What is the ideal miss percentage in competition?

Siz

Siz

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Suppose you are about to play competitively - a tournament or money match - and are working out your game plan. What percentage of misses that you should be targetting?

Zero would be an option. But unless you are super human (or playing out out of your skin), the only way to achieve a zero-miss percentage is to play very conservatively. This means only going for high-percentage shots and on every shot concentrating fully on the pot even if it means not getting good shape on the next ball. That sort of conservative play may give you good pot/miss stats; but it won't win you games against decent opposition.

At the other extreme, you could just go for anything that is pottable - throw in banks, kicks, combos and masses - and see what happens. But that kind of reckless / desparate play is not going to win you much either.

So is there an optimum range, and if so what is it? If you were given the stats after a match, what percentage might make you think "I played safe too much - I should have taken more risks" or "The way I was missing balls, I should have switched to a more tactical game"?

I suspect that few, if any, players think about their strategy / shot selection in these terms. I certainly don't. I suspect that I am like others in treating each shot on its merits; making my decision based on how I feel about the shot in front of me, on what the match situation is and on what the alternatives are. But how can you test objectively whether you are making those judgement calls correctly or whether you have a persistent and sub-optimal bias towards either offense or defense?

Any thoughts?
 
Aaron_S

Aaron_S

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
If you are talking about a rotation game like 9-ball or 10-ball, where the major emphasis is on running balls, I think the ghost is a good tool to use to determine how aggressive or conservative you should play. I don't play all that often, so I usually will play a few sets against the ghost before competing. This gives me a baseline for determining when to shoot or duck, and I'll adjust my percentages accordingly as the tournament or match progresses. Without some sort of a baseline, you are kind of playing a guessing game with your percentages, and may as a result suffer more misses than you would like. Of course, even if you have a good handle on your percentages, you still have to have the discipline to apply them appropriately.

Hope that helps,
Aaron
 
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CreeDo

CreeDo

Fargo Rating 597
Silver Member
Jim Rempe has said in a DVD "never shoot a ball you can miss". Of course that's easy to say when you're Jim Rempe and there is no ball you can miss :)

Since following that advice (it was for straight pool but I adapt it to other games) my winning percentage has gone up. At the very least, there should be a big reward for shooting a missable ball like opening up a cluster or getting better shape on the gamewinning ball. And if the safety is an even lower % chance than the shot, then just take the shot.

Try to make all of your missable shots 2-way so you can leave the opponent hosed if you DO miss.
 
cardiac kid

cardiac kid

Super Senior Member
Silver Member
Siz,

I really don't think the number of missed balls is a determining factor. This past week during the SBE, I played two perfect matches miss wise. Won both convincingly. Won two matches in which I missed one ball in each. Lost two matches in which I missed one ball. My break was working well, parked the cue ball near the center, made a ball in well over 50% of the breaks. Sometimes a ball would roll between the cue ball and the lowest object ball. What are you going to do? One of my opponents had three consecutive low ball / nine ball combo's in one set. Hard to win against that.

Realistically, everyone misses. Work on all the other game aspects as hard as not missing. Safety play won more than one match for me. One opponent jokingly told me I won because of my safties and not the fact I had not missed a ball.

Lyn
 
Nature Boy

Nature Boy

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Aaron_S said:
If you are talking about a rotation game like 9-ball or 10-ball, where the major emphasis is on running balls, I think the ghost is a good tool to use to determine how aggressive or conservative you should play. I don't play all that often, so I usually will play a few sets against the ghost before competing. This gives me a baseline for determining when to shoot or duck, and I'll adjust my percentages accordingly as the tournament or match progresses. Without some sort of a baseline, you are kind of playing a guessing game with your percentages, and may as a result suffer more misses than you would like. Of course, even if you have a good handle on your percentages, you still have to have the discipline to apply them appropriately.

Hope that helps,
Aaron
Click to expand...

So if you only consistently run four against the ghost, that is all you would try to run in competition?
 
Aaron_S

Aaron_S

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Nature Boy said:
Wow. Very interesting. So you just play an outright safe?
Click to expand...

Right. Run 4, then duck. Except I only play the 3-ball ghost, so I always run 2, then duck. That's the beauty of it, you can tailor it to fit your specific game.

Aaron
 
Nature Boy

Nature Boy

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Aaron_S said:
Right. Run 4, then duck. Except I only play the 3-ball ghost, so I always run 2, then duck. That's the beauty of it, you can tailor it to fit your specific game.

Aaron
Click to expand...


Run then duck? Not duck first if there is more than four?
 
Aaron_S

Aaron_S

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Nature Boy said:
Run then duck? Not duck first if there is more than four?
Click to expand...

Well I live in 4-ball country, so all of the tournaments I play in are 4-ball tournaments. In 4-ball, it is really wonderful because there are rarely more than 4 balls on table at one time. If you are playing a championship game like 7-ball, however, you will have to apply the "supplemental run 2, then duck" (or "s-r2td", as most people refer to it) rule. The supplemental rule states that you should, at your earliest convenience, make it so that there are an even number of balls on the table. This may force you to make just 1 ball before ducking, which might at first appear to be in direct contradiction with the "standard run 2, then duck" (or "r2td", as it is commonly called) rule, but the transgression is permissible in these advanced games. Once you have an even number of balls on the table, you can simply divide that number by 2 (I carry a pocket calculator in by bag so I don't have to remember the formula for division, plus it saves on pencil and paper, which, in a strange coincidence that my friend pointed out, are both made out of trees). This number is the amount of times you need to get ball-in-hand to win the game. So if there are, say 6 balls on the table, my calculator tells me that I need to get ball-in-hand exactly 12 tim... strike that, I used the formula for multiplication, lol. I need to get ball-in-hand 3.000000 (basically the same as 3) times. So if I can get ball-in-hand 3 times (I know, you would think it would be more, right?) in the game, I figure to get out at least 74% of the time. I know this percentage from my experience playing the ghost, which is why playing the ghost is a real good thing to do.

Sincerely,
Aaron
 
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Siz

Siz

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Aaron_S said:
Well I live in 4-ball country, so all of the tournaments I play in are 4-ball tournaments. In 4-ball, it is really wonderful because there are rarely more than 4 balls on table at one time. If you are playing a championship game like 7-ball, however, you will have to apply the "supplemental run 2, then duck" (or "s-r2td", as most people refer to it) rule. The supplemental rule states that you should, at your earliest convenience, make it so that there are an even number of balls on the table. This may force you to make just 1 ball before ducking, which might at first appear to be in direct contradiction with the "standard run 2, then duck" (or "r2td", as it is commonly called) rule, but the transgression is permissible in these advanced games. Once you have an even number of balls on the table, you can simply divide that number by 2 (I carry a pocket calculator in by bag so I don't have to remember the formula for division, plus it saves on pencil and paper, which, in a strange coincidence that my friend pointed out, are both made out of trees). This number is the amount of times you need to get ball-in-hand to win the game. So if there are, say 6 balls on the table, my calculator tells me that I need to get ball-in-hand exactly 12 tim... strike that, I used the formula for multiplication, lol. I need to get ball-in-hand 3.000000 (basically the same as 3) times. So if I can get ball-in-hand 3 times (I know, you would think it would be more, right?) in the game, I figure to get out at least 74% of the time. I know this percentage from my experience playing the ghost, which is why playing the ghost is a real good thing to do.

Sincerely,
Aaron
Click to expand...

I am sure that this method will soon get the popularity that it so obviously deserves. BTW, do you ever play the ghost for money?
 
Aaron_S

Aaron_S

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Siz said:
I am sure that this method will soon get the popularity that it so obviously deserves. BTW, do you ever play the ghost for money?
Click to expand...

No, he still owes me from last time.

Aaron

(with apologies to the OP for getting completely stupid in his thread)
 
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