Justin Bergman is on a mission

Tobermory said:
Before you sell Justin Bergman short because of his being absent from the tournament scene, you might want to give a very brief moment’s attention to the Wikipedia entry on Joe Balsis.
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Yeah, Joe was a friend of mine. He is considered among the best junior players of all time (a junior in what I believe was the late 1930s). Irving Crane mentioned him to me, too, as having been a junior that many felt was the next American great.

Joe, however, chose not to go pro and went into the family business, which was the meat business (hence, the nickname "Meatman"). He didn't go pro until the early 1960s and fulfilled the expectations of yesteryear, winning enough major titles to gain BCA Hall of Fame induction.

I can't think of any other player that took more than twenty years off from competition and had a successful return. Joe was an original.
 
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maha said:
they are already beating players in ping pong. similar things for robots. and won a marathon.

but i hope you are right.
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I just watched that ping pong robot. I don't consider that autonomous. When you have to have a specific table in a specific location with a fixed robot, that isn't autonomous in my opinion. I would mean a robot going to a table with balls that aren't pre-known able to autonomously move around the table, make shot selections etc...
 
sjm said:
Thanks for the assistance.

Yes, now it's coming back. That Shaw match was at Derby. Mike did, however, play the 2024 US Open at Harrah's, as you have noted, but he did not cash.
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Hard to find good pool records! Nobody keeps them. I use AZB in part, but it's not accurate, either.
 
Didn't expect to find accusations of using AI on a pool forum or talk of robotic players!

I'll stick to Bergman. Glad he is giving it a go, but his best bet to get on the team is a wild card due to strong, consistent performances. Nobody has a big number of points, so he will be in the running either way.

PS: I am never going to knock someone's enthusiasm, in this case, JAM.
 
jbart65 said:
Hard to find good pool records! Nobody keeps them. I use AZB in part, but it's not accurate, either.
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Agreed. For many events, including the majors, there can be little, or even no, record of the players that played and did not cash.
 
jbart65 said:
Good to see, but he might have to play in a few international events to rack enough points. We'll see if he's willing to travel. He hasn't so far.

[...]

Deschaine never signed up for any big WNT or Predator events. Last time he played in the US Open was in 2016.
[...]
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Dechaine played in 2024 US Open and also in the very first US Pro Billiard Series (Predator) event in AZ in 2021.
 
Dechaine is actually a year younger than Bergman- until I looked it up, I thought Dechaine was 2-3 years older.

I guess he has gone back to being a local player after saying he was going to enter more tournaments across the country a few years ago.

Both are still young enough to play top level pool though- you can still play at an elite level in your late 30s
 
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I was in St Louis in March, met up with Justin and was pleased that he is so humble and nice. He had a great showing at the Predator 8 ball, beating some big names like Filler and Duong Quoc Hoang. I love watching his run outs in Ultimate Pool. Hopefully he makes the MC team and America has some heart this year and puts up a great challenge to Europe.
As for DeChaine, he is probably never going to be in the MC again, did you all forget when he exposed Shane as a pedophile? Doubt Shane would play on a team with him again.
 
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jasonlaus said:
Cars been winning marathons for decades, later we'll talk about planes and rockets, maybe even light 😁
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and people said cars wouldnt replace horses and man could never rocket to the moon. and i remember when its was a joke maxwell smart had a shoe for a cellphone with no wires and that was impossible.

most houses have a robot vacumn cleaner. super science fiction just a few decades back, and we already have self driving cars. so a robot pool player is easy but not feasible to make money with so it wont be made until such time.

already our dear bob can be almost replaced with ai. dr. dave comes next and then all the rest of you. ai can make better posts without all the wasted bandwith.
and quantum computing will change completely how we think about our daily lives and possessions which will all be at some risk.
 
maha said:
and people said cars wouldnt replace horses and man could never rocket to the moon. and i remember when its was a joke maxwell smart had a shoe for a cellphone with no wires and that was impossible.

most houses have a robot vacumn cleaner. super science fiction just a few decades back, and we already have self driving cars. so a robot pool player is easy but not feasible to make money with so it wont be made until such time.

already our dear bob can be almost replaced with ai. dr. dave comes next and then all the rest of you. ai can make better posts without all the wasted bandwith.
and quantum computing will change completely how we think about our daily lives and possessions which will all be at some risk.
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How many tournaments do you reckon will allow robots to play?
 
JAM said:
You're welcome. I'm not sure what you mean by "sloppy AI analysis intro," though. I shared a post from Facebook and typed a few sentences about it. Good grief, man!
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Seems like I was wrong then. I've been seeing AI slop in a ton of pool content lately and I lumped your post in there. My apologies.
 
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