2025 Men's World 10-Ball Championship, Sept. 20-28 -- General Comments Thread
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sudocrushms
Well-known member
Working on getting caught up with the dude's 10b and dudette's 9b opens and I've just got 1 thing to say so far:
DEAR GOD PREDATOR: USE A TEMPLATE!!!
Half the racks have been slugs...
Develop your own template, I don't care (hell, I'd probably buy it). I've been a Big Cat fan my whole pool life and I really wish they'd stop trying to make tables, racks, and balls. This Arc table is playing weird and the racks aren't good enough...
DEAR GOD PREDATOR: USE A TEMPLATE!!!
Half the racks have been slugs...
Develop your own template, I don't care (hell, I'd probably buy it). I've been a Big Cat fan my whole pool life and I really wish they'd stop trying to make tables, racks, and balls. This Arc table is playing weird and the racks aren't good enough...
table bounces funny racks break funny and balls look funny
races to 4 are funny and a spot shot decider is not funny it’s silly
when they bring out predator shoes and gloves and hats and glasses and perfume and breakfast cereal i’ll probably just laugh but i won’t support those either
sudocrushms
Well-known member
Agree, but I will say their gloves are excellent, but that's subjective because they fit me perfectly. Hands are a pain to find a fit for.
One monkey don't stop no show!
I greatly prefer two formats that we used in the past. The first was two out of three sets of 9-Ball, each a race to seven. We used that in the Peter Vitalie Championship and it was very well received by players and fans. The the second was three out of five sets, each one a race to five. We used that in a major 9-Ball tournament in Vegas in the early 90's and it was also well received by players and fans. There was no controversy in either event as well.
I will only add this. Promoters/producers of professional pool tournaments need to learn how to promote! And pissing off half your fans is not how to do it. Take it from one who produced the biggest and best tournaments of the 1990's. Yes, I'm bragging, but if it's true it's not bragging.
not sure about the table. maybe people aren't used to seeing brunswick-y tables in the era of diamond and rasson. i would think the arc table is a brunswick with 6 (yep, six) cat decals on it. yalin's unlikely to reinvent the wheel, it's probably the same base table as their new GC.
100% agree on the racking. it's been going on for years now. in theory, over time, the slugs are evenly distributed. but tell that to someone that's travelled to vietnam and gets a dud while breaking for his/her tournament life
the predator lights is probably the best of their non-cue products. never heard anything bad about them
after you play on the predator table you’ll see. springy. bouncy. weird. pockets are oddly shaped and the cloth is hard to figure out. goes from real fast to real slow. the bright lights are excellent, but you’ll need a hat with a brim. it’s a little bit taller than most tables but not as tall as a snooker table or a chinese 8 ball table.
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Long read but this will illustrate where you are going wrong on this one. Without realizing it, and even though you are trying not to, you are still at least subconsciously thinking of this as if it is a single race to 4 instead of fully taking into consideration that it is a best of multiple races to 4. Yes, anybody can win a single race to 4 (although the better player will still always be favored in a single race to 4 or even in a race to 1 for that matter), but the more of those races to 4 that you have, the less likely it becomes for the lesser player to be able to win.
To more clearly illustrate how multiple short races can in fact be just as good or in some cases better at determining who the better player is than a single longer race like say the more standard single races to 9, lets start with a more extreme example.
Yes, you might have say a 10% chance of beating say Gorst in a single race to 4. But what if you play Gorst a best of 1000 races to 4 (aka first to win 501 sets of races to 4). Who do you think would win their 501 sets of races to 4 first? You have literally 0% chance of winning that. What if you played Gorst a best of 100 sets of races to 4 (aka first to win 51 sets), who would get there first? Still literally 0% chance for you. What about a best of 50 sets (first to 26 sets) of races to 4? Still literally 0% chance for you. As clearly illustrated with these more extreme examples, I think you and everyone else would admit that the best of some X number of multiple sets of races to 4 can absolutely determine the better player, and even do it way better than a single race like say a race to 9 does.
Let's keep reducing the numbers though. What if you played Gorst a best of 20 sets (first to 11 sets) of races to 4, what are your chances of winning now? Probably .1% (tenth of a percent) chance. What if you played him a best of 10 sets (first to 6) of races to 4? Your chances are probably up to .5% (half a percent) now. What about if you play him a best of 5 sets (first to 3) of races to 4? As the number of the sets keeps coming down, your odds are definitely going up, but you still are only probably at like 3% chance to win this one. What if you played him a best of 3 sets (first to 2 sets) of races to 4, like the Predator Pro Billiard Series has been doing in the past and plans to continue for the early rounds in the future? You probably have let's call it a 6% chance now. Now what if you instead played Gorst a single race to 9? You have that exact same 6% chance of winning the race to 9, same as you did with the best of 3 (first to 2) races to 4. You have finally come down to the point where the odds became equal.
We can clearly see that winning the best of a whole bunch of races to 4 (1000, 100, 50 of them etc) is way harder to win against a better player than winning a race to 9 is. We can clearly see that as the number races to 4 we have to win is coming down, our odds of winning are going up. We can clearly see that at some point we are going to get to a small enough number of best of X races to 4 that it is finally going to give us the exact same odds of winning that a single race to 9 does. This is further proven by the fact that if we continue to keep going down in number to say a best of just 1 race to 4, that is now easier to win that than a single race to 9 so we know that we already went past the point where the odds would have been equal.
I think we would all now agree that there is no question whatsoever that there is a point where some "best of X number of races to 4" will be exactly as difficult to win as a single race to 9, and the only real question is exactly where that point is. Mike gave the math that proves that when you get down to a best of 3 (first to 2) races to 4, that is exactly the point where you have the exact same odds for winning as you do for a single race to 9.
On a related note to help explain why it is so difficult for our minds to accept that that a best of 3 races to 4 is exactly as difficult to win as a single race to 9, consider the idea of doing a best out of 199 races to 1 the next time you want to gamble even with someone for big money. Does a best out of 199 races to 1 sound like a great test of skill, and does it sound like it would be a great determiner of who the better player is? It doesn't sound near as good as it should because that is what is also known as a race to 100, made popular by TAR, and considered by many to be the gold standard and ultimate test for determining who the better player is. They are literally the exact same thing just said a different way, but the fact that a best of 199 races to 1 probably doesn't sound near as good as a race to 100 just illustrates how our mind can irrationally and subconsciously focus too much on one thing, such as the "races to 1" part (since we all have such an aversion to single short races), and not nearly enough on the "but there are a whole bunch of them" part which is the part that allows it to be a great test of skill.
And that is the same thing that is happening to us here with this format. Because of our hatred for single short races, our minds are irrationally getting fixated on the "races to 4" part and are not being able to give the proper consideration to the "but there are three of those sets, not just one of them" part, and so we are irrationally wanting to see this format as not being able to do as good a job of finding the better player as say a single race to 9 can when the odds for the two players is exactly the same in both.
Maybe there are other good reasons to hate the format, but we can't hate it due to it being "easier for the lesser player to win matches in this format than to win in say a races to 9 format" when that simply isn't true.