LLM generated slop. Do better - I like your videos.Most competitive players believe matches are decided by skill. The better player wins. The higher level prevails.
Train enough, raise your standard high enough, and results will follow automatically. That belief is logical because skill is visible. You can measure it in shotmaking, cue ball control, pattern play, decision quality. You feel it when practice is crisp. You see it when someone runs racks without effort. So when competition goes badly, the default conclusion is obvious: I need more skill.
For years I believed the same thing, until a pattern became impossible to ignore. I had weeks in practice where everything worked. The stroke felt clean, the cue ball did what it was supposed to do, the table looked simple. Then I stepped into league or tournament play and performed far below what I knew was in me. Nothing had changed technically between the practice room and the match. The same fundamentals, the same knowledge, the same cue, the same body. Yet the outcome was completely different. That gap is the core problem most serious players are actually fighting.
The reason it happens is simple once you see it. In a match, your skill level is fixed for that day. You cannot add three months of training between rack two and rack three. You cannot magically become more precise because the moment is important. Skill is what you built beforehand. Competition is where you attempt to access it. What changes from rack to rack is not your ability, but the percentage of your ability you can use when the heat is on. That percentage is performance.
Before going further, one thing has to be clear: skill absolutely matters. If two players both perform close to their actual level, the one with the higher skill will win most of the time. And if your skill is significantly higher than your opponent’s, you can often survive stretches of average performance and still come out on top. I have won many matches simply because my underlying level was stronger, even though I was far from perfect. At the same time, when the skill gap is not huge, a player with slightly lower ability but much better performance can beat a stronger opponent who collapses under pressure.
Skill sets the range of what is possible. Performance decides where inside that range you operate.
This is why “just play to your level” is one of the most damaging ideas in competitive pool. It sounds responsible, even professional, but it quietly turns the match into a test of identity. Instead of seeing a layout and solving it, you start checking whether you are living up to what you believe your level should look like. That shift creates a constant background pressure: "you’re supposed to make this, you can’t miss here, this is an important ball, don’t embarrass yourself." The table hasn’t changed, but your attention has. You stop playing the game and start protecting an image.
That identity pressure can come from many places. Sometimes it’s external expectations. Sometimes it’s your own standard. In my case, being known as a coach amplifies it. When you teach patterns and decision-making publicly, every miss feels heavier. It’s no longer just a technical error; it feels like a contradiction of who you’re supposed to be at the table. And that is exactly the trap. The moment you start protecting identity instead of solving the layout, you are no longer fully present in the shot.
Once that shift happens, performance drops quickly. Fear of missing changes both body and decision-making. You tighten up. The stroke gets smaller. The tempo changes. You start steering instead of delivering. Your mind jumps ahead to consequences instead of staying with execution. None of that reflects a lack of skill. It is performance collapsing under expectation.
Mistakes are already built into your skill level. They are not exceptions. They are part of the package.
Even the best players in the world miss balls, misjudge speed, choose the wrong pattern. Expecting error-free pool is unrealistic. Believing you can access your personal 100 percent in every match is just as damaging. Your absolute ceiling exists, but it shows up in peaks, not permanently. Some days you are close to it, some days you are not. That fluctuation is normal. When you expect both perfection and constant access to your maximum level, every ordinary mistake feels like failure. And that emotional reaction is what turns a single miss into a collapse over the next few racks.
When you accept that mistakes are normal at your level, the entire emotional structure of the match changes. A miss is no longer a crisis that needs to be explained. It is simply one of the outcomes your current ability produces. That acceptance doesn’t make you passive. It makes you calm. And calm is the foundation of performance, because it gives you access to what you already know how to do.
Performance, then, becomes much simpler than most players think. It is not a mystical mental toughness trait that you either have or don’t have. It is the ability to stay with the task in front of you and solve it with the tools you have today. In pool, every visit is a puzzle. You read the layout, decide what the correct solution is, commit to it, and execute. The more your mind drifts into judgment, identity, or future consequences, the more you lose access to that simple process.
That is why practice and competition can feel like two different sports. In focused practice, you rarely attach meaning to a shot. You don’t think about the score. You don’t worry about what the opponent thinks. You don’t fear embarrassment. You just try to execute and learn. The goal in competition is not to suddenly become better than in practice. It is to recreate that same mental structure while the stakes are present: task first, outcome second.
This also explains why so many strong practice players stay inconsistent for years. Their skill keeps rising, but their performance stays unstable. They add more tools, but they still can’t reliably access the tools they already have. That creates the most frustrating situation in pool: you know you’re getting better, yet your match play doesn’t reflect it. At some point, more training alone won’t solve that. You need performance skills: acceptance of mistakes, control of attention, commitment to process, and the ability to reset quickly after an error.
So the practical takeaway is not to ignore skill. It’s to put skill in its correct place.
Build it deliberately in practice. In competition, stop trying to prove your level and stop demanding perfection. Put your attention where it belongs: on the current puzzle. See the table clearly, choose the solution, commit, execute, accept the result, reset. When you do that consistently, pressure drops on its own, your performance rises, and your real ability finally has space to show up.
I also have a video where I am talking about that, you can check it out here:
Cheers,
Shari
Why Your Skill Doesn’t Matter in Matches - Just in Practice
- Thread starter Sharivari
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LLM generated slop. Do better - I like your videos.
I actually found the post to be very insightful and I for one appreciate him sharing it. I think the points he made are applicable for all levels of players as we all have moments where we feel we have to meet some unspoken expectation; one that we have created for ourselves or one that others have placed on us. If the focus is on the process however rather than the outcome it frees our mind and increases the probability of a better outcome.
I can't count the number of times I've missed an easy shot or runout and realized I wasn't focusing on the shot and instead was thinking about, this'll be a 4 pack or I better not miss, or if I make this I'll be guaranteed 5th place. It'll always help to understand that you need to focus on the right things and stay in the moment.
Yes, exactly! That is what the OP is saying! It was kind of wordy, he was just trying to add context. Your skill level doesn’t matter, unless you can access it. What percentage of your skills, can you apply, to this moment.
DeeDeeCues
Well-known member
Your message would be better served if you didn't obfuscate in an attempt to be profound.
Using short sweet parables while in the chair helped get my mind right in competition.
3 words is a good place to start.
My go to was ....
Make him earn it. (oops 4 words
)
Having the goal of performing to the best of my ability was more effective for me than the goal of winning.
IF..... I performed to the best of my ability winning was collateral. .
3 words is a good place to start.
- Make it count.
- Seize the day.
- Never give up.
- Believe you can.
- Create your destiny.
- Learn from yesterday.
- Appreciate every moment
My go to was ....
Make him earn it. (oops 4 words
)Having the goal of performing to the best of my ability was more effective for me than the goal of winning.
IF..... I performed to the best of my ability winning was collateral. .
. In competition the fact that a missed shot gets me time in my chair to think about what I have done. That thinking time needs to be practiced as well. I see less value in rapid fire repeate of drill shots.
In practice I simulate competition by playing right hand vs left hand. When I miss I give that a hand a time out and transfer the cue to the other hand.
Not a perfect method but it's served me.
In practice I simulate competition by playing right hand vs left hand. When I miss I give that a hand a time out and transfer the cue to the other hand.
Not a perfect method but it's served me.Exactly. What Sharivari (OP) is saying is that the skill level you have in PRACTICE is not the skill level you demonstrate in COMPETITION, mostly at the amateur and semi-pro level. Mark Wilson says that people play at 70% of their skill level in competition compared to what they do in private practice. Not sure where he got the 70% from, but the conclusion is correct.
It's all about your brain, eye, muscles coordination. It is much more difficult in competition to perform at 100%.
At the amateur level in trapshooting it is absolutely well known that a shooter tend to miss if the person before misses. Sometimes you can have everyone going straight and then one person misses and the next three or four shooters miss in a row. I have seen this hundreds of times. It is so common that you are taught by coaches to visualize breaking the exact target the person before missed before going through your pre-shot routine for your shot ... this is not applicable/necessary in pool from my experience.
The main thing for missing in pool is pressure. For Sharivari who is a YouTuber and coach, it's absolute pressure for him to perform under a live camera. He is just human. Give the guy a break with some of the shit comments posted here.
bpeacock
Well-known member
I disagree. I can totally relate to the struggle that the OP is talking about. Yes, I get my butt kicked on the table often but I go home and train... I track my progress training and I see my skills are going up. Then I go back to league and have more crappy performance
. So why isn't my performance improving? I think @Sharivari is spot on... His post is not only encouraging but helpful for me.It's not ever gonna be one size fits all. Sharivari makes astute observations. Joe Aspiring Pro may have many other concerns.
I'm from the technical mastery school. (I had piano lessons
) The reason is simple. You can't play the tune if you have to struggle against it. That's what I think about low skill priority. The winners at pool have their gig all calibrated and can compete assured their method won't fail. They won't dwell on the pedantic cautions in vogue. It's all mastered. See?
Anyway back to me. I put in far more than amateur time on marksmanship and precision. So I make comments - that makes the sharks "knowingly" salivate; not teasing or laying it on either. It's what I believe about craft. RKC has a video on how to tailor and clothe a 7 footer. He had all the stretch offsets down. The right glue and how come. Mind blown.
So showtime in pool is about headroom; the freedom to effortlessly do the appropriate thing.
And here's the second point I make. A match involves a minimum of two minds. Bring yours.
I'm from the technical mastery school. (I had piano lessons
) The reason is simple. You can't play the tune if you have to struggle against it. That's what I think about low skill priority. The winners at pool have their gig all calibrated and can compete assured their method won't fail. They won't dwell on the pedantic cautions in vogue. It's all mastered. See? Anyway back to me. I put in far more than amateur time on marksmanship and precision. So I make comments - that makes the sharks "knowingly" salivate; not teasing or laying it on either. It's what I believe about craft. RKC has a video on how to tailor and clothe a 7 footer. He had all the stretch offsets down. The right glue and how come. Mind blown.
So showtime in pool is about headroom; the freedom to effortlessly do the appropriate thing.
And here's the second point I make. A match involves a minimum of two minds. Bring yours.
The worst thing in any hands-eyes coordination sport is to say "don't miss" because you will most likely miss that very shot. I saw a video by one of the best trapshooter in the world (Phil Kiner) in which he claimed that the brain does not register the "don't " part and actually trigger the miss. It's a brain thing that makes you miss.
If there is a sport psychologist on this site who can shed more light on this it would be helpful.
Well it is correct for Some People, not everyone. Some people carry that baggage. It's possible to overcome that sort of limiting attitude. Some can be satisfied with a 70% performance. It's much more rewarding when I can perform at 110%. Exceeding expectations starts with dropping expectations.
The fight or flight is something I can't create in practice. The deer in the headlights look is a Tell. The predator eyes tell nothing. So even when nervousness creeps in .....don't let it show.
Any sign of weakness strengthens the opposition. NEVER show displeasure with a missed shot. Efren is my role model. Period. When he misses he scratches his head and smiles or even chuckles. Half the game is 85% mental.
When playing for money my goal was to make my opponent surrender. Making him quit was more important than the money. Of course there were times when I got down to my last barrel and the self to self always got around to, "Well I have been broke monetarily a few times and I survived. So uh ? The inner Alfred E Newman says, WHAT? ME Worry?" Some of my favorite comeback memories. My observation and study of Cole playing one pocket for a thousand a game was entertaining and educational. Cole's game Never changed based on his money. His last barrel game was the same as his 25,000 ahead game. Perhaps better. Cole always showed up to play Harry with one barrel, or less. Figuring to get the full thousand required to play Harry with $20 nine ball the night before. I never saw Cole seek a backer. I did see him go broke a time or few. It wasn't the pressure that changed his game it was the alcohol. Alcoholism is a disease that's incredibly hard to cure. Cole tried the wagon many times but always fell off. His confession to me was, "I just need one drink to take the edge off." The nerves solution worked at first but Cole couldn't stop at just one.The big 2 day event that I performed my best in had me starting Sunday morning with 3 drinks at my table when my first match started. A beer a cup of coffee and a glass of water. The beer and coffee got a sip or two depending on how my mind felt. The water quickly became my go to and the other two were not finished. The method took me to the finals. worked for me.
I was taught that the subconscious doesnt register the don't when you think Don't Miss. Miss is all that it hears. So miss I will. If I catch myself thinking of the don't when pre shot analysis is happening, I need to replace it with a positive thought. "Don't miis" needed to be replaced with, "just make the ball." Imagine success works.