Was pool better 50 years ago?
- Thread starter The Wolverine
- Start date
For example:
1) Far more kicking systems are known today than fifty years ago, and, unlike back then, all the top players are learning them.
2) The technical breakdown of the stroke is more advanced today than in Sigel's day and the video equipment exists to break down a stroke into its component parts in ways that were impossible fifty years ago.
3) Thanks to online resources, more knowledge is accessible about the technical side of the game and the physics governing what is possible than back in the day.
4) Much more is understood about the break than in Sigel's prime. In Sigel's day, they were still figuring it out, and Mike himself was often breaking with draw, something that is almost extinct today.
5) Tactical theory has come a long way since Sigel's day. Yes, the Filipinos of 1995-2010 had a lot to do with the advancement of the theory, but today's players have a heightened sense of the percentages because of it, far beyond anything I saw back in the day.
In a dream scenario, I'd like to see Filler play Mike with the kind of equipment that was in vogue in Sigel's day and without the knowledge edge that today's players enjoy because of the improvement in both the teaching of the game and the abundance of online resources. Alternatively, Mike could, just as you suggest, get himself up to the level of knowledge enjoyed by a Filler, and match up on today's equipment.
No matter how you slice it, these time travel matches are awfully hard to handicap! Still, we can fantasize, right?
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Biloxi Boy
Man With A Golden Arm
We played on the old equipment. We know what it took to overcome the limitations. I play better now -- I credit better cloth and rails, but cues have come a long way, too. I can only wish my young self could play with the benefit of all of the advancements of the last 50 years . . .
The distribution and availability of knowledge, however, is tops, hands down. Stu, and maybe others, killed it on this point. TV, computers, phones, Dr. Dave, et al., the hits just keep on coming. We have all of this incredible information at our fingertips. I often rail against technology and its deleterious effects, but when it comes to the distribution and availability of knowledge, I have to conclude that we are emerging from a second Dark Age. I had to go to my college library and its card catalog (remember the Dewey Decimal System?) to find ancient tomes on billiards.
The distribution and availability of knowledge, however, is tops, hands down. Stu, and maybe others, killed it on this point. TV, computers, phones, Dr. Dave, et al., the hits just keep on coming. We have all of this incredible information at our fingertips. I often rail against technology and its deleterious effects, but when it comes to the distribution and availability of knowledge, I have to conclude that we are emerging from a second Dark Age. I had to go to my college library and its card catalog (remember the Dewey Decimal System?) to find ancient tomes on billiards.
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yea but the filipino players that filler often beats grew up on conditions wetter, slower and dirtier than i've seen in any old american (or european for that matter) recording. some of the money matches they stream to this day have third world conditions, old beat up star tables with cloth that looks like it's been flipped five times and with talcum on the rails. lee van corteza plays with a regular maple shaft, so does the ko brothers and several other pros. i've never found this argument to hold up.
Ko Ping Chung is playing outstanding pool with a wood shaft, 13mm tip, and no glove. But I assume the shaft he uses is LD relative to old school wood shafts.
vintagecollectibles831
Well-known member
Yeah, Filler is such a powerful player. He could probably adapt to a nice Joss, from the 70's, for example, pretty easily, and adapt to those tables, pretty easily.
I grew up during the 90's, and even then, the equipment was so much different then it has been in recent years. There were no jump cues, for example. No high tech break cues, or super LD shafts, lol. The game was so much more interesting during the 90's, because it seemed that the top players had such a powerful stroke, and there was none of these silly soft breaks, and cut breaks, going on.
vintagecollectibles831
Well-known member
Your reply just gave me a thought. I wonder how much stronger a prime Buddy Hall (from the mid 70's) would play on todays conditions, and with todays equipment. Him, or any of the other top players from 50 years ago. They might play even stronger, if they have and play on the high tech stuff that is available today. Your reply gave me that thought, because those Philippine players have to play in such horrible conditions, but when you put them in perfect conditions, they become freaks, and just run everyone over. The Filler killers, many of them, I bet.
middleofnowhere
Registered
I think the only real thing that Mike would have to learn would be the safety play, kicking and the jump cue. If Mike was 25 years old again it would be no problem he would master what ever is required. Beyond that, Mike had all the tools his talent can't be denied. He would be a top player today.
The game was more interesting for the same reason that today's one pocket can be more interesting to watch when it's two shortstops playing instead of two world beaters -- there's just more variety. Today's top tier players have such high make percentages that the game just loses a lot of its suspense. When lesser players play, there are more interesting situations faced, and decisions made. Also, before the break (and rack) was properly understood, the game had more variety even if this was partially due to ignorance.
The more I think about it -- ignorance really is bliss when reminiscing about pool's glory days.
The more I think about it -- ignorance really is bliss when reminiscing about pool's glory days.
I don't know about 50 years ago, but I can go back about around 35 years. And pool is far more more exciting today then it was back then. All the main things about pool are better like the balls, the pool tables, the cues, and the players are also much better as well. Now maybe the player level has something to do with the better equipment, but I don't think any of the top players from the 80's or 90's would even crack the top 20 today. And part of what makes it even more remarkable, are that the pockets are much tighter today then they were back then. That's not to say that there weren't tight pockets back then, but they were far less prevalent. we used to play on 5 1/4" Gandy's compared to 4 1/4" Diamonds today. One thing that was pretty cool from that era were the old dark pool rooms full of gamblers, and there was always lots of action going on. Also leagues have elevated the game today and brought in a lot more players. The leagues back then were small in nature operated by local people, not the big national leagues you have now.
Mike's break would have to be a lot better than it was back then, but otherwise, agreed 100%. Like Filler, Mike was a once-in-a-generation talent.
I got away from pool starting in 1983, didn't hit a ball until the 2020 pandemic! My first contact with professional pool was in
Pensacola FL(1963) betting on a World Class All Around Player named Richard Hunziker, playing Richie (from the Bronx) Ambrose. Then Ronnie Allen made the mistake of playing Hunziker Snooker (1964). Starting with those two exposures, followed with dozens of matches around the Washington D.C. area, I became use to watching players break & run 4-5-6 racks of 9 ball back and forth with each other. Todays game with 9 on the spot, it doesn't happen. 14.1 players you never heard of would play 50 no count. The action was more lively back then.
Witnessed Greg/Craig Stevens break & run 20 of 21 rack on Pat Lynch in Rockville Md. giving up 6-7-8-9, taking the break (in 15 minutes). The sane Pat Lynch that broke & ran 17 racks on Bernie Schwartz (Pittsburgh John). The next day in Silver Hill, Md. Stevens gave Beanie the same game and was beating Beanie to death, until the game had to stop when Balsis was giving an exhibition. Sevens had been up for 2 days, and laid down, when he got up after Balsis was finished, he couldn't make a ball, and Weenie Beenie Broke him! (1966-67)
After being on the "Road" at times with players like Melvin "Strawberry" Brooks, Ambrose, Grady Mathews, Steve Gumphry, Mike "Geese" Gerace, in 1983 I gave it up, right before the apparent" Drug money explosion" took hold of pool.
IT WAS 1000% more exciting back then.
Pensacola FL(1963) betting on a World Class All Around Player named Richard Hunziker, playing Richie (from the Bronx) Ambrose. Then Ronnie Allen made the mistake of playing Hunziker Snooker (1964). Starting with those two exposures, followed with dozens of matches around the Washington D.C. area, I became use to watching players break & run 4-5-6 racks of 9 ball back and forth with each other. Todays game with 9 on the spot, it doesn't happen. 14.1 players you never heard of would play 50 no count. The action was more lively back then.
Witnessed Greg/Craig Stevens break & run 20 of 21 rack on Pat Lynch in Rockville Md. giving up 6-7-8-9, taking the break (in 15 minutes). The sane Pat Lynch that broke & ran 17 racks on Bernie Schwartz (Pittsburgh John). The next day in Silver Hill, Md. Stevens gave Beanie the same game and was beating Beanie to death, until the game had to stop when Balsis was giving an exhibition. Sevens had been up for 2 days, and laid down, when he got up after Balsis was finished, he couldn't make a ball, and Weenie Beenie Broke him! (1966-67)
After being on the "Road" at times with players like Melvin "Strawberry" Brooks, Ambrose, Grady Mathews, Steve Gumphry, Mike "Geese" Gerace, in 1983 I gave it up, right before the apparent" Drug money explosion" took hold of pool.
IT WAS 1000% more exciting back then.
middleofnowhere
Registered
You mentioned a number of names. You mentioned Steve Gumphry. I have been trying to remember his name for the longest time. I saw him not long before he died.
Biloxi Boy
Man With A Golden Arm
Can we all agree that the french fries used to be much better?
no, it's a maple shaft. both of the older ko brothers won a world championship each with southwests. coming to think of it they won three with SWs. there's no magic in carbon fiber shafts, it's a bunch of sponsorship bs.
as far as lassiter he was born before 1920 so anyone alive now never really saw him in his real prime.
people over 50 are long out of their prime in pool but many can still play near a top speed.
lassiter was 50 around 1968. and no one wanted to play him anything even then.
people over 50 are long out of their prime in pool but many can still play near a top speed.
lassiter was 50 around 1968. and no one wanted to play him anything even then.
vintagecollectibles831
Well-known member
During a time when people actually spoke to each other face to face, instead of on smart phones, lol. During a time when people actually hand wrote letters, and mailed them through the post office, lol.
Stu,
I am selecting your post to question simply because I think you are one of the sharpest and most knowledgeable men in pool. I have tremendous respect for your knowledge. Now I will pick apart your post!(grin)
I. I would much prefer to face someone that constantly works with a half dozen systems than someone that only uses 1 or 1 to 3 systems and uses them well. Also, the person that works with many systems would be better off spending their time elsewhere in my opinion.
2. What does this gain over the same time gaining experience on the table?
3. What does knowing the physics gain over knowing how the balls move without being able to spell physics?
4. I beat every major player I have beaten using draw and a touch of side. I found something that worked and used it for years. With many thousands of repetitions in that break, it worked for me!
5. Here I won't agree or disagree. I don't know. I will grant your much greater experience and time witnessing top players in action.
Take a hard look and think about your first four points. Do any of them help a person play better on the table? Would they be better learning the "book smarts" of these things or putting in the same effort on the table?
I am going to invoke Efren as old school. I don't know what education he has, certainly very little formal education, no physics or advanced technical education. While he is an outlier simply by being the best in the world for many years until age took him down, during much of that time he worked with very poor vision. His knowledge and tuning on the table carried him through.
Going back to my own experience in various forms of competition, I studied the technology to seek an advantage, then got my ass kicked by men with twenty years or more of experience and not a fraction of my technical knowledge.
Remember when the Kenyans first came to the Olympics? No science or technology at all. They came and ran barefoot and kicked everybody's ass! A man in I think Australia ran a five day or week long race in workboots. The people in running uniforms and running shoes thought it was funny until when they stopped for the day he kept on running. He won.
Greater technology is valuable. I have played enough with carbon fiber to endorse it simply because it plays the same whichever way I turn it while the best wood I have played with benefits, if only a tiny amount, from indexing. The question is would developing a CF shaft themselves have been a more beneficial use of the competitor's time than hitting balls for an individual competitor?
If I can use one technique and accomplish all of my goals for a shot, does it benefit me to know six more ways of achieving the same result?
Has a pool player ever played better because they had a degree in physics? In another arena, bullets shot from some rifle barrels cut the wind better than those shot from other barrels. When I was competing twenty years ago the world record for five 5 shot groups at one hundred yards was 0.150" Shot by a man I was proud to call friend, Jef Fowler.
Countless thousands of tiny groups shot, yet nobody had a definitive answer as to why some barrels cut wind better. The components are the same, got to be something unique in the metallurgy or machinery of the barrel. After decades of searching and even using an electron Microscope, it was still an unknown. A man with very impressive scientific credentials sent me a PM asking why I was giving respect to people with little education that had owned such barrels in a thread and asking follow-up questions. Eventually I owned such a barrel. It was made and machined at the same time as barrels that didn't cut the wind as well. I know no more about why now than I did when I first discovered the abilities of that barrel thirty years ago.
Could the same thing exist with some cues, or other components? Could some cues, shafts, or tips, send a cue ball across the cloth with less interference? Science may find such a thing and chances are the discovery will be by someone that can't run five balls!
I wrote a book but the question is what is productive effort for a competitor and what is merely gilding the lily for the competitor?
Side story here, derailing my derailment! I was a Master CNE. To obtain that certification required passing a dozen tough tests. I learned that cramming doesn't work for me. I might spend five or ten minutes looking at one thing but usually not even that long. Driving the thirty minutes to the testing center, I listened to country music. Intuitively I thought Marty or Merle or even Mel might give the best results to ready me for testing. Johnny Cash produced the best scores. I thought it was a rabbit's foot but before a very tough test I listened to Cash!
Hu
vintagecollectibles831
Well-known member
Hi, lol, I was too lazy to read the last half of your post, but I just wanted to reply to your question about Efren. I do not think he needed any systems, or any of that other mumbo jumbo (whatever), lol. He learned everything, and mastered everything about all of the games, by just playing, probably 18 hours a day, for who knows how many years. I do not know if he ever did drills, for example, but I would not be surprised if he never did a single drill in his entire life. I would not be surprised if he gained all of his knowledge, and skill sets (in the various games) simply by competing against the best players he could find to compete against.
Keith McCready said that he never did drills, and I read that he was the most feared money player on the planet, back in the early 80's. Look how great he played, with that very unusual style. I believe that he got to be one of the best by simply just competing.
I believe that maybe many of the greatest may have never had any systems, and never did any drills. That would not surprise me a bit. They simply just knew the ins and outs of everything, and had a very high level of natural ability.
Or, maybe I am completely wrong about everything that I said above. I do not know. I just remember reading that bit, about Keith McCready saying that doing drills was a waste of time, in so many words, lol.