ;) Actually i ran around 30 once about 40yrs ago. Never got into it as no one played in Ok, Ks,Tx,Mo,Ark. All 9b and1p.
 
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