Recent content by sjm

... so this is what it's like to be part of an NPR thread. The theme to which many subscribe seems to be "If you are young and show any aptitude for it, why not try pool as a career. As there will not be much else for human beings to do soon enough, why develop skills in a trade or career?"...

Agreed. For many events, including the majors, there can be little, or even no, record of the players that played and did not cash.

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...

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.

I believe this is in error. I believe that Mike played in the US Open in either 2023 or 2024 but failed to cash. I remember chatting with him at length in the tournament room at Harrah's. Ironically, he drew Jayson Shaw, his old rival on the Joss Tour, but unlike when their rivalry was...

Agreed. It doesn't take that many ranking points to be an auto-qualifier for Team USA. One good finish, like when Tyler Styer came 3rd at the 2025 UK Open, might be enough and, even if it isn't, will put him in the limelight for a possible wildcard selection. Actually, I suspect that Tyler...

Yeah, Tony was one hell of a player who had a very big break. He was probably never a top five player, but often a top ten. I got to know him during his PBT days and enjoyed his company. He is sorely missed.

I'm sure many will remember the TV show from the mid-1970s called the "Six Million Dollar Man." It was predicated on the idea that it was possible to reengineer a human being in a way that made him faster, stronger, and gave him better vision. While it all seemed pretty farfetched in the...

This is wonderful news, as to this point, just the opposite has been true. The Mosconi points race runs from November to November, so it is nearly half over, and Justin has zero Mosconi ranking points at present. The fact that he is playing in an Ultimate 8ball event, to me, is of no import...

Just in case you were wondering, I do not subscribe to the idea of "the divine right of kings."

I reacted to the attached article about the robot that broke the world record in the half marathon, thinking about how it might translate to pro pool. There's every reason to believe that a pool playing robot might greatly excel one day.

OK, so one day there will be a robot that can give Filler the seven. How will this affect the game long-term?

No, we are not saying the same thing. Heart is not the deciding factor in who can play when faced with the systemic interruption that is not found in any other pool tournament of the year. Crowd noise, which in the case of the Mosconi might be termed crowd sharking, does not add pressure but...

As somebody who attends nearly every Mosconi Cup, I do not agree with this. What makes the Mosconi different from every other event is the screaming fans who are loud while a player is at the table, and sometimes even when they are over the shot. Some have a very hard time adjusting to an...

I grew up playing two shot shootout. More or less what Maha posted, but in New York, we spotted everything that went in illegally. If you made four balls on the break and scratched, all four of them would spot, at least on the nine footers. In most cases, the pros switched to Texas Express in...