I watched the video, and I still don't see any good reason for this. League's are designed to be fun and a way to encourage people to take up pool. If you're a better player and want to play in a competitive league then that's a different story. But I think for most people it's a night out where they hang out with their friends, have some drinks, and relax without burdensome rules being enforced. For example, If you're a woman who can barely play, you now have the additional worry about your hair or chest accidentally touching a ball when stretching for a shot. And what this ultimately does is take away peoples choice of what type of league they want to play in based on their skill level. Also this gives way to much power to some governing body. Will these leagues be required to pay WPA a fee to use their rules? If so, they would basically control the entire pool league industry, if all the leagues adopt their rules.
Why Pool Leagues Should Embrace “ALL BALL FOULS”
- Thread starter dr_dave
- Start date
perhaps nitpicking here, but Mike Page rarely proves anything, but often cherry picks various specific locations with whatever statistical alignment he is looking for.
I am a big believer in Fargo above any eye test and as a general representation of a player's skill. But to think some players with different Fargo ratings can't have different levels of subskills (someone is better at 9b than 1p, someone else is better on bar boxes than 9') and that these differences don't necessarily translate perfectly to Fargo rating is really stretching credibility.
We have a recent thread about Gorst v Filler, with the predominant idea from experienced talent evaluators that Filler would have the advantage at 9b, but Gorst might be even or even have a slight advantage in 10b. Yet, Filler has an 11-pt Fargo advantage. Which is it? Is the game they are playing inconsequential or is Filler better "on average" but perhaps behind/even in some specific conditions?
Bergman, who is an absolute terror on the barbox (recently ran 19 in a row in 9b), just played and didn't even cash in one of his rare big-table tournaments at the USA Pool Championships. Now one tournament isn't dispositive, but he did lose to relative no-names, and I don't think that's a coincidence. He simply doesn't seem to play much on the big table any more and so is likely a little rusty, despite being someone who could probably rival Shane on the bar box. So, again, is table size irrelevant, or can it still be a determining factor between two players?
How does it not? Claims are made here that the rules have to be the same to accurately compare oneself to others (I even make that claim), yet here is a system that does exactly that without regard to rule sets. It's just an example that seems to go counter to the claims.
Bergman lost 8-7 to Oscar Dominguez and 8-6 to Max Eberle.
For a true, fair comparison, even the tables should be the same specifications, i.e., size, cloth, rail height & pocket size.
7’ tables are hardly the test of your pool skills and I’ve proven that to myself. On a 7’ table, my best run in 9 ball was 3 consecutive runouts and I missed on the 7 ball or it might have been 4 in a row. Running the table on a 7’ table Is far easier than on a 9’ table and BTW, the runout I’m referring to was on 7’ Diamond tables. But on 9’ Diamond tables, I’ve never accomplished that and I mainly play on 9’ tables. I’ve run 2 racks in 9 and 10 ball but still haven’t reached 3 games.
And my runout % on a 7’ table is much higher than what I can achieve on 9’ tables regardless of the game played.
Mike Page still has to learn that bigger tables do play more difficult than smaller ones. Just get your ass on a 10’ table
with pocket size not larger than 4.5” and see how you do. Then go play on a 7’ table. That’s pool table reality in action.
All ball fouls don’t belong in APA, BCA, etc. There’s too many sloth like players & also beer consumption for it to work.
However, for pool tournaments, all ball fouls should be used. That’s how pool used to be played and IMO, should be.
7’ tables are hardly the test of your pool skills and I’ve proven that to myself. On a 7’ table, my best run in 9 ball was 3 consecutive runouts and I missed on the 7 ball or it might have been 4 in a row. Running the table on a 7’ table Is far easier than on a 9’ table and BTW, the runout I’m referring to was on 7’ Diamond tables. But on 9’ Diamond tables, I’ve never accomplished that and I mainly play on 9’ tables. I’ve run 2 racks in 9 and 10 ball but still haven’t reached 3 games.
And my runout % on a 7’ table is much higher than what I can achieve on 9’ tables regardless of the game played.
Mike Page still has to learn that bigger tables do play more difficult than smaller ones. Just get your ass on a 10’ table
with pocket size not larger than 4.5” and see how you do. Then go play on a 7’ table. That’s pool table reality in action.
All ball fouls don’t belong in APA, BCA, etc. There’s too many sloth like players & also beer consumption for it to work.
However, for pool tournaments, all ball fouls should be used. That’s how pool used to be played and IMO, should be.
Thanks for the correction. I was watching a lot of matches and my memory mixed up who lost to whom (Max, while performing well overall in both 9b and 10b, did have a couple losses to significantly lower-ranked players).
Point stands. There are subcategories in pool skill and thinking FargoRate is absolute across all subcategories is borderline arrogance on the part of those selling that viewpoint.
Ironically it's the average players who play leagues and are very serious about it who create the most issues with rules and exploit them. At the higher levels players police themselves normally, don't waste time arguing and don't want the rep of a cheater. Plus they know the actual rules
Fouls attempted to be called on me... Shirt foul, moving the cue ball with my tip when I'm using my shaft, claiming they didn't know which stripe I was shooting in 8 ball when both were obvious, I'm sure there's others I don't remember. Sometimes they are just bullying or sharking. Nobody wants to fight about rules except the overly serious league player
Fouls attempted to be called on me... Shirt foul, moving the cue ball with my tip when I'm using my shaft, claiming they didn't know which stripe I was shooting in 8 ball when both were obvious, I'm sure there's others I don't remember. Sometimes they are just bullying or sharking. Nobody wants to fight about rules except the overly serious league player
There was a time I was called in to play after I had told my team leader that I was sick.
I came and played to make for a 5-man team.
In my 3rd game; I attempted a massé shot, got CB to arc correctly, make contact with OB, and left OB within a business card thickness of rail.
Opponent (who knew the sorry physical shape I was in) ask me if OB hit the rail.
I told him truthfully, I don't know.
He let it go.
Bully for him.
I really don't know if it hit a rail or not--as I was more than kinda drowsy--and was doing well just to stand and play.
I came and played to make for a 5-man team.
In my 3rd game; I attempted a massé shot, got CB to arc correctly, make contact with OB, and left OB within a business card thickness of rail.
Opponent (who knew the sorry physical shape I was in) ask me if OB hit the rail.
I told him truthfully, I don't know.
He let it go.
Bully for him.
I really don't know if it hit a rail or not--as I was more than kinda drowsy--and was doing well just to stand and play.
Even if 9' tables are tougher it doesn't matter to ratings because the players are playing each other on the same equipment against each other not against the table.
Because in pool players are rated vs each other, in golf its the player vs the course, how can you not see that? Are there mulligans in pool? Do players improve their lie in pool? How about different T boxes?
The 19 in a row were pattern racked with a magic rack. HUGE asterisk.
I must disagree to some extent because 7’ tables tend to make shots easier for weaker players from bank shots to cut shots and especially……slopping in the 9 ball any pocket. Heck, in APA, even when playing 8 ball all slop shots count, except for marking your pocket on the 8 ball. I have lost games playing against weaker opponents on a 7’ table that can’t beat me on a 9’ table because of the added difficulty. Case in point is safety play where it is much easier to leave your opponent no shot on a 9’table resulting in BIH. Pool played on a 50”x100” Simonis covered table is much harder than a 7’ pool table.
I find weaker players and their "proud outs" annoying. Still, they're supposed to have the chance they need to win. I stayed out of the leagues and was able to get along with the crowd and even enjoy their progress. 
I think you're oversimplifying it a bit. In golf, the score you get is player vs course, but that score is compared with the scores of the other golfers, so the competition really is player vs player. Your index depends on course ratings, which are determined by how others do on the same course, so it also really is player vs player. Conversely, I've seen some rating systems in pool that are not very dependent on who you play but are very dependent on the table(s) you use. So the competition is player vs player but the rating is not.
To answer your specific questions, I have given mulligans in pool, I have let my opponent move the cue ball so he has an easier shot, and I have let my opponent remove some of his balls in 8-Ball or given a similar head start in 9-Ball (only in 9-Ball the head start usually comes at the end of the game, like giving someone the 7). But all of those things have more to do with the application of ratings than they do with the calculation of them, so I don't see your point.
it's a commercial product, and including barbox pool and one pocket are market decisions i would think? if he was based in the UK he would probably include english 8-ball, and in china probably heyball. makes about as much sense. there are spillover connections between them and yada yada.
We DO require you play by the same rules as your opponent ;-)
This is an area people don't understand very well. Let's say we were not the "commercial product" you imagine but were instead contracted by Matchroom specifically just to rate players worldwide at 9-Ball on 9-foot tables. That is our only goal, and we have no incentive to do anything else. What data would be include? We absolutely would include all the data we now include. Without it, we would be a lousy job rating those 9-Ball players. Understanding this is not about understanding pool in the different conditions. Those differences that people obsess about are all averaged out in the ways that matter to the 9-Ball ratings.It is about understanding WHY the FargoRate approach works, and that is far more a mathematical/optimization question than a pool question.
In fact, if we did add all available data for english 8-Ball on small tables, and chinese 8-ball on big tight rounded-pocket tables, that would actually IMPROVE FargoRate's ability to assess how Oscar and Lukas compare playing 9-Ball on a 9-foot table. That is hard for people to understand. But it's true.
lol
Imagine a narrow raised sidewalk with a six-foot dropoff on either side. Playing on a 9-foot table is like walking on that one-foot wide sidewalk.
It is harder than walking on the 1.5 foot wide sidewalk (7-foot table). But here's the deal. When you move to the wider sidewalk, the fall increases from 6 feet to 12 feet. So you are less likely to falter, but the price is higher when you do.
It is an incomplete picture to look at the width of the sidewalk in isolation.
I encountered a rules situation in a small local tournament yesterday. It was a new tournament for me so I enquired to the rules before starting play. The answer was BCA . Well with no tournament director and a clueless bartender presiding, the rules had been mangled. At one point there was a prolonged discussion about what to do about an 8 ball pocketed early. They were confused because a scratch on the 8 ball only lost if the 8 ball was pocketed. It took a while for it to be sorted.
In the finals match after my opponents break I was forced to play a safety. An object ball was so close to the cueball that no other ball could be seen. I chose to brush it lightly and roll whitey to the head rail where it hit the rail and rebounded a foot. My opponent rushed to pick up the cueball because the object ball hadn't hit a rail. in the name of sportsmanship I explained the BCA rule and suggested he just put it back approximately where it was and we would play on. He agree reluctantly as last week it was a foul. His grumbling indicated he thought I was unsportsmanlike. Go figure. He was mad enough that he ran out and won the tournament. Second place money didn't even cover my nut. Hopefully my sportsman ship points count for something. 
Hopefully my sportsman ship points count for something.
Karma points for sure!