This is why we can't have nice things

hang-the-9

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Welcome to the world candya55 players that are not good enough to man-up in the box.

Handicapping should be reserved for the handicapped.

I despise handicapping at ALL levels.

To me, a person don't need a handicap, they need to find out how to practice the right way and get better or accept the fact their gonna lose.

Handicapping is:

Foodstamps for POOL.....

Jeff

Without handicapping events and leagues would die off. At least in my area. There are maybe 3-4-5 good players in each event that would win all the time without a handicap, and maybe 10 lesser players that would still play to compete. The other 20,30,40 would find a handicapped event or find a lower level only tournament.

I know at least one person that wanted to do a league only for low level players because they did not like playing people that were good even when they were getting a spot.
 

DelawareDogs

The Double Deuce…
Silver Member
Without handicapping events and leagues would die off. At least in my area. There are maybe 3-4-5 good players in each event that would win all the time without a handicap, and maybe 10 lesser players that would still play to compete. The other 20,30,40 would find a handicapped event or find a lower level only tournament.

I know at least one person that wanted to do a league only for low level players because they did not like playing people that were good even when they were getting a spot.

And there you have it. The evolution of pool laid out before us.

The players that aren't as strong as the better players don't want to play better players...... they only want to play who they think they can beat......:smile2:

I got where I was in pool through a lot of hard work, a ton of failure, and definitely playing and losing to people that were much better than me. I also understand that for me to get BETTER, I'll once again need to endure some hard work, a ton of failure, and getting run over by people who are better than me.

We've all seen the Earl documentary....he'd lay in a ditch in NC as a kid and cry when he got beat.

Being the best at anything is a struggle.
 

jason

Unprofessional everything
Silver Member
Of course they play better on a BB. It's because they spend almost all their time on toy tables so they can feel good about those "seemingly" hard outs, when in general, those outs are in reach for everyone but complete beginners.

I love it when a toy tabler wonders over to the big tables. Lol....it don't take many games or even just a few shots before you hear "lets move to the 7'er".... then, after a few games over there...lol...we hear, "I need soom weight". Thats usually when I tell them "nope, you need some practice or actually, a lot of practice and maybe even a coach".

Jeff

9 ft are a lot easier to run out on. There is less congestion. The shots are longer, but rarely the creative breakouts needed. As long as you shoot straight, not so hard.
 

evergruven

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Welcome to the world candya55 players that are not good enough to man-up in the box.

Handicapping should be reserved for the handicapped.

I despise handicapping at ALL levels.

To me, a person don't need a handicap, they need to find out how to practice the right way and get better or accept the fact their gonna lose.

Handicapping is:

Foodstamps for POOL.....

Jeff

rake, I knew I could count on you in this thread:thumbup:

I think handicapping has a place in pool
but it's a place I don't wanna be at

fargo is cool
but there is dumping in it
it's a system
that can be gamed

my favorite system is
bring your best game
if u win, u win
if u don't, u don't
oh well..keep trying
or just die
natural selection works
 

sjm

Older and Wiser
Silver Member
9 ft are a lot easier to run out on. There is less congestion. The shots are longer, but rarely the creative breakouts needed. As long as you shoot straight, not so hard.

Surely you jest. When the top guys match up on a bar table, 10-packs are not at all uncommon. I recall reading that Dave Matlock once ran a 28-pack on a bar table. Much easier to string racks on the bar table than the big table.
 

couldnthinkof01

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
And there you have it. The evolution of pool laid out before us.

The players that aren't as strong as the better players don't want to play better players...... they only want to play who they think they can beat......:smile2:

I got where I was in pool through a lot of hard work, a ton of failure, and definitely playing and losing to people that were much better than me. I also understand that for me to get BETTER, I'll once again need to endure some hard work, a ton of failure, and getting run over by people who are better than me.

We've all seen the Earl documentary....he'd lay in a ditch in NC as a kid and cry when he got beat.

Being the best at anything is a struggle.

I believe struggle is very important.
Learning from a loss. Being humbled. Getting back up.
Also getting those wins against that guy you know
is the best, are some of the greatest moments in any
endeavour.

Learning how to win. Being in the finals. Winning against
even competition( or close to it:) ) is also important.

You have levels for a reason. Putting a white belt against
a black belt everyday is only going to teach him how
to get his a$$ kicked, not how to win.

I dont fault anyone who doesnt want to play open
tournaments. I think your confusing them only wanting
to play against those they can beat with wanting to
play in matches in which they have a chance to win.

You need both.

Its just that when your playing in a handicapped
field, it is impossible to think that the system is
perfect. Adjust your expectations. Their may be
some outliers or miscalculations but the majority
of your matches will be "fair". You just need to dig
deep and not make excuses when they are "not fair".
 

Tom1234

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Accusations of sandbagging does get out of hand. In APA, on a couple of nights where I have played well, I have been accused of sandbagging. Never was though..just played better that night.

Trouble is, some LOs weight those 2 nights FAR higher than the other nights where you were off (bad day maybe). These very same POS LOs never look at consistency. So what if you just beat a SL7, they may have tanked trying to get YOUR hcp up. And once these same POS LOs RAISE your hcp to a given level, they will move heaven and earth to keep you there. I know one player who has won 2 matches against SL7s all year (it’s late September) out of about 18 matches against them. If you can’t beat players at your SL at least 50% of the time, how can you be that SL? JMHO and your mileage may vary.
 

Bob Jewett

AZB Osmium Member
Staff member
Gold Member
Silver Member
One feature of Fargo is that they can look for sandbagging. If a player has a much better record in big-money events than in smaller events, it can be detected. They know exactly where you played well and who you were playing for every game in the system.
 

Dan_B

AzB Gold Member
Gold Member
Silver Member
No disrespect to Fargo, but I chose not to get into the conversation
because of the apparent good it was doing according to others. I understood how
the ratings would apply to parimutual betting but I never knew it applied to handicapping.

I figured that handicapping was xnay for higher level players anyway so it really didn't affect me.

So how does Fargo affect handicapping to start off with?

HA! :D that's funny, you figuring no one would notice...
.. that it's not necessary for your skill level to be noted.
 

highkarate

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
9 ft are a lot easier to run out on. There is less congestion. The shots are longer, but rarely the creative breakouts needed. As long as you shoot straight, not so hard.

I'm gonna have to vehemently disagree with you here. Curious to hear what your biggest package is on a bar table vs big table? Because I can tell you mine is almost twice as high on a bar table. I personally know guys that have packages in the teens on bar tables. And these guys are nobody as far as pool is concerned. They would have 0% chance to win a professional tournament. Why? Because they can't do it on a big table.

Disclaimer: If you've run like a 35 pack on a big table I'll take it all back and shut up forever on the subject
 
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Pacecar

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
What I'm seeing is that some players are using weekly regular season league play to lower their Fargo rating. During league playoffs, they play their true skill level. During tournaments, they play very well. How do they do this? A group of much higher level players form a 5-person league team. The same three of the five play well every week. Those 3 players don't mind if their Fargo rate is high. The other two players have the objective to lower their Fargo rate, so they play well only in certain situations (such as a match tiebreaker game). For most matches, the 3 players shooting at their normal high speed enables the team to win and be seeded at the top for the playoffs.
 

336Robin

Multiverse Operative
Silver Member
HA! :D that's funny, you figuring no one would notice...
.. that it's not necessary for your skill level to be noted.

In my area its Fargo what? So no it doesn't affect me and there no promoters
here doing anything. Everything is done at the room level. That's our Pool Universe and
its the only thing that matters to the local players but I'm happy for those it works for.
Extending it into handicapped events is always going to be met with possibles for
manipulation especially if its so sensitive in that it changes quickly. Why would there not
be a component to keep a player from falling from his ranking overnight almost?.its my understanding
the APA does that.
 

sbpoolleague

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
What I'm seeing is that some players are using weekly regular season league play to lower their Fargo rating. During league playoffs, they play their true skill level. During tournaments, they play very well. How do they do this? A group of much higher level players form a 5-person league team. The same three of the five play well every week. Those 3 players don't mind if their Fargo rate is high. The other two players have the objective to lower their Fargo rate, so they play well only in certain situations (such as a match tiebreaker game). For most matches, the 3 players shooting at their normal high speed enables the team to win and be seeded at the top for the playoffs.

Never happened. Never will.
 

JC

Coos Cues
One feature of Fargo is that they can look for sandbagging. If a player has a much better record in big-money events than in smaller events, it can be detected. They know exactly where you played well and who you were playing for every game in the system.

That's where tired and a shot of whiskey come in. You are in fact not the same player in the two events. So by showing that in Fargo you are really not showing anything not already known and expected. I used to take pride in not losing games to lesser players under any circumstances and tried hard all the time. Now the circumstances where I care enough to bear down and get in the zone are selective. None of the lesser players who win some games here and there are asking for action. We all know the pecking order. The pool world is just like that.
 

Dan_B

AzB Gold Member
Gold Member
Silver Member
In my area its Fargo what? So no it doesn't affect me and there no promoters
here doing anything. Everything is done at the room level. That's our Pool Universe and
its the only thing that matters to the local players but I'm happy for those it works for.
Extending it into handicapped events is always going to be met with possibles for
manipulation especially if its so sensitive in that it changes quickly. Why would there not
be a component to keep a player from falling from his ranking overnight almost?.its my understanding
the APA does that.

I myself don't play apa to know how fast ones' speed changes.
Looks like in your area, room(s), everybody pretty much knows everyone, maybe
similar speeds play in their groups , match ups and such?

Fargorate is a powerful tool for managing a game for the masses.
The strong players don't really care to give because their good,
really good and prefer it to pay, straight up.
In the big picture they're a handful. Yet, Fargorate would, will, still play a big role in a
seasonal session of professionals in a certain gaming format into the future, I'd get
established if you want to be in the big dance, there would be a match, a race for your speed.
I caught your post because I was wondering, ' how doe's he play?' dunno, can't tell.

The organized game, league, is for everyone.
I too hear and are told that the handicapped game can be played,
sandbagged on the bets and such. Jockey Clubs deal with it, so...
 

Cory in DC

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Do you have a specific example of this? If so you should send it to Mike.

But some care is needed before you start making accusations. Are you sure it isn't just that the players are more up for the larger events?

The general problem with looking back on a tournament is that whoever wins it was probably playing above or well above their average level. They may appear to have been sandbagging but they just happened to have a good day. It has to happen to someone.

I wish the OP were wrong, but he's probably not. I think it's fixable.

For players with established ratings, FargoRate could present stratified ratings based on records in tournaments with low/medium/high stakes. A tournament director could then pick the rating for each player that corresponds to the type of tournament being run. That way, a player would have to dump multiple high-stakes tournaments in order to get an edge in the next one, but that wouldn't be profitable.

If FargoRate were able to track the stakes of entered matches, that could also be in input into the algorithm. It already puts more weight on more recent matches than on older matches; it could use the same basic approach to also weight higher stakes matches more. The weights would be set to maximize the predictive accuracy.
 

Cory in DC

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
People always come into threads like this to say that handicaps are for wimps and to just play even up tourneys. Thing is, in my 30+ years of playing pool, the large majority of the action I've seen is handicapped. It just so happens to be handicapped in the form of one-on-one tournaments.

Why is it perfectly fine to use weight to generate action in individual matchups, but somehow wrong to use weight to fill up a tournament?

If playing even is super-cool no matter how long the odds, then where is the line of players looking to play Dennis, or even the local shortstop, even up for $100 or $1,000 a rack?
 

jrhendy

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
People always come into threads like this to say that handicaps are for wimps and to just play even up tourneys. Thing is, in my 30+ years of playing pool, the large majority of the action I've seen is handicapped. It just so happens to be handicapped in the form of one-on-one tournaments.

Why is it perfectly fine to use weight to generate action in individual matchups, but somehow wrong to use weight to fill up a tournament?

If playing even is super-cool no matter how long the odds, then where is the line of players looking to play Dennis, or even the local shortstop, even up for $100 or $1,000 a rack?

The Mezz West Tour, going on it’s fourth year, is a handicapped 9/10 ball tournament held in pool rooms that always draws over 100 players. There are four tiers. The top pro tier gos to 9 games and the adjustments are based on the Fargo Ratings. A well run handicapped tournament with reasonable entry fees for players will work.
 

ShootingArts

Smorg is giving St Peter the 7!
Gold Member
Silver Member
toy tables

Surely you jest. When the top guys match up on a bar table, 10-packs are not at all uncommon. I recall reading that Dave Matlock once ran a 28-pack on a bar table. Much easier to string racks on the bar table than the big table.



Stu,

I chuckle a little when I read about toy tables and toy table players. I doubt seriously if the people talking like that have tangled with a short track artist like Dave. Run racks, leave you with an almost impossible kick, run some more racks. After somebody has chilled in a chair a few hours having never gotten a real shot in that time they may sing a different tune!

I hope Dave and Keith manage to get together. Even both way over the hill it might open a few eyes.

Hu
 
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