only 2 is infinitely more important than 1. again i ask, what has fargo #2 ameer ali banked? he works part time selling cutlery. no shame in that, but yapp has won over $325000 and that's why he's ranked #2 in the world in the WNT rankings
(Un)Popular Opinion on Fargo Rate
- Thread starter kollegedave
- Start date
only 2 is infinitely more important than 1. again i ask, what has fargo #2 ameer ali banked? he works part time selling cutlery. no shame in that, but yapp has won over $325000 and that's why he's ranked #2 in the world in the WNT rankings
Depends on what you are measuring. Fargo attempts to measure pure pool skill. Money won is as much about number of tournaments entered as it is about skill.
As a pro, I don't doubt #2 is what matters. Gotta pay the bills. But improving #1 (the actual pure pool skill part) can also boost #2.
Also Ameer has so few games in the system it's probably still much more likely that his true rating should be much lower than that it's accurate. Whether that means he'd be an 820 or a 780 or what I don't know, but I'd bet lots of money he'd drop a lot by the time he's at 3000 games.
yet there he is, if you open fargo top 100
And a player who gets lucky rolls and successfully gives the 9 a ride a few times and runs into players who make more mistakes than usual all to win a tournament where they were a huge dog still has the money in their bank account.
noone wins a MR major by riding the 9 and getting rolls. tables are tough, fields are absolutely brutal. if you win one of those you've played very good pool. if you win three, like yapp's done, i would agree with wayne that you're currently on the top of the heap, at least in 9-ball
Agree! Luck can get you through a game. Rarely, but I have seen it get someone through a match. It never gets someone through an event and three events in a row are redhot skills. True greatness takes even more than that but three wins is a damned good start.
Hu
The only way to win a tournament of equal peers is to have all 3 of these: play over your head, opponents play under their speed, and you get a few rolls.
all true but if fargo is accurate then you can accurately find the probability of winning each match, and your chances also of landing in each of the payout spots. if fargo is off some you can still get a good estimate. a simple program you can run should do that.
and if done right, find close to what you will gross each year playing in tournaments. as long as you play in enough of them to make a good sample.
how's dem apples?
and if done right, find close to what you will gross each year playing in tournaments. as long as you play in enough of them to make a good sample.
how's dem apples?
A different perspective:
I started watching pro pool in late 2021, and within several months I became addicted. By 2023 I had watched 100s of hours of matches and I had become very familiar with the top 100 or so active players on the WNT and WPA.
And yet, I never paid close attention to Fargo ratings until the last six months or so. I judged players by the eye test and supplemented my observations with a WNT rankings based on money won. I thought that gave me a good idea of which players were really good.
I started using Fargo when I ran into the players I didn’t know much about, and when I watched them, they look pretty darn good. (I don’t know my Fargo and have no opinion in how it is used in nonpro tourneys).
To me, Fargo ratings give me a ballpark estimate of a players talent and history. I guess I sort of think of them just like baseball stats, football stats, college football and basketball rankings, and so forth. They tell you how good a player has been and how good he will play if he stays at the same level.
What it can’t tell you, quickly, is which stars are fading, and which newcomers are rapidly rising. I use the eye test and the money rankings for that. From what I’ve seen, most big tournaments will be won by players at Fargo’s above 820. But I think anyone around 790 or above has a reasonable chance.
Ultimately, I don’t give huge weight to Fargo as a fan, and I doubt most fans do. There’s always gonna be upsets. There’s always gonna be surprise winners, there’s always gonna be good players having bad tournaments and very good players having great tournaments. Fargo does not add or subtract from my appreciation for the game.
I started watching pro pool in late 2021, and within several months I became addicted. By 2023 I had watched 100s of hours of matches and I had become very familiar with the top 100 or so active players on the WNT and WPA.
And yet, I never paid close attention to Fargo ratings until the last six months or so. I judged players by the eye test and supplemented my observations with a WNT rankings based on money won. I thought that gave me a good idea of which players were really good.
I started using Fargo when I ran into the players I didn’t know much about, and when I watched them, they look pretty darn good. (I don’t know my Fargo and have no opinion in how it is used in nonpro tourneys).
To me, Fargo ratings give me a ballpark estimate of a players talent and history. I guess I sort of think of them just like baseball stats, football stats, college football and basketball rankings, and so forth. They tell you how good a player has been and how good he will play if he stays at the same level.
What it can’t tell you, quickly, is which stars are fading, and which newcomers are rapidly rising. I use the eye test and the money rankings for that. From what I’ve seen, most big tournaments will be won by players at Fargo’s above 820. But I think anyone around 790 or above has a reasonable chance.
Ultimately, I don’t give huge weight to Fargo as a fan, and I doubt most fans do. There’s always gonna be upsets. There’s always gonna be surprise winners, there’s always gonna be good players having bad tournaments and very good players having great tournaments. Fargo does not add or subtract from my appreciation for the game.
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Any of the three or none of the three can determine a winner, not needing all three at the same time. If an event is held, barring splits allowed, a winner will be declared. That is regardless of any of your conditions being met.
Things are odd sometimes. In a lifetime of competing I have had nights when I played like crap, and won. Other times everyone was red hot. A friend of mine was the world record holder at tie down calf roping, a popular rodeo event. Few people noticed, the very next rider out of the gate set a new world record! My friend was the world record holder for about two minutes.
Hu
Lower? Probably
As far lower as 820? More likely no than yes. But perhaps.
As far lower as 780? Quite unlikely we think
One way to think of this is to take someone with a lot of games who is a little under 800 [e.g., John Morra, 794, 22,000 games] and interrogate John's record to see whether his performance for a hot string of 500 games ever pings near 840 or 850. He has 44 of these 500-game chunks, and we might imagine there is one chunk for which he was playing his own A-game, tended to get the rolls, and his opponents tended off their game on average. That's the trifecta of high apparent performance. While John sees 800 about 30% of the time, he never sees 820. 819 (25 above his rating) is as high as it gets.
If Ameer's 500 game chunk that we happened to capture is the equivalent of John Morra's best chunk, that would suggest Ameer's long-term average to be 824 or so. It is more likely he is somewhat above that, though.
Why do people keep assuming their guesses/feelings/assumptions about Fargo are correct? Mike routinely backs up what he says with, oh the horror: REAL DATA. Is FR perfect? Of course not but its BY FARRRR the most accurate rating/handicapping system the game has seen. Hey folks i still love the 'idea' of straight-up no h'cap events but try to run one these days. The vast majority of players are not pros/full-timers and they aren't going to spend the money to go get run-over by players they have no chance with.
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While his actual rating might actually be correct, I don't think comparing him to one person is really relevant. You'd really have to look at all the 500-game strings for a lot of players to see how common it is to play 20/40/60 pts above one's "true" rating. Also, even within one person you can't look at only 44 500-game chunks for a player with 22,000 games played. You'd really have to look at 21,501 different 500-game streaks. Otherwise, maybe games #1-500 and 501-1000 aren't all that high, but who's to say games #312-811 isn't an outlier?
As well, there might be a bit of a rare-disease paradox going on here. How common is an 840-850 player anyways? Even if playing 30-60 pts above one's rating for 500 games is rare, it could very well be the case that some relative unknown crashing the scene with a good run of near-850 play is still more likely to be seeing results well above his skill level than be a true-850 player.
All said, obviously all possibilities are still on the table (maybe he's an 860 player who's underperformed?). But none of the provided analysis is remotely convincing that he couldn't actually very possibly be a sub-820 player.
Divide 22,000 by 500.
reread what I wrote.
There is a Fargo dead zone for the average player. You hit the mid 600s and then they won’t let you play in the local tournaments because your to good but your not good enough to win the pro tournaments. So now you have guys sandbagging their Fargo because if they don’t then they can’t play .
Hear this all the time but its FAR easier said than done. Might get away with it short term but not for long. In my area they've pretty much weeded out the 'baggers. A funny 'bagger de-bagged' story: a good local player(about a 630) had 'bagged his way down to 599 to go play a big event in Fla. He got down there and went two-n-out. Can't write shit like that. His getting 'outed' has pretty much burned his action.
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I understand what you wrote , do you understand it looks like you are grasping for straws to refute Mike?