Predator's WPA Women's World 9 Ball
- Thread starter jax_joe
- Start date
very good match
Just reckless at times.
Might get to be too much like work. Filter fighting.
Meanwhile, there's money to be had milling around.
Mike, are you saying they've been performing at a 680 level over the past three years? If that's the case, shouldn't their ratings be much higher then?
It feels like the Fargo algorithm is too sticky and too much of a lagging indicator. Any chance the algorithm gets tweaked to weight past games less heavily?
Yes, the overall Fargo rating is a little slow to catch up to rapidly developing players. Both girls have a very high ceiling and are probably at the moment, true 680 (or even a touch higher) players. They are American-born women's best hope for international relevance.
I agree and appreciate that you brought up Sofia Mast, whose game is probably the slightest bit ahead of Savannah's, and who just doesn't have as much social media presence. But I do think you undersell Savannah quite a bit.
Two years ago, Savannah was a 13-year-old girl playing like a stronger-than-average league player. She had a social media presence and therefore was getting herself well-known, but she was a curiosity, particularly since there are so few girls that age who even know which end of the cue to hold. In the past two years she has forced herself (yes, along with Sofia) into the conversation for being the top American-born female player going. That is not by any stretch of the imagination a modest rate of progress, that is an unbelievably accelerated level of progress, especially since she only started taking the game seriously, what, 3-4 years ago?
And every time I see her play, she has gotten clearly better and developed multiple aspects of her game. She is playing as much as anyone, and as focused on improving as anyone. Yes, she has to get a lot better to realistically compete for a world title, and the way these things go who knows if she might stall out. But she is not behind anyone in terms of potential. Comparing her with Jean Balukas and Siming Chen, two women who might have claim to the title of greatest female player of all time, is grossly unfair. So is comparing her accomplishments at 15 with just a handful of others' at ages 16-19, which is eons developmentally speaking. Take any of the top-20 women in the world. At the ages of 15, where were their games at?
Finally, judging her based on her Fargo, which is weighted down by literally thousands of games from a year ago when she was nowhere near the player she was today, and thousands more (yes, at a lesser impact) from two years ago when she wouldn't win a typical league's top shooter award, is again missing her rapid ascent. She is 680+ in current play-level ability. And, again, she is only 15.
Fast-forward 10 years. Who is most likely to be among the top-20 female players in the world? Savannah is way, way up there in my estimate, moreso than any 35+ year-old who is likely on the (albeit, elongated and slow) downward slope, and even more than any 25-35 year-old player who isn't already there whose game has most likely peaked. The most likely thing to stop her from being internationally competitive is if the money just isn't there--if adding her tournament winnings and anything she gets off social media and endorsements still doesn't equate to what a steady job brings in.
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I think sjm is just saying that there is a long ways to go between where Savannah is now and where she needs to get to be world class, and the pace of improvement has not matched the pace of some other people who did get to that level during the same period of their lives. You ask, how many people were as good as Savannah at 15? Probably most eventual world class players, if they played as much as Savannah has at the same age. SJM provided more examples than just Balukas and Chen.
Her stage parents brought this scrutiny upon her, of course, through their over the top social media presence, bordering on exploitation. No one is nitpicking Sofia Mast.
Her stage parents brought this scrutiny upon her, of course, through their over the top social media presence, bordering on exploitation. No one is nitpicking Sofia Mast.
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I believe Savannah was just a 530 Fargo a few years ago at 13. She has come a long way. I remember a buddy playing her in a tournament here in Vegas around that time. We busted his balls when he lost lol.
I'm saying they're both performing near 680 now. Two years ago both were performing around 630s and 3 years ago both near 600. Their Fargo ratings (both in 650s now) lags behind. This is not a general problem. Fargo ratings are not too sticky. This is an issue only for a very small number of young players who are improving rapidly while developing physically at the same time. If we turned a knob to fix Savannah and Sofia, the ratings for hundreds of thousands of other players would get crappier and less reliable.
The video linked below is a discussion that shows peoples intuition is not very good when it comes to interpreting "recent performance" measures. In particular we take a group of people whose most recent 500ish games from last 6 months is on average 12 points above their well established Fargo Rating.
These are the players who seem to have been punching above their weight class recently. Then we ask the question what do we expect for the next six months?
So again, last 6 months performance is FR+12
What is estimate for performance in next 6 months?
A. FR.
B. FR + 12
C. FR + more than 12
Most people (86%) think it is B or C. But it isn't. The Fargo Rating is the best predictor of the next six months.
Thanks for your input. This is a well-reasoned and well-presented post. I agree that Savannah, who will be sixteen in seven weeks, is improving and I wish her well. Perhaps she will go on to be a great player, but she is not yet threatening the most elite players and many of the greatest young female phenoms already were at that age.
That said, I was already watching women's pro pool in the 1970s and have probably attended nearly 100 WPBA events live in my life. I have a lot of observation upon which to base my contention that her rate of progress is not as great as what I'm used to seeing from those that go on to be the greatest champions. I mentioned Jean Balukas, Loree Jon Jones, Siming Chen, Han Yu, and Jasmin Ouschan all did major damage on the international circuit as teens. So did Sha Sha Liu, World 9ball champion at 16. Prior to the existence of the WPBA, California's Robin Dodson won two Caifornia State championships as a teen. Cheka Centeno probably played Fargo 725 speed as a teen. Ga Young Kim was already posting wins against the world's most elite players as a teen, too.
The last two notable American teen phenoms were in the 2010s. They were Briana Miller and April Larson, both of whom were very capable cueists posting some solid results by age 17. Neither went on to be a superstar in women's pool, although both play nicely (Briana is #51 and April is #57).
As for your suggestion that the Top 20 today weren't great players at Savannah's age, you are mistaken. It simply means that you do not follow the women's pro game very closely. Looking at a few of them, a) Siming Chen was world champ at 16, b) Han Yu was already winning majors by 17, c) Sha Sha Liu was World champion by 16, d) Jasmin Ouschan was already one of the world's best 9ball and 14.1 players at 16, e) Kristina Tkach won three Eurotour events by 17. Most of the top female players were already doing a lot of damage on the tournament scene in their teens.
Once upon a time, it was America that produced the world's best female players, but now it is Asia. Much has been written of the superb training academies for women's pool players in Asia and how they keep mass producing superstar players. Asia has 34 of the Fargo Top 50 women and not even one of the other 16 is American born. There is little doubt in my mind that both Savannah and Sofia will change this, but if you ask me if I convinced that either will be a Top 20 player in the world down the road, I will say no. I expect that the Asian training machine to continue producing the giants of the game with a sizable contingent from Europe, but for now, I'm not convinced that America is going to produce its share of the world's best women players. Of course, it is quite possible I am wrong here and I will be rooting for both Savannah and Sofia every step of the way.
To sum, I agree with you that Savannah is progressing, but I am in a position to compare that rate of progress to that of the many female teen phenoms that I have watched over fifty years. It is my considered opinion that Savannah's progress is slow compared to what I've seen from those that went on to be the giants of women's pool.
Of course, the bottom line here is that I've been wrong before and will be wrong again, so we'll see how it all develops.
i favor tkach for the title. much as i'm impressed by allison, you have to think a WC win at 57 y.o. is improbable, especially after yesterday's matches. seo seoa has looked strong, fu i haven't seen yet.