SpiderWebComm said:
I spoke to John Schmidt about this same question. He says if you're really playing well, your run can depend largely on how clean the balls are. Meaning, polished balls spread and tend not to stick in the muck.
He said no one in the world has to run 100 everyday. I always believed if you could run 50, you could run 100, and up. He mentioned that wasn't true... and that running 400 was exponentially harder than running 300, which was exponentially harder than running 200 and so on.
John, I know you read the posts (esp. on 14.1). Chime in and give your thoughts - you have excellent insight, I def. learned a lot.
D-man,
I noticed that John brought his own balls to the DCC 14.1 competition - a habit that Willie Mosconi cultivated during his exhibition heyday.
I also totally agree about the exponential nature of increasingly higher runs (which of course makes my chances of ever reaching 100 somewhat slim). Perhaps there is also an exponential difference between running a hundred, and "raining" hundreds.
I'm not sure that anyone in the world is a favorite to run 100 everyday (being that the discipline of 14.1 is no longer pre-eminent). In the "day", however, players like Mike Sigel, Steve Mizerak, Willie Mosconi, and Irving Crane would most likely bet every penny in their pocket that they could in a few tries; but we are talking about the most expert 14.1 practioners of all time.
Jim Rempe said when he was playing daily 14.1, he just "rained" hundreds.
My father's degenerate pool gambling buddies who hung out with Mosconi in his Kansas City years stated that Willie played them 100 no-count to 1000; and rarely lost (and they, by their own accounts, were pretty good players). They stated that during his daily practice Willie would usually play until he ran 150 or 200 and then quit - he probably had hundreds (if not a thousand) of unfinished 150's, and hundreds at least of unfinished 200's. He was an offensive machine; and they stated that his 150's and 200's would rarely take much more than an hour.
Grady Mathews in the 1980's rarely failed to run 100 within a few innings in his exhibitions.
I believe if the world's best current players applied themselves to the game, they also would be more likely to run daily 100's.