China Open

[AtLarge]

There was a statistic analysis that showed that there is no difference for the end result, so why do people feel so strong about it? ...

Where was that? Was it amateur or pros? Because my recollection of the At Large work is that the break does favour the good pros.

Perhaps skor is remembering what Bob Jewett has said on winner breaks vs. alternate break formats, such as this from 2024:

If psychology is not a factor, probability and statistics has a definite and rather surprising answer to this question.

Consider all of the following formats for a race to N games:

Winner breaks
Alternate break
Loser breaks
Winner of the flip says who will break each game but cannot assign more than N breaks to either player
Winner of the flip breaks N times and then the other player breaks N-1 times

The amazing result from probability and statistics is that all of these break formats give the same advantage to the better player.

That means you can choose a format that is good for other reasons without worrying about giving more/less advantage to the better player.

 

[Bob Jewett]

Perhaps skor is remembering what Bob Jewett has said on winner breaks vs. alternate break formats, such as this from 2024:

In summary, the two main results are that the match-winning chances do not change for a change in format (winner/alternate) and the match length is generally a little longer for alternate breaks. Loser breaks also does not change the match-winning probability.

 

[Jaden]

yea, wu was pretty much toast mid match. make it race to 13 winner breaks and make it a WNT event so they can credit the ranking points

I wish, but never gonna happen as long as the WPA holds Asia hostage..

 

[Jaden]

There was a statistic analysis that showed that there is no difference for the end result, so why do people feel so strong about it?
On one side, I like winner breaks (and the looser rack), sort of prize and punishment for the winner and looser, works great for amateurs, didn't work well for pros when they would argue about the racking and it took forever to rack and get the game moving... now that was a pain to watch... then came referee racking and then the Sardo rack etc etc but that's another story.

Here is another perspective, you travel across the world to play in a tournament, winner breaks format, loose the lag, your opponent break and runs 9 racks, you pack your cues and go home... fun...
Or go with alternate break and at least you get on the table and maybe on the score board, even if we follow the statistic that show that since it doesn't matter, you were about to lose anyway at least you got to play.

All the WNT events early stages are boring as hell, all the seeded players are playing dead money and win 9-0 or 9-1, give the dead money a reason to come back next time.

The ability to comeback from an 8-1 or something like that, that we saw in Arizona, means that the players have figured out the break.
You want to keep it interesting and keep the winner breaks, bring the 3 points rule in. we will see less cut breaks and more good old pool.

Well you have to understand that those statistical analyses have an inherent flaw. It's only showing tv table matches, which are going to err to the side of the better performers. So yeah, there might not be a difference in the break between those players who are playing better and are more likely to be on the tv tables and to get farther in the tournament. but that doesn't mean that the players who aren't playing as well aren't having more difficulty than they normally would be with other breaks.

Now don't get me wrong I'm not arguing that in the long run, it's different. Honestly, I doubt that it is, but any statistical analysis needs to include all of the matches to be truly reliable. The tv tables are inherently going to have better performing players on average.

 

[jay helfert]

weird. i was watching the final on ko brothers channel and it had english commentary, until the ko brothers inserted themselves and now it's chinese. but what stream are they restreaming?

Same here. Those who defend alternate break tend to cite tennis, but in tennis, the serve is a giant advantage. For example, in today's US Open men's tennis final, there were just three service breaks in thirty games played, so the server won 90% of the games. Alternate serve is a no brainer in pro tennis.

Combining the stats at the last two WNT majors (Arizona Open, US Open 9ball), per AtLarge stats, the breaker won 234 racks out of 394 racks played, or 59% of the racks played. The breaker's advantage in today's nine ball is not so great as to require alternate break to make it fair.

As a fan, I find alternate break less interesting to watch. There is nothing more electrifying than seeing a player keep the table for racks at a time, and the fans have always responded to it when it happens. The match often cited as the greatest ever at the World 9ball was Wu Jiaqing vs Po Cheng Kuo in 2005 --- in the race to 17 final, Wu stepped up to the table trailing 16-12 and ran out the match to win the world 9ball championship. That could not have happened with alternate break. Pool has always been a game of momentum, and alternate break spoils it for me.

With alternate break and no shot clock, I'm having a harder and harder time taking the China Open seriously these days.

Hear Hear!

 

[jay helfert]

There was a statistic analysis that showed that there is no difference for the end result, so why do people feel so strong about it?
On one side, I like winner breaks (and the looser rack), sort of prize and punishment for the winner and looser, works great for amateurs, didn't work well for pros when they would argue about the racking and it took forever to rack and get the game moving... now that was a pain to watch... then came referee racking and then the Sardo rack etc etc but that's another story.

Here is another perspective, you travel across the world to play in a tournament, winner breaks format, loose the lag, your opponent break and runs 9 racks, you pack your cues and go home... fun...
Or go with alternate break and at least you get on the table and maybe on the score board, even if we follow the statistic that show that since it doesn't matter, you were about to lose anyway at least you got to play.

All the WNT events early stages are boring as hell, all the seeded players are playing dead money and win 9-0 or 9-1, give the dead money a reason to come back next time.

The ability to comeback from an 8-1 or something like that, that we saw in Arizona, means that the players have figured out the break.
You want to keep it interesting and keep the winner breaks, bring the 3 points rule in. we will see less cut breaks and more good old pool.

Break from the head spot! That'll work.

 

[jay helfert]

In summary, the two main results are that the match-winning chances do not change for a change in format (winner/alternate) and the match length is generally a little longer for alternate breaks. Loser breaks also does not change the match-winning probability.

The better player will always have an advantage!

 

[skip100]

Statistical analysis looks at the long run probabilities regardless of whether it’s a TV table or not. That’s the whole point.

 

[JolietJames]

So the breaker had a 59% win rate in the tournaments used as examples.
This makes it sound like alternate break and winner break is somewhat even when it comes to outcome.
Is this due to all the break rules that have been put in place over the years?
What was the breaker win % without rule changes like the 3-point rule, break box, etc.?

 

[skogstokig]

So the breaker had a 59% win rate in the tournaments used as examples.
This makes it sound like alternate break and winner break is somewhat even when it comes to outcome.
Is this due to all the break rules that have been put in place over the years?
What was the breaker win % without rule changes like the 3-point rule, break box, etc.?

you can find atlarge's break statistics going back 10+ years at dr daves website

 

[sjm]

Well you have to understand that those statistical analyses have an inherent flaw. It's only showing tv table matches, which are going to err to the side of the better performers. So yeah, there might not be a difference in the break between those players who are playing better and are more likely to be on the tv tables and to get farther in the tournament. but that doesn't mean that the players who aren't playing as well aren't having more difficulty than they normally would be with other breaks.

Now don't get me wrong I'm not arguing that in the long run, it's different. Honestly, I doubt that it is, but any statistical analysis needs to include all of the matches to be truly reliable. The tv tables are inherently going to have better performing players on average.

Very true, but there's yet another issue. In winner's break format (used in nearly all of the events analyzed by AtLarge,) the better player is breaking more than half of the racks, so it, perforce, causes a slight increase in the "breaker wins the game" statistic.

 

[Jaden]

Very true, but there's yet another issue. In winner's break format (used in nearly all of the events analyzed by AtLarge,) the better player is breaking more than half of the racks, so it, perforce, causes a slight increase in the "breaker wins the game" statistic.

Yep, exactly. The successful breaker is more likely to be breaking the majority of the games for any given match.