Mirror image pool

HawaiianEye

HawaiianEye

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
With all the talk of "who can beat who, etc.", how about a game of "mirror image pool" (for lack of a better name).

With today's technology, it ISN'T impossible to create things that are "identical" duplicates" or "mirror images" of other things. With today's cameras and computers it ISN'T rocket science (but it would take some cash).

That being said, I think the PERFECT way to differentiate between players is for them to be graded on "identical" tasks.

Player 1 is up first.
- He breaks and goes as far as he can. That could be anything from scratching on the break and his turn being over to running perpetual racks, and "anything" in between. When his turn is over, player 2 is given a "mirror image" of how the balls were laid out immediately after the break shot. If he goes "FURTHER" than Player 1, he gets a point.

Once Player 2 has now won or missed, he breaks and goes as far as he can. Then Player 1 is given the same layout that Player 2 left after he broke and now he must go "FURTHER" than Player 2 went in order to get a point for himself. Otherwise the opponent would receive another point.

Game repeats using the same cycles as above until the Player that reaches a certain number of points is declared the winner (race to 25 for example).

There is no way to say this isn't fair. Both players have broke, both players have played the others identical layouts and the person who got the the finish line first is the WINNER.

And there would only be ONE point per game, NO MATTER if you ran 10 racks before you missed. That is considered ONE TURN at bat. If the other player runs NONE or 100 when it is his turn it is still considered ONE point if he BEAT whatever you did.

I haven't really put a lot of thought into this game (as you can probably gather by now), but I think it would prove INTERESTING. It would kind of be like playing "H O R S E" on the basketball courts in the old days. You do something and the other guy has to "match" or "beat" it until somebody is declared the winner.
 
Pretty interesting

I like that idea would be awsome to see it played. The other thing that would be awsome would be to see 5 of the top players do this even for just an exibition. The learning material that could be learned would be amazing. The way each player maneuvers each rack. the similarities, the differences. Maybe the top 5 asian players, the top 5 americans, the top 5 europeans. Can you imagine the style differences displayed. Maybe an international challenge format. Many ideas could work here.

I just watched the womens challenge of champions on espn sunday. they had a program that mad a graphic of the table and it rotated and was able to have diagrams used on it. it was amazing how quick it was able to calculate the ball placements.
 
Why even have them break then? For guys with great breaks what advantage is it to break really well when your opponent is going to get the same layout. I understand that you get to play off his layout as well but the break shot has no point in this game that you describe.
 
Shannon.spronk said:
Why even have them break then? For guys with great breaks what advantage is it to break really well when your opponent is going to get the same layout. I understand that you get to play off his layout as well but the break shot has no point in this game that you describe.
Click to expand...

That was my INITIAL thought too. Like I said, I haven't fully thought this out yet. I was just throwing this idea out to see what everyone thought. My first thought was to "throw" the balls randomly out on the table somehow and that was the starting point.

The reason I threw the break shot in was there would also be someone that says, "but XXX breaks better"..just like you did. Using the method I mentioned would address that matter. You could "point" to the number of games that they broke at and won and those that they broke at and lost. It may be that one guy gets out more often on the other guys break than he does on his own. Wouldn't that maybe imply that the "other" guy broke better? If both players "consistently" got FURTHER after the breaks of XXX, would it imply that XXX had the better break?

The idea of this game is to "measure" the "better" player. There is NO way that I know of to measure ANYTHING, unless the measuring utensil is EXACTLY the same for the thing being measured.
 
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I have thought about this same format before,because that way you can see what kind of skills any player has by that,maybe a way to measure their handicap in a tournament,its kind of like a game of Horse playing basketball. I would just have them start out with an easy table and progressively get harder,and like horse once they miss so many times they are out. Instead of horse,we call it "POOL", so you would get 3 misses and on the 4th one you would be out of the tournament. You could find easy outs on youtube matches and set them up for the first round,then find a little harder rack to run for the second round and so on,lots of ways to run it. I thought their used to be a game similar to this in Robert Bynes standard book of pool and Billiards called "equal offence". I have always thought this would show the top players skill set objectively,by using the same measuring device like you said.
 
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