50 vs 100

[Ron F]

Great Post

I can't tell you how much I learned from this post. The statistical data was helpful and makes sense - not really surprised at that. But the discussion on comfort levels really opened my eyes. I just had the experience of being out of my comfort level, but wasn't aware that that was what was happening. It occurred in a game and my previous high run had been 60. As I neared 60 this time all hell began to break loose internally. I started sweating big time, my concentration was cut in half - maybe more. It was like having an out of body experience. By the time I was looking down the shaft at a sharp rail shot as a secondary break, it felt like a freight train was running through my head. I missed, miserably, and almost welcomed the relief of finally being out of that situation. Since then I've hit an 80 and a 63 and the experience was nowhere near as startling. But that 65, for some reason it was like experiencing buck fever or the feeling you get just after a fist fight. You're just not thinking straight - at all. Great, great post. I learned a lot from it and it'll help me be prepared for similar situations as I put my hours in every week.

Ron F

 

[Blackjack]

Thanks Mike. The old saying that if you can run 50 you can run 100. Maybe, maybe not. My numbers say its 20 times harder as Rich pointed out. If it is true does that mean if you can run 100 you can run 200 which is probably about 100 times more difficult? I don't think so.

I would like to hear what Schmidt, Harriman, Lipsky, Barouty and Blackjack have to say about it. Oh, I know Schmidts answer, but he can tell all you guys. lol

-Bill

Most of my runs are in the 42-56 ball range. Occasionally I can get upwards of 70-84 - on better days I can poke my way into triple digits, but not very often ... perhaps 1/4 as much as John (or less).

I remember a thread from a few years ago when we discussed how in a hundred ball run, you need to have about 5 or 6 good rolls - or lucky rolls. A lot of things have to go right to get there. Also, the longer the run goes on, more mental energy is burned up - your excitement heightens after you get on each break ball, especially when you go into uncharted territory.

What you need to remember, is that your high run may stay the same for years. For a long time, my high run was 156. Then I hit the 170's, and set my goal on the 200 mark. My 212 was over 10 years ago. 167 is the closest I have come to that since - and even that has been a few years ago. It's unrealistic to expect to run those kind of numbers consistently (unless you are as talented and as gifted as John Schmidt or Danny Harriman - I'm not and I can live with that). If anybody thinks differently, they will constantly frustrate themselves and eventually abandon 14.1 out of extreme hatred.

Concentrate on getting a good key ball to get on a good break ball. Learn to know which balls serve a purpose, and which balls DO NOT serve a purpose. If you learn how to do that and also learn how to calmly remain in your comfort zone, then the numbers will take care of themselves. My hope is that players would start to remember that more than they remember my high run or anybody else's. The answer to mastering 14.1 is in this paragraph - and the man in the mirror needs to learn and accept that.

High run numbers doesn't always mean that there was great execution. Sometimes a "technically perfect" 70 is much more rewarding than $hitting your way into a 100+ run. John and I talked about this several years ago, and we positively agree on that. It's more about the process, not the numbers.

When I review my videos, I pay attention to the patterns, my control, my shotmaking and cue ball precision, etc. I watch how I am contacting the rack on the break ball - if my breaks suck - then it means I am either trying to muscle the shot - or I am getting crappy position due to choosing a less than desirable key ball, or my cue ball control sucks.

Sometimes its a combination of all 3. Some days, my head is jammed so far up my asss that I can't run more than 30. Some days you're not going to run a lot of balls. When that is the case, I switch to 9 ball or 8 ball. Frustrating myself won't make the situation any better. At some point you have to be able fight through those kinds of days - identify your weaknesses and do something about them.

If I just concentrate on chasing high numbers, then I will eventually get tunnel vision and I will never slow down and try to learn why I am not running them.

That's the way I see it.

 

[SpiderWebComm]

I had this conversation with Schmidt a while back. His thoughts were similar to Lipsky's.

I mentioned to him that I keep hearing, "Dave.... if you can run 50, you can run 100. Or, if you can run 100... there's no reason why you can't run 200 or 250."

If I recall correctly, Schmidt's answer was that was all horseshit. Running 100 is an order of magnitude tougher than running 50. Running 200 is WAAAAAAAAAY tougher than running 100. For every extra hundred you run, I believe he said your ability as a player has to double from one level to the next.

His reasoning (if I recall correctly) was that there are SOOOOO many things that can go wrong within a 100 ball run... bad ticks, bad rolls, no shots, whatever. So many things are against you; yet, it takes that much more ability to dodge the bad things and make it to the next milestone.

So, to say you can run 100 if you can run 50 --- that's like saying since I know how to run 50 I can probably keep my mind in the game and run 400. It's completely false.

We all love to play 14.1 and we all know how QUICKLY things go to SHIT the moment we get SLIGHTLY out of position, bump into our break shot, miss breaking apart a small cluster against the rail, etc, etc.

Imagine what level of skill it takes to get to 400????????? I agree with John. When he ran those 400+ runs, he was 1000x better than me that day (or more yet.... because I've played well over 1000 racks and I've never seen 100, let alone 400).

It's statistics. He MIGHT have said "squared" instead of "doubled" based on the same ability. I think he's right.

 

[Marop]

I had this conversation with Schmidt a while back. His thoughts were similar to Lipsky's.

I mentioned to him that I keep hearing, "Dave.... if you can run 50, you can run 100. Or, if you can run 100... there's no reason why you can't run 200 or 250."

If I recall correctly, Schmidt's answer was that was all horseshit. Running 100 is an order of magnitude tougher than running 50. Running 200 is WAAAAAAAAAY tougher than running 100. For every extra hundred you run, I believe he said your ability as a player has to double from one level to the next.

His reasoning (if I recall correctly) was that there are SOOOOO many things that can go wrong within a 100 ball run... bad ticks, bad rolls, no shots, whatever. So many things are against you; yet, it takes that much more ability to dodge the bad things and make it to the next milestone.

So, to say you can run 100 if you can run 50 --- that's like saying since I know how to run 50 I can probably keep my mind in the game and run 400. It's completely false.

We all love to play 14.1 and we all know how QUICKLY things go to SHIT the moment we get SLIGHTLY out of position, bump into our break shot, miss breaking apart a small cluster against the rail, etc, etc.

Imagine what level of skill it takes to get to 400????????? I agree with John. When he ran those 400+ runs, he was 1000x better than me that day (or more yet.... because I've played well over 1000 racks and I've never seen 100, let alone 400).

It's statistics. He MIGHT have said "squared" instead of "doubled" based on the same ability. I think he's right.

Very well said. You touched on all the key points. I believe squared was the word he used.

Your turn next to post 100.

 

[SpiderWebComm]

Very well said. You touched on all the key points. I believe squared was the word he used.

Your turn next to post 100.

I need to work on my short positioning. My positioning is too lax as I mostly find myself in the medium range on all of my shots. I recall Lipsky made a post a year or so ago that hit me in the face like a ton of bricks. He said something to the effect of, "Guys who are running 30's and 40's but not getting by 50's often just don't have their cue ball control refined enough to hit 100 or more."

I forget his exact words, but that was the first day to the rest of my life as far as pool was concerned. It's funny because some lower-level players might watch me run balls and think "Wow, this guy plays gooood" when in fact, I play like shit. The difference in speed between someone who is short-positioned ALL the time versus someone like me is pretty big (just shows that there's WAAAAAAAY more to 14.1 than just making everything you shoot at).

Anyways, I've been shortening my bridge and trying to be more exact in where I want the CB to go. As I said in the post above, I have to learn how to avoid the bad things (outside of missing balls--- it's everything else that stops my runs).

Hope to get to 100 soon. Maybe then I can finally quit this game hahaha

 

[driz86]

I really don't know what to think about that (not that its important). I heard Diliberto say the same thing, that if you can run 50 you can run 100's. Well I tend to side with that in certain cases but like I say, it depends on who's shooting. I can say this, that there are certain times when I catch a gear and I might run off 30 or 40 just because my cb control just isn't there yet I FEEL like I could have run 80 at the time.

 

[AtLarge]

The Probabilities Involved

The answer to how much more difficult it is to run 100 than it is to run 50 depends, of course, on how skilled the player is.

By the numbers in post #1, Bill ran between 50 and 99 195 times and 100 or more 5 times over the course of 22 months. We know he's a better player now than he was at the beginning of that period, but let me ignore that for now just to create an illustration.

How many attempts did Bill have in those 22 months? I have no idea, but, again for the sake of an illustration, let me assume it was 20 per day for 5 days a week for 95 weeks. That makes a total of 9,500 attempts (or innings). So with 195 or 200 "successes" at running 50, the relative frequency was about one time out of 50. So if we could say that someone has a probability of .02 (1 in 50) of running at least 50, then the probability of doing that twice in a row (without a miss) for a run of 100 or more would be 1 in 2,500, or .0004. 100 would be "50 times as hard" as 50. Bill's results actually are pretty close to this, with a ratio of about 40 to 1 for runs of 50-99 versus 100 or more.

For someone less skilled than Bill, with a probability of, say, .01 of running 50, then running 100 would have a relative frequency of .0001. 100 would be "100 times as hard" as 50.

On the other hand, for someone with a probability of .1 of running 50, perhaps like a skilled pro, then the relative frequency of running 100 would be .01, and 100 would be just "10 times as hard" as 50.

Now, I know that this simplistic view overlooks and simplifies lots of things, but I thought it might help give a sense of how long runs can be viewed in relation to shorter runs from a probabilistic standpoint.

 

[sausage]

after reading all of the posts in this thread, i have come to the conclusion that more runs are stopped by over-thinking rather than under-thinking the game.

 

[Marop]

The answer to how much more difficult it is to run 100 than it is to run 50 depends, of course, on how skilled the player is.

By the numbers in post #1, Bill ran between 50 and 99 195 times and 100 or more 5 times over the course of 22 months. We know he's a better player now than he was at the beginning of that period, but let me ignore that for now just to create an illustration.

How many attempts did Bill have in those 22 months? I have no idea, but, again for the sake of an illustration, let me assume it was 20 per day for 5 days a week for 95 weeks. That makes a total of 9,500 attempts (or innings). So with 195 or 200 "successes" at running 50, the relative frequency was about one time out of 50. So if we could say that someone has a probability of .02 (1 in 50) of running at least 50, then the probability of doing that twice in a row (without a miss) for a run of 100 or more would be 1 in 2,500, or .0004. 100 would be "50 times as hard" as 50. Bill's results actually are pretty close to this, with a ratio of about 40 to 1 for runs of 50-99 versus 100 or more.

For someone less skilled than Bill, with a probability of, say, .01 of running 50, then running 100 would have a relative frequency of .0001. 100 would be "100 times as hard" as 50.

On the other hand, for someone with a probability of .1 of running 50, perhaps like a skilled pro, then the relative frequency of running 100 would be .01, and 100 would be just "10 times as hard" as 50.

Now, I know that this simplistic view overlooks and simplifies lots of things, but I thought it might help give a sense of how long runs can be viewed in relation to shorter runs from a probabilistic standpoint.

Very impressive and informative post. Your numbers for myself are fairly accurate as far as attempts, some days less some days more. The regularity of a 50 ball run 22 months ago was probably once every 2 or 3 weeks. Now if a take 20 innings a day I will more than likely run 50+ on that day.

All my runs are dated so I guess I could go see how many of the 200 runs over 50 were done in the last six months. I could do it now or I can go take another inning, I think I'll take the inning. lol

 

[Samiel]

Good thread! I play in a 14.1 league where there are three divisions, Low, Medium and High if you will. For the month of June, these were the high run stats:

Low: 11
Medium: 17
High: 36

Matches are to 75 (some only go to 50 though), 100 and 150 respectively (on 8-foot tables).

We have a few 100 ball runners in the High division, but I really don't see them often. The better players usually have innings of 10-20 balls with many lows and highs between them.

In fact, I was watching the 2006 Straight Pool World Championships and a lot of matches didn't see players with high runs of more than 30 or 40. I was thinking many times, "uh oh, it's over, player X has an open table with a great break ball and will run 150 and out now," but it didn't happen most of the time.

So even though the high run of many of the pros are well over 100, it didn't come up much in the matches.

 

[Steve Lipsky]

I could do it now or I can go take another inning, I think I'll take the inning. lol

Some of us are at work, Bill. Thanks. lol.

Btw, the percentages game can get interesting in another way as well. Someone who plays the game well enough to make 95% be the average difficulty of every shot will have an "average" run of 19 (he'll miss one time every 20 balls). But if you can raise that average to just 98% you will have an average run of 49 (one miss every 50 balls).

Just like AtLarge's analysis, this one isn't exact and has many limitations. But I do find it interesting that raising your average make-percentage of each shot only 3 percentage points, from 95 to 98, can make such a difference in your expected runs. And like spiderweb alluded to in a prior post, this difference of course is not achieved by becoming a better shotmaker, but by playing shorter position.

- Steve

 

[stevekur1]

Your turn next to post 100.

What about me !!! i want that 100 on Video Real Bad as well !!!!

Sorry i dont have anything logical to post here in this post.

i dont think my comfort zone is in the 20s and 30s...i have been running in the 50s and 60s for the last several weeks, although today i was a mess.

i was playing in a different room again today, played one of there regulars a race to 100 for the time. he had me 90-72 and i hit him with a 28 and out to win the game(maybe i should of kept on going)(But i plan on playing him again). although it wasnt a huge run, i feel good about it since i didnt know him from a whole in the wall. in this was his home room, i think i made a little bit of a statment !



-Steve

 

[stevekur1]

Today I ran my 200th run over 50 within the last 22 months. 189 are on video. I am breaking down the runs by category to illustrate the the difference in difficulty from running 50 compared to running 100. Any thoughts?

50 - 59 = 110 times
60 - 69 = 49
70 - 79 = 18
80 - 89 = 12
90 - 99 = 6
100-120 = 5

-Bill

to come up with the average or difficulty level dont you also have to include runs that are below the 50 mark as well.

-Steve

 

[Marop]

to come up with the average or difficulty level dont you also have to include runs that are below the 50 mark as well.

-Steve

I'm just trying to illustrate the difference in difficulty between 50 and 100. If it were somebody like John who has been over 200 numerous times I would use 100 to 200.

 

[stevekur1]

i still say you have to illustrate the difficulty of 50, but thats just me !

 

[Marop]

i still say you have to illustrate the difficulty of 50, but thats just me !

That would be fine but I don't have the data. I only save video of 50+. To establish the difficulty of 50 than you would have to document all runs over 25 for a period of time. But if I had to guess I would say its probably about 5 times harder to run 50 than it is to run 25. Assuming 50 to 100 is about 20 times harder, and 100 to 200 is about 100 times harder.

 

[stevekur1]

Thanks Bill, i was just trying figure in how we all can participate !

-Steve

 

[dmgwalsh]

Comfort Zones and high runs

What about me !!! i want that 100 on Video Real Bad as well !!!!

Wanting it and getting it are two different things. You need to run the camera more often or the odds of you actually capturing one will become prohibitive. If you have only had one in your life and you seldom have the camera on, ....Well, you can figure out the rest.

Sorry i dont have anything logical to post here in this post.

i dont think my comfort zone is in the 20s and 30s...i have been running in the 50s and 60s for the last several weeks, although today i was a mess.
Steve

That is a nice comfort zone to be in.

Steve- Are you comfortable when you are in the 50s and 60s because you have been there so often or are you just happy to be there?

Bill is in that zone because he regularly runs 50s-70s.

I once ran a 57. No comfort for me there.

I probably have been in the 40s somewhere between 20-40 times. Again, not overly comfortable when I get there. Kind of excited.

I've been in the 20s and 30s quite a few times but still I am not real comfortable when I get there.

To tell the truth, I get a little giddy when I am on my first break shot at 14 or so. Not overly so but just a little. I am getting better at it but methinks it may be a long journey and I hope I do not run out of time.

I heard Diliberto say the same thing, that if you can run 50 you can run 100's.

I have heard Danny say this many times, but I suspect in my heart of hearts he might be conning the mark a little bit. But it is a good thing. It keeps people trying to achieve the heights, like certain guys playing in an advanced 14.1 league who dream that they might be able to hold a candle to the great players.

Good for everybody.

 

[stevekur1]

Steve- Are you comfortable when you are in the 50s and 60s because you have been there so often or are you just happy to be there?

Was this meant for me or mr lipsky ?



i wouldnt say i was comfortable, i am just glad i am there and really try not to think about it. i say i start thinking about it when i am in the upper 50s. gotta start taking my breather breaks again to dismiss all the previous shots i think ! !! it seems to work......

lately i am just not comfortable at all when i shoot, but that's a horse of a totally different color !

-Steve

and if i had my own table the camera would never be turned off, kinda hard to setup the camera all the time, when you are bringing it to a pool hall. and especially when its a newer room that you have to go to, and they look at you like you have 3 heads !!!

 

[rikdee]

IMHO, go back and read 3andstops comments a few days ago. It's about one's ability to hold focus and concentration, along with an unshakeable belief in one's ability, nothing more. If you want a micro-cosmic view of this principle, watch the Action's Rooms coverage of the next Derby City Classic. Or, gather up $10K of your own money, go to Taiwan, and challenge every SOB to a 14.1 contest; boys, that's a pool player...