9 ball! so why 10 ball?
- Thread starter champ2107
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it's just basically an improved version of nine ball.
takes a lot of the luck out of the game, hence the reasoning for making the ten on the break no longer a win. also there are more balls on the table because for one, there is an extra ball, and two, it's harder to make a ball on the break. so this leads to more safety exchanges and kick shots tactical exchanges. and you need a good break in ten ball. no soft breaking it wont get you anywhere.
only thing i don't like is the ten ball isn't as cool to look at as the nine ball. hmmmm
takes a lot of the luck out of the game, hence the reasoning for making the ten on the break no longer a win. also there are more balls on the table because for one, there is an extra ball, and two, it's harder to make a ball on the break. so this leads to more safety exchanges and kick shots tactical exchanges. and you need a good break in ten ball. no soft breaking it wont get you anywhere.
only thing i don't like is the ten ball isn't as cool to look at as the nine ball. hmmmm
td873 said:
I don't know of any studies but I suspect that the difficulty is more than linier with the number of balls.
First, 9 Ball isn't 9 Ball...it is some number less than 9 balls depending on whatever the average number of balls made on the break might be.
So, it's really probably something like "8.2 Ball." (-:
And I don't know what the average balls on the break in 10 Ball is either but the raw number of balls left after the break is not the entire issue.
As worriedbeef pointed out, if there are more balls then there is a greater chance of them clustering and a greater chance for natural routes being blocked.
So, if the average number of innings per rack defines how hard a game is, I would be interested if anyone has that statistic for both 9 & 10 Ball.
But personally, I don't buy the "10 Ball is superior argument."
Why don't we fix 9 Ball before abandoning it?
1. Spot the 9 on the Break.
2. Move the rack up to keep the wing ball from going.
3. Call all shots...ball and pocket.
Spotting the 9 and calling shots would only return the game to the way it was often played back in the day and would certainly reduce luck to a measurable extent.
But I REALLY don't think that doing much to lengthen the average time to complete a rack would be beneficial to the sport. As it is, HUGE portions of racks/matches are already edited for television which just wrecks the continuity, interest and drama IMHO.
Besides, over time...over the course of a seaon, luck is going to even out and the best players are going to win. There is luck in every sport including weather, injuries, illnesses...a line drive hitting the baseline to stay fair etc.
The best player/team virtually never wins every single contest.
I think tightening up 9 Ball is the way to go.
Regards,
Jim
BPG24
Banned
Top players will tell you that 10 ball is a much better game because in 9 ball who ever breaks better wins over 90% of the time... At least at that level...
By the way, I have seen 10 ball played where if you make the 10 ball on the break it does count as a win, so that must be a regional rule
By the way, I have seen 10 ball played where if you make the 10 ball on the break it does count as a win, so that must be a regional rule
BPG24 said:
That raises several interesting issues.
1. What is that percentage in 10 Ball?
2. How is "better break" defined?
3. The "win 90% of the time" statistic is quite a bit too high. According to Cappelle in Play Your Best 9 Ball, Archer and Strickland had far and away the best break and run percentages on the pro tour during the 1990s with Strickland at 32.7% and Archer 31.7%. But of course, neither player won anywhere near 90% of their matches.
I would hazard a WILD GUESS and say that they won maybe 60% of their total matches played. Anyone have any stats on that?
Bob Jewett recently posted that Accu-Stats data shows that in pro matches, breaking was actually a slight disadvantage. Then he added that that was "before the tight racks."
I'm not sure what he meant by that...possibly the Sardo...but I don't see that used much any more and the standard type racks now in use are now better, as far as I know, then the racks used years ago.
In any event, given the return to the "old" rules of spotting the 9 on the break, moving the rack up and eliminating slop, the relative difficulty gap between 9 and 10 Ball would shrink noticeably.
I would also suggest requiring called safties. In other words, if you miss a shot and luck into a hook, the opponent gets ball in hand. And no fair calling safety on every shot. If you call a safety, your inning would end after that shot whether you made a ball or not.
But IMHO, it is CRITICAL for this sport to not allow average rack times to expand. There is a limited number of hours that pool tournaments are going to get on TV and the longer the racks, the more of them will get edited which will hurt viewership and the sport can't stand any much more of a reduction in TV popularity.
Regards,
Jim
BPG24
Banned
av84fun said:
I know how much you like to debate these things... So I will keep this fairly simple.
Every Shortstop level player and up that I have talked to personally about this subject have told me that in high level 9 ball, the players who is breaking the best wins 90% of the time.
I understand if you disagree, but that doesn't change what they have told me. Owning several tapes/dvd's of top players and watching them many times, plus all of the tournaments I have been to and watched with top players in them confirm what they are saying to be true...
Adding one ball only makes the game one ball harder. There is only one more ball to get locked up, get clustered, or block paths. Also, the contrary point was not considered: with one more ball, there is one more ball to make on the break, one more ball than can line up for a combo, one more ball to play safe behind, etc., etc. That is, adding one more ball has a "positive" side as well. When it's all said and done, you only have to make one more ball. And making one more ball in 10-ball is 11% more balls than 9-ball. Seems linear to me. Besides, a pro isn't going to have a hard time running 9 balls or 10 balls if the table is open. Furthermore, pocketing no balls on the break in 9-ball is the same game as pocketing one ball on the break in 10-ball. Thus, in that situation the games are identical.
IMO, the way the balls are racked and the resulting spread is the key difference between the games.
Also, the "more clusters" analogy is not accurate since we are dealing with the same playing area - i.e., the table size does not decrease when you play 10-ball. Put another way, playing 9-ball on a bar box has a greater chance of everything being clustered, as there is less surface area for all the balls. But, adding one more ball only increases the tendency to cluster by that one ball. Conversely, if you played 10 ball on a 6X12 snooker table, you would have less tendency to cluster simply based on surface area. You would need something like 17 balls on a 6X12 for the same "tendency to cluster" percentage. Similarly, playing 6 ball on a bar box has the same "cluster percentage" as playing 10 ball on a 4.5X9.
As long as everyone plays by the same rules, the game doesn't really need fixing. Well, except for the wing ball thing
-td
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no reason at all to abandon 9 ball imo, just eliminate the slop, and that can be done a number of ways
besides, pool needs a little of the luck factor, hasn't hurt the golf industry
besides, pool needs a little of the luck factor, hasn't hurt the golf industry
Hillbilly mentioned calling shots on TAR feed, while I've always thought that was the way to go, his particular reasoning never occurred to me
he was interesting to hear on that broadcast
he was interesting to hear on that broadcast
av84fun said:
This is a very good point that i never have considered.
When I played my first Games of 10 Ball i had the first impression that it is way much harder than 9 Ball.
It seemed to be that from my feeling i didn?t have to deal with one more Ball but with 3 more Balls.
Now it makes sense with the Post of Jim.
On an average 9 Ball Break there are about 1 or 2 Balls that are pocketed.
On an average 10 Ball Break there are 0 Balls pocketed.
Ergo:
9-2 = 7 Balls on the Table after Break
10-0 = 10 Balls on the Table after Break
And then it all makes sense. There are really 3 Balls more on the Table to deal with. That leads to a more difficult Run out, more clusters etc
Of course in theory there is only one more Ball to Deal with but practically there are 3 more Balls to deal with.
I think it makes the Game really harder and more tactical.
champ2107 said:
Why 10 Ball? Because some folks prefer it over 9 ball for all sorts of reasons as given in the posts above and maybe for other reasons as yet not thrown into the mix.
Is it more fun or harder to play? Depends on who you ask. Are the rules the same? Depends on who's rules you play by.
It's comparing apples to oranges. It's a different game. The next fad might be rotation.
No need to ask why or argue about which is better because there is no answer. Just play pool.
if we were comparing say banks and 9-ball the i'd agree with you.
but 9-ball and 10-ball are so similar discussion is needed to work out whether 10-ball is actually an improvement on 9-ball or not.
one key thing, thivial as though it may sound, is the very image of 9-ball is kind of iconic. everybody know the striped yellow ball is the money ball, and the classic diamond shaped rack. even though ten ball is the same game ultimately, the average new viewer is gonna wonder what the hell this game is. (talking tv here)