Pros and cons of believing in talent or hard work

Tin Man said:

Would you rather be right? Or would you rather be successful?

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I don't buy the dichotomy. You can be both. I beat Efren Reyes once, despite knowing that he had more talent than me, and was a better player than me.

Bob Jewett said:

It's true that a lot of champions are/were more or less self-taught but are we talking about the greats or are we discussing the APA 5s and the FargoRate 500s who would like to get better? The Fargorate 700+ players make up such a tiny fraction of pool players that their patronage is completely insignificant to instructors. Besides some of those champs are very hard to teach.

There are lessons and there are lessons. The Balukas family owned a pool hall, as did the Cranfield family and the Mosconi family. When a child sees that "this is what the cool people do" it can make an impression.

Walter Lindrum from boyhood was expected by his family to play billiards. He was arguably the most skilled person to ever play a cue sport. It was said that for the first six months on the table, his father only allowed him to have the cue ball.

And then there was Willie Hoppe. From about the age of 10 he was expected to earn the family's living. According to one story, his father beat him when he missed. Hoppe was known for making the hard shots but not such perfect ball control, so I guess his father was a good instructor.

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These are very valid points. The great players improve at an alarming rate they don’t need anyone to teach them. Most probably had some help at a very early age. Almost every great player I’ve heard of were very good from a very early age. It’s very rare for anyone over the age of 25 to show up that no one has ever heard of.

I was going to bring up Bob J's champ or learner question albeit more sacrastically. Regardless, this concept of "champ"; supposedly the guy who trounces the rest of the pile: I arrived at the following notions contemplating history's bad guys. ie. How is it one guy gets through all the murderous treachery (cherrytree in pool) to become the boss? I have no answers except the speculation that, 1) the guy has a pass and 2) whether innate or gifted after the fact, he has a skill set far in advance of the goons he commands. Nuff said about that.

Few set out to win the lottery. Why set out to be champ? I mean champ literally. The ONE TRUE guy. There's no apparent way to tell how much distance you need to cover; for one. Further, anybody pack it in having realized the "top" wasn't even in range? I doubt that ever happens. So, if you harbor no such desires, all you need is the smarts to figure it, and the passion to do it.

Tin Man said:

The debate over hard work and talent has been rehashed many times. It will never be resolved and people will land on different sides of the fence. In my opinion there are two more important questions to be asked:

How does the belief talent is required to make it to the top help your pool journey?

How does belief that hard work will take you to the top help your pool journey?

In my opinion belief in talent can be demotivating. When things aren't coming together it's too easy to say "Well, I guess I just don't have it, why bother". When you believe that hard work will get you anywhere you want to go, when things get tough the answer is always the same: Keep Going.

Why would anyone choose to believe something that makes it harder to achieve their goals? I seriously don't understand. What is the benefit of believing in talent? I suppose if you're looking for excuses for failing to achieve your goals then it's a good one. Maybe you can sit around the bar and talk about how you could've been a contender. But every champion out there believes they are 100% accountable for their pool destiny. Every one.

You can either soften the blow of failure or turn your dreams into reality.

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Talent is real and is imperative for pool and snooker success. Beauty is more important for happiness than anything else. Harsh truths are no less true.

Saw a guy once who went from complete beginner to serious contender in 6 months. Sorry buddy, that's pure talent. Don't give me that hard work crap. He was playing a lot sure, so was 100 other guys who didn't excel. Even the best of the rest took at least a couple of years to get to a high level. He didn't play drills, work with a coach, anything. He just picked up a cue and instantly (relatively speaking) knew how to play. His shotmaking skills and shot selection sense were just spot on. Just a freak of nature that I'll likely never see the likes of again. I've also seen people play for decades who can't string 5 balls to save their lives. They refuse to listen to anyone or learn anything new.

I had hopes on one day breaking 200 balls in straight pool. I've come to the realization that I never will. It's just too much of a leap from where I am now, I don't have the talent and the clock is running out. As you get out to triple digits, the difficulty double and triples faster and faster with the raising number. Also the pocket size keeps going down in my pool hall. Haven't played on 5 inch pockets in a decade. The table I've been playing on for years now is 4.2-4.3 inches. It's very tough to even break 100. The people are now talking about 4 inch pockets... Hope it doesn't happen, but there is a chance.

I'm not wasting every minute of my life chasing this dream anymore. Is it a failure? In a sense, I didn't reach my goal. In another sense, I played a game I love and enjoyed it. I still play the game on and off, though not since Corona struck. I'm still learning little bits every time I play, and I enjoy it more now, since it's not longer "work" towards a goal, but just pure fun. The last time I played I didn't even try to count the balls, just enjoyed running them, which was a first. Felt like a pretty good run too.

While I have seen people improve (myself included) after the 5 years of playing mark, huge leaps do not happen. The best you can hope for after that is incremental improvement. I've never seen ANY coach of any standing taking someone who is a 5 year or more (of solid play) C player and turn him into a star. It just doesn't happen. Even from B player and up to A is not typically seen, but can happen. Usually people just stay put around the skill level they are at the 5 year mark, at least as far as raw shotmaking and speed control is concerned. They do tend to learn workarounds for their problem shots to give them better results. As they improve marginally, so do usually the people around them and the skill ladder in the pool hall remains unchanged. The best you can do for these people is to teach good shot selection and make their fundamentals solid so they have better consistency. They still won't break records, but they'll get some upsets and maybe place in some local tournaments. Sometimes when everything goes right, they can do remarkable things, like run 6, 7 maybe 8 racks, that one time. Every B-lifer has a story like that.

I believe in coaching, learning new things and striving towards improvement. I also believe in realistic expectations. If you are a C player after 5 years, you'll never win the US Open. Believing that you will is unlikely to help you with anything other than wasting time and giving you heartbreak.

Edit: This post comes off maybe unnecessarily negative. You can increase your skills, maybe even go up a level after 5 years, but not likely 2 or 3 levels, like some would have you believe. It's also going to be a lot of hard work. Also if you are allready at a high level at the 5 year mark, then I think it's more likely that you can improve more. The opposite is also true, if you are completely terrible and unable to even reliably run one rack of 8 ball, you can improve a lot with coaching. The mediocre is the hardest place to get out of.

Most people know me as a big fan of tight pockets.

4 3/8” CP and 4.75” SP are the smallest I’d want.
Anything smaller, well, might as just play Snooker.

The problem is finding a 10’ table so forget about a 12’.
The most fair pocket size is 4.5” CP that’s 2x an OB width (2.25”).

Think to be great at anything is ta three pronged trident.

Desire.

Hard Work.

Talent.

If you talented, but do nothing with what is natural ability, most people accomplish not much.

Then you have the person hell bent on being great, they improvise, adapt, overcome, and become great.

The KFC Col. Sanders was an old guy, before he made it. But he never gave up.

I only read the OP thus far, but a comment on the negatives of both:

If you believe in nature, then you are telling yourself: "I was not born as good as my fellow better player". And you are telling yourself "all men are not created equal".

If you believe in nurture, then you are telling yourself, "I'm a lazy bum and don't work as hard as my fellow better player".

Both can be pretty negative to one's mind, I suppose.

straightline said:

I was going to bring up Bob J's champ or learner question albeit more sacrastically. Regardless, this concept of "champ"; supposedly the guy who trounces the rest of the pile: I arrived at the following notions contemplating history's bad guys. ie. How is it one guy gets through all the murderous treachery (cherrytree in pool) to become the boss? I have no answers except the speculation that, 1) the guy has a pass and 2) whether innate or gifted after the fact, he has a skill set far in advance of the goons he commands. Nuff said about that.

Few set out to win the lottery. Why set out to be champ? I mean champ literally. The ONE TRUE guy. There's no apparent way to tell how much distance you need to cover; for one. Further, anybody pack it in having realized the "top" wasn't even in range? I doubt that ever happens. So, if you harbor no such desires, all you need is the smarts to figure it, and the passion to do it.

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I can give you a list of 500 guys who got near the top at pool and realized it was a dead end road, just like they were told the first time they showed interest. Most just walked away, can anyone imagine the feeling of loss that would carry?

iusedtoberich said:

I only read the OP thus far, but a comment on the negatives of both:

If you believe in nature, then you are telling yourself: "I was not born as good as my fellow better player". And you are telling yourself "all men are not created equal".

If you believe in nurture, then you are telling yourself, "I'm a lazy bum and don't work as hard as my fellow better player".

Both can be pretty negative to one's mind, I suppose.

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Both look pretty honest to me.

Tin Man said:

Straighpool99 gave the best write up explaining why he feels talent is real, and made a reasonable point that understanding limitations and believing in the reality of talent helps people make mature decisions about whether or not they want to pursue pool for their livelihood.

But a few of you have gotten my true point. It all feels like cue ball weighing to me.

See, I have known a couple of players that are really super sensitive about equipment. When they play if the cue ball seems light they line it up in between other balls and lay their cue stick across them to see if they are different sizes. Or they weigh them with some drug dealer scale down to the billionth of a gram scale. Same goes for table roll. They'll start slow rolling balls around the table and pointing out with exasperation how it drifts left, how the table plays a diamond short, and so on. I don't get it. I just adjust to the table and go back to running racks. I find it an interesting choice to get so emotionally swept away with this other stuff.

Now, is it TRUE that the cue ball is a little lighter? Is it TRUE that the rails play short. Yeah, probably, whatever. I don't really care. I can't control the size of the cue ball or how the rails play. I don't have much interest in things out of my control nor do I feel they are decisive. My job is to run tables. I'll let others get worked up pointing out how this cue ball is off round. I just laugh and run tables.

So when it comes to talent, you can get out your weight scales and explain forever how everyone is a little different, or you can shrug and play the game. I dunno, maybe my focus on things I can control is talent...

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Knowing the cueball is light gives you information, which you can then use to your advantage, giving you control.

I once saw a very good player lose a set, because he didn't account for one of the object balls beeing a replacement ball, which was lighter than the others. For some reason they used a mismatched set, and I don't believe it was any kind of set-up by either player. They just didn't care about the balls at all, seemingly. The player didn't get the draw he wanted, came up short on a tight position window and ended up losing a hill hill game. The funny thing is, he was oblivious to it. Just thought he made a mistake, which he did, just not the one he thought. Had he not have to draw the ball into such a tight window it may never have happened at all, the weight wouldn't have made a large enough difference to be noticed. To an experienced eye, the difference in ball reaction was plain to be seen.

It's one of the benefits of being a railbird, you can see things so much clearer. Would it have helped him if he knew? I'm not sure. Some people cannot play in an analytical mindset. I'd say a majority can't. Most of the best players are naturals and instinct players. A player like myself, who often take the time to find the rolls of the table, the play of the balls to give me every advantage would maybe have benefitted but not been in a spot to do so...

Just "getting on with it" is probably a good mindset if you are in a position where you have the skill to do so and the natural ability to block out distractions. On the other hand, some people enjoy obsessing over details and I do know a couple of high level, Eurotour players who do.

Is belief in talent and thus non-talent destructive? Depends on perspective. Just having the idea that talent exist can do nothing on it's own, it's what you do with that knowledge. Do you try to improve yourself, from a realistic point of view, or go all in, shooting for the stars? I don't believe in the shooting for the stars approach, for many reasons, but mainly because I like grounded theory. To start from something real,and basic and work from there. Instead of going: "I want to run x racks" (which was a mistake that I myself made), I think it's more productive to say: "I can run 1-3 racks today, I wonder how I can learn to run 4 or 5". Or just simply "why can't I run 4?". Then dealing with whatever issues stand in the way of that. Most of the best lessons I have learned have been from trying to find out WHY I can't run 200 balls. I can run 100 and change, so surely I should be able to, but I just can't. I wonder what I'm doing wrong? I'd say the answers to those questions helped me be a better player. Some stumbling blocks were removed, that I may never have seen otherwise.

Tin Man said:

So when it comes to talent, you can get out your weight scales and explain forever how everyone is a little different, or you can shrug and play the game. I dunno, maybe my focus on things I can control is talent...

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Straightpool_99 said:

Knowing the cueball is light gives you information, which you can then use to your advantage, giving you control.

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agree with both..
I measure and test, and ponder and ask questions about the seemingly small
but it's not because I can't play off the wall with no info. and rock
I just dig pool..I dig the science of it, and getting deep in the weeds
what one person finds insignificant, I might find truly intriguing..and that's ok
but it's a false dichotomy that just because anybody is a nerd about it
means they can't get down and dirty..coz we can do it too

Tin Man said:

PS- no offense to comments about the need to adjust to equipment. Yes, it makes sense to know how the table rolls or kicks or whatever. My point was simply not to let that crap get in your head and shark you, i.e. "I can't play with equipment like this". Adjust, yes. Go OCD self destruct, no.

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totally.
use the knowledge, don't let the knowledge use you
or something..

book collector said:

I can give you a list of 500 guys who got near the top at pool and realized it was a dead end road, just like they were told the first time they showed interest. Most just walked away, can anyone imagine the feeling of loss that would carry?

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Please do. Couple back stories wouldn't hurt either. Uh wait. No Jaime _Lion.

unless you have a back story...