In March 1954, Willie Mosconi set a record by running 526 balls in an exhibition high-run.
In May 2019, John Schmidt set a new record by running 626 balls.
In Nov 2021, a Legends group started inviting select players to make high-run attempts on a live stream.
In May 2022, Cue Sports Live invited John Schmidt to make high-run attempts on a live stream.
In what follows, I’ll present some interesting data from those high run attempts where video exists.
The players
Player
World-wide Fargo rating
Shane van Boening
2
Jayson Shaw
10
Ruslan Chinakhov
34
Earl Strickland
82
John Schmidt
Not in top 100
The videos
This analysis uses only the videos of continuous attempts posted on the different social media.
The Legends group videos of Shane, Earl, and Shaw all had problems with the video dropping out, or runs getting cut off prematurely, or the stream not working. Runs not completed on video were not counted. After Shaw’s first stream ended abruptly, he later ran 714, and this has been included. The run was later reduced to 669 due to a foul, but I’ve kept the original 714 in place.
The Cue Sports Live stream of John Schmidt included a run of 346. The organizer described one of the racks in that run as ‘questionable’, so I’ve considered the run to end with a miss at that point, for a run of 322.
In what follows, I’ll treat Shaw’s two episodes as separate players since there are some notable differences in the style of play and the statistics.
Note that with runs attempted that were not publicly available, the actual times played for Shane are probably an hour or two higher, and for Shaw1 the actual time is four hours higher, and for Shaw2 is maybe a couple of hours higher.
The high runs
Some observers were only interested in the high-runs and didn’t care much about the consistency or quality of play.
Watching these high-run attempts, it quickly becomes clear that it’s very much a numbers game. A player skilled enough to make most shots will have a higher probability of a run the more attempts made. That means the high-run itself isn’t a good measure for comparing player skill without controlling the hours spent on it, or number of runs attempted.
The average BPI
Another 14.1 skill metric often cited by Willie Mosconi is the average balls per inning, and Willie had the record for highest grand average in a competitive world tournament of 18.36 balls per inning.
Ruslan with an average of 126.7 BPI. This average was from his first and only day, in which he made 10 attempts. A phenomenal average.
Earl was only averaging 39 BPI, and was clearly under-performing. He’s the 82nd ranked player in the world, and #10 in the USA. It seemed he was easily distracted and missing a lot of shots that should have been routine for him.
Schmidt at 86 BPI performed very well and so did Shaw1 and Shaw2.
Shane also under-performed.
Looking at the median balls per inning instead of the average shows a similar appearance, although Shane performed better than Shaw1 in this case.
Instead of looking at overall BPI stats, if we look at it day-by-day, we have the following chart.
I’ve done some work watching coaches work with their players on drills, and it was noticeable that as time went on, sometimes the consistency at completing some of those drills would start low, then increase, then peak, then diminish as fatigue set in. I expected something similar with 14.1 exhibitions, but it didn’t turn out that way.
Notably, Schmidt’s 3rd day had an average BPI of 140, exceeding Ruslan’s 127.
Shane’s best day was his 3rd, and so was Earl’s and Schmidt’s.
Shaw1’s best day was his first, and Shaw2’s was his second.
There was a lot of randomness to the runs, and a run of 10 might be followed by a run of 200 and that might be followed by another low run.
Balls potted
You can see the ‘level of effort’ varied widely, from Ruslan sinking ‘only’ 1267 balls, to Shaw1 sinking 13,573.
In one day Shaw1 made more attempts than Schmidt did in his entire four-day effort.
Ball potting success
Potting success data shows they were all performing to a high standard, and the distribution follows the Average BPI.
Again, the two straight pool players (Ruslan and Schmidt) outperformed the ‘rotation’ players.
Rack success
If we look at the success rate of each player completing the rack, again it follows a similar distribution.
How runs ended
Runs ended with either a miss or a scratch. (The player cursing and sweeping the cue ball away with his cue was counted as ‘conceding a miss’.)
Earl scratched the least in ending his runs, whereas Ruslan scratched the most in his one day of effort.
Shane scratched more than the other players, and many people noted this at the time.
Shaw1 and Shaw2 were close to each other.
Runs ending on the break
If we just look at runs that ended on the break shot,
Ruslan ended six of his ten runs on the break shot.
Shaw2 performed better than Shaw1. 23.2% vs 34.1%
Earl was the least likely to end on the break shot. His runs were the most widely distributed among all 14 balls.
