Balls Per Inning

I agree in theory for sure that it would be a much more accurate representation of your average. Except, the thought crossed my mind that quite often in a match if you don't get on your breakshot well enough to contact the rack, it isn't unusual to pocket the ball and play safe. These intentional 1 ball innings would cloud the true bpi stat regardless.

Steve Lipsky said:

OK, there it is. Who agrees and who doesn't?

- Steve

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To me, some stats are more useful than others. In football, I've always scratched my head at the "time of possession" stat. It's pretty useless as it bears no relation to who is winning the game, but I guess it provides some flavor as to how the game went. It seems to me the balls per inning is the same kind of thing, but maybe even worse.

I know nothing of why or how the BPI stat originated, or what its intent really is. I'm sure people like Bob who are really into the history of these things will know. For me, I much prefer the method Steve suggests. It's just more interesting to have a stat that basically says, "This guy averaged 32 balls per run in his last match (or tournament) when he was trying to run balls."

dwhite

I also think a new way of scoring BPI is in order. There are many obscure instances that can crop up, but those shouldn't have much of an effect on an overall BPI, especially over the length of a tourney/season. Those situations happen maybe once in 3 or 4 games IMO.

I guess in the grand scheme of things stats really may mean nothing except if you like to anylize things. There are stats I like to know like winning %...BPI...and the Accu-stats numbers are cool too.

I don't really have much to add to your system Steve...I like the way it's going.

Gerry

Just a thought. Let's say your BPI in a tournament in some way counts towards your end result. In Norwegian tournaments it's sometimes used for seeding purposes.

Would players then not tend to play safe more when they have only tough shots on? In this way it could change the way the game is played.

BPI is a joke.

As many on the forum know, Irving Crane and I were close. Many a shortstop who saw Irving's BPI would have wanted to gamble with him. How do I know? Not only have I discussed the subject with Irving, but I used to be one of the scorekeepers at the PPPA World Open in the mid 1970's through the early 1980's, and I kept the scoresheet in a few of Irving's matches.

It's no secret that Crane was pre-disposed to defensive wars of attrition that he usually won. His inning summary might look like this:

56 0 0 0 -1 0 32 28 0 0 0 0 28 0 -1 0 0 0 8

BPI = 150 / 19 = 7.9

In truth, however, in his true shooting innings (which to me, should omit his 8 ball run to reach the finish line) he made 144 in four innings:

Balls per shooting inning = 144 / 4 = 36

Irving told me he believed he had to average 35 on his true shooting innings to contend for the top titles, and i recall that Jack Colavita came up with a similar guess regarding what it took. My guess is that, at his best, Sigel was getting about 40 - 45 balls per shooting inning, though I was once told that his stats in PPPA world championship play was about 13 BPI. I have been told that Mosconi's typical BPI was between 15 and 16, so if Willie played safe about as often as Sigel, one must guess that Willie averaged about 50 -60 balls per shooting inning.

Mr. Lipsky, sign me up for your cause. BPI doesn't cut it.

I agree with Steve here. One-inning safeties shouldn't be regarded as innings when calculating the BPI. I like playing safeties but I wouldn't like to have one lengthy safety battle ruin the BPI especially if we would be running high breaks between the safety battles. I think on an EPC 14.1 tournament roughly ten years ago used to have the "safety" option in the scoresheet and after the tournament the officials would give out two different BPI's for each player, with total innings and with safeties excluded. The system was probably omitted because it required more work from the officials.

Bob Jewett said:

OK, this sounds simple enough. I assume if he fouls on the safety, the point is deducted from his score but no inning is charged.

Here is a corner case: the player calls safe while on two fouls. He fouls. He shoots an opening break shot and banks a ball out of the rack and runs 28. How is this scored?

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Let me guess...

He calls safe and fouls... No inning is charged.
Then he calls the bank on an opening break shot and runs 28... 28 points / 1 inning.

So, the inning only counts when the player call a shot at the beginning of his turn...
I like Steve's suggestion.

Bob Jewett said:

I have never seen a detailed explanation of how 14.1 scoring is to be done. For another example, suppose a player's 150th point is a combo out of a nearly full rack. The player blasts it and pockets 4 balls. Is his score 153? Common sense says one thing, but I think the rule book is silent on this point, except to say that all extra balls pocketed with the called ball are scored.

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If you are playing a race to 150, I don't think you can have a final score of more than 150 points. The rulebook probably is silent here, because the issue is only related to calculating BPI's and high runs and they aren't a major issue in tournament play from the rulebook's point of view.

Steve Lipsky said:

Bob, I didn't want to hijack your other thread, so I figured I'd start a new one.

You mentioned that there are other problems that crop up when certain innings are excluded. Since there are really no two way shots in straight pool, I'm trying to think of what you meant by this. Can you clarify?

To those of you who haven't seen the other thread, I am on a campaign to change the Balls-Per-Inning stat . As it's presently calculated, innings consisting entirely of a safety are counted in the formula, bringing the overall number down heavily. To provide a quick example, someone who runs three 50s, but gets bogged down with a tight opponent during the safety battles, can easily have a BPI around 7. To delve further, take two players who ran the same 3 50s - one who did it in consecutive innings and another who was forced to engage in lengthy safe battles - they will have wildly different BPI calcs. I'm not sure what value, if any, this provides.

If discounting the safes made it such that official scorekeepers were necessary, I'd understand the difficulties. But you need scorekeepers to calculate a BPI as it is - and if you don't trust them enough to recognize a safe, you shouldn't be trusting them with your score.

OK, there it is. Who agrees and who doesn't?

- Steve

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Perhaps the first question should be what is the purpose of
the BPI stat?

AFAIK - the 'Total Balls Pocketed' is the only stat used as a tie-breaker
in tournaments. It seems to me BPI, tho oft quoted, actually gives more
info on the style of a player than on his ability.

I do know that in the Carom games, the 'Points-Per-Inning' stat
is an important consideration. Could it be that 14.1 meerly
caried on with a tradition from Carom that was not so applicable to
the pocket games?

Dale

The way the BPI statistics are calculated traditionally, I have to agree that it isn't suited to rate a player's speed exactly. Maybe Hohmann's 50 BPI during the european championships being an exception.

But to evaluate a player's style the BPI can be quite a helpful tool, if you set it in relation to the games W/L index. E.g. a player with a relative low BPI stat, but more wins than losses is probably a rather cautious player.

Here are my stats from this season which rather reflect my style of play than it does how well I've played.

Main league: ~ 6 BPI, style: rather cautious, opponents can hit you with runs of 50+ any time
Minor league: 10 BPI, pretty aggressive, I'd rather shoot than play safe, not much danger of losing
Practice game to 1000: 25 BPI, strictly offense, always try to make a ball

The difference of 6 to 10 BPI is a _huge_ difference in style of play, at least it seems so to me.

Now, to change the way the BPI is determined is much more difficult than it sounds to rank players accurately imho. Enough situations were already mentioned.

To get an impression of a player's speed that I only know by his stats, I rather look at how many balls his opponents has made. Although not being foolproof either it often times was the better way to rate a player. I would really like a statistic of "balls made" vs. "balls allowed".

Steve Lipsky said:

SJM,

Nice post. Thanks for the words from Mr. Crane. Truly interesting!

You bring up a good point about the final inning. Ira Lee, NYC's greatest 3-cushion asset, has spoken to me about the same thing in billiards. In billiards it's even more a problem because average is such a widely-used statistic in that discipline.

The problem, of course, is those final points need to count somehow. It's not a true problem to somehow discount them if the player only goes 8-and-out. But if he goes 146-and-out, having a BPI of 4 isn't really accurate either .

Ira and Will Hanisch, also from NYC, have a solution. (I apologize if this idea originally came from someone else; the only time I've ever heard it was from them.) They suggest counting successes divided by attempts. In other words, using "inning" as the denominator fails, as you mention, because the player doesn't have an opportunity to continue shooting past the end of the game. The denominator becomes the number of shots you actually shoot, and the numerator remains as pocketed balls.

In billiards, it works easier because your average is, well, an average. But in BPI-terms, you'd have to convert this decimal to a run, which can be done but imo it's not as pure.

What do you think?

- Steve

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I know Ira and Will quite well, and they are definitely on to something for three cushion. Success ratio works pretty well in a game where players attempt to score on every trip to the table.

The 14.1 predicament is far more complex, however. Count defensive innings and a guy like Irving Crane looks bad, yet a Jimmy Caras, who was famous for shooting even the toughest shots in competition, would look good. Omit defensive innings and Crane would look better than Caras, because Irving was more selective about when to go for a run, meaning the average chance he took on was easier.

When it comes to straight pool, average margin of victory (with losses counted as negative numbers) probably offers a better measure of a player than BPI or any other similar measure. Karma made a similar point in the excellent post immediately preceding mine.

Actually, thirty years ago, total ball count was the tiebreaker to determine the order of finish. If you were among the eight that tied for 17th, but had the second best total ball count among those eight, you finished 18th. I thought that made a lot of sense.