Balls Per Inning

Steve Lipsky said:
... I am on a campaign to change the Balls-Per-Inning stat :). ...
For me a more interesting stat is the average difficulty of the shots a player shoots. It's fairly easy to estimate the raw difficulty of each shot based on the ball positions measured in diamonds. I did this for seven matches in the 1976 14.1 WC (Asbury Park, PPPA) and the best average I measured was by Larry Lisciotti who won the tournament. His average shot was something like 2 diamonds from object ball to pocket and 1.6 diamonds from cue ball to object ball. See http://www.sfbilliards.com/articles/1994-04.pdf for details of the method.
 
I gave some more thought (thanks to Bob's correction) and I have a new suggestion (to support Stevie's point).
:)
At the beginning of a player's turn, he can do one of the two things

1, Call for a shot and he starts a "Scoring Inning". This "Scoring Inning" stops when the player misses after any amount of ball pocketed or the game point has been met. The ref will add the points then

2, Call for a safety and he starts a "Safety Inning". He get only one shot afterwards. Most of the time the ref will mark a "0" after the shot. However, if the player fouls, The ref will deduct the point(s) after the shot.

In the case as Bob pointed out earlier, a player calls for a safety and fouls for the third time. The score gets deducted 16 points and the "Safety Inning" stops. The balls get re-racked and the player has to shoot again. Before shooting he has to make another call again (to call a shot or to call a safety). If he calls for a shot then there is one more "Scoring Inning" added to him.

The score sheet can look like the attached pic (6 columns total). This is a rare example where a player get two innings during one visit to the table. In addition, we might be able to generate a defense effectiveness stat from such chart.

A lot of times when I (a sloppy straight pool player) don't have a good angle for a behind the rack break, I'd simply call for a bank shot to the side pocket. I will see if I can get lucky to get 1 more point and play a safety next. For a serious player however this will cost them 1 "Score Inning" and reduce their average...

example layout:
http://CueTable.com/P/?@4AFTR4BCYB3...HAMB3IAUe3JFbd4KDnP3LBjP3MEMO4NBJl3OBal3PIWb@

In 3 Cushion, every visit to the table is considered a "Scoring Inning" because players are always trying to score (even in two way shots). I have William's article here in hand and I will get his okay before putting it out...
 

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Bob Jewett said:
For me a more interesting stat is the average difficulty of the shots a player shoots. It's fairly easy to estimate the raw difficulty of each shot based on the ball positions measured in diamonds. I did this for seven matches in the 1976 14.1 WC (Asbury Park, PPPA) and the best average I measured was by Larry Lisciotti who won the tournament. His average shot was something like 2 diamonds from object ball to pocket and 1.6 diamonds from cue ball to object ball. See http://www.sfbilliards.com/articles/1994-04.pdf for details of the method.

Bob, give me some time, I will make tools for you to do this :cool:
 
One reason for keeping the statistics is to get an idea of how well a person plays. There are a couple of things that might be useful.

1. What percentage of the balls did the player make in the game?

Pmade = sum of player’s ball made / sum of all balls made

SJM's post 04/03 at 08:48PM re Irving Crane is used for an example.

Assume a race to 250, Crane’s Pmade = 152/250 = 61%

Obviously I do not have the other player’s scores and do not know what score was used as the end point so I have had to make some assumptions. However note that if the game was played to 250 and 260 balls were made by both players because of fouls etc the statistics are not changed all that much with a divisor of 260. These kinds of statistics would be of most use when they are averaged over several matches.

2. What percentage of his innings were safes?

Psafe= sum of “0” score / number of player’s innings

Crane played 12/19 innings with “0” score = 63%

When calculating Psafe all “0” scores are assumed to be safes. The few times a player actually misses the system is forgiving and Psafe would average out over time.

3. How many balls does he usually make in an inning?

For average balls made I would calculate the sum of all positive innings and throw out the top and bottom score. The remaining innings are averaged.

ABPI = 32+28+28 /3 = 30

Scores 56 and 8 were dropped as outliers. The best run and the worst run are considered chance occurrences.

4. High average runs could be kept by simply calculating the sum of the highest runs over several matches divided by the number of matches. In this case 56/1 = 56

In this limited set of data, Irving Crane ran 30 balls per inning. He made 61% of the balls and he played safe 63% of the time when he was at the table. His high average run is about 56.

Seems like a reasonable handle on Irving Crane.
These stats could be kept for a match, a season or for life time averages given access to the data and a simple scoring system. No inferences are made about intentions and statistics are created from what they did not what someone thought they did.
 
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JoeW said:
For average balls made I would calculate the sum of all positive innings and throw out the top and bottom score. The remaining innings are averaged....The best run and the worst run are considered chance occurrences.

Enjoyed your post, Joe, but it is here that I must take issue. The very best players will typically have one run in the 50 - 75 range in a typical race to 150. It's no aberration, and to discard it will produce a very misleading picture of the player's performance.
 
I think innings and thus BPI are easy to calculate if we would mark all runs in order "as usual" (won't go into scoring details here, sigh... see another thread... :) ) and if there is a safety, we could just mark down "S" to see if the inning was used just to make a safety. If a player tries to make a ball and misses, then it is counted as an inning and the run was "0". No further adjustments are needed imho. It doesn't change the BPI if a player ends his run with a miss or a safety. And I think that the opening shot should not be considered as an inning, unless a player tries to make a ball from it.

Example: player makes runs of 4, 15, 25, 50, S, S, S, S, -1S (intentional foul), 57-out. So he would make 150 points in 5 innings and having a BPI of 30 while with the current system he'd had 10 inning with a BPI of 15.

I don't think the last run should be omitted, even if the player would need to run just one to finish the set. Referring to the SJM's suggestion here.
 
Mr. Jewett,

As our resident expert on such matters, what would be the mechanism for getting this suggestion looked at by a governing body? Whether it's accepted or not, I'd sure like someone in an official capacity to take a look at it.

I am embarrassed to admit I wouldn't even know where to start on something like this.

Thanks,
Steve
 
Steve Lipsky said:
Mr. Jewett,

As our resident expert on such matters, what would be the mechanism for getting this suggestion looked at by a governing body? Whether it's accepted or not, I'd sure like someone in an official capacity to take a look at it....
Well, there are various problems.

The score sheets for 14.1 tournaments are not specified by the rules, so a tournament organizer is free to do whatever he wants, but he is likely to get great steaming piles of flak if the scoresheets are not understandable by the people who have to write numbers on them. If he wants to keep track of the number of draw shots and cuts over 30 degrees, that's fine, as far as the rules go. If he fails to have scoring that keeps track of the number of consecutive fouls....

So, the first step is to get the organizer on-board.

The next step is to publicize the results, and especially to explain and promote the particular measure of ability you have innovated.

As for getting in the Rules and Records Book, I just talked to Mike Shamos about that and it seems that the BCA no longer has a Records Committee. I don't know if the WPA has a Records Committee. Perhaps we could start one.
 
Bob Jewett said:
Well, there are various problems.

The score sheets for 14.1 tournaments are not specified by the rules, so a tournament organizer is free to do whatever he wants, but he is likely to get great steaming piles of flak if the scoresheets are not understandable by the people who have to write numbers on them. If he wants to keep track of the number of draw shots and cuts over 30 degrees, that's fine, as far as the rules go. If he fails to have scoring that keeps track of the number of consecutive fouls....

So, the first step is to get the organizer on-board.

The next step is to publicize the results, and especially to explain and promote the particular measure of ability you have innovated.

As for getting in the Rules and Records Book, I just talked to Mike Shamos about that and it seems that the BCA no longer has a Records Committee. I don't know if the WPA has a Records Committee. Perhaps we could start one.

Thanks Bob. I think a great first place for us to start is to come up with an official scoresheet. If it's user-friendly, I'm sure it would be adopted by the major tournaments in a heartbeat, especially because, as you say, there currently isn't any officially-accepted scoresheet. Once all the organizations are using the same sheet, it will be much easier to standardize the statistics.

We have some pretty creative people on AZ; let's come up with something!

- Steve
 
I agree, the best place to start is with an official score sheet. The sheet should be based on the desired information such as differentiating a miss from a safe. However, the sheet needs to be so easy to use that the instructions could be placed at the top or bottom of the sheet and a person with an 8th grade education could easily understand it. This 8th grade reading level is the criteria I use when constructing surveys so it has nothing to do with pool players. Inferences need to be excluded and only observations included to create a reliable instrument that would stand the test of time. Perhaps some one like Bob J. could create a draft for others to comment on, try out, and then submit it to several organizations as a group effort
 
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3andstop said:
I agree in theory for sure that it would be a much more accurate representation of your average. Except, the thought crossed my mind that quite often in a match if you don't get on your breakshot well enough to contact the rack, it isn't unusual to pocket the ball and play safe. These intentional 1 ball innings would cloud the true bpi stat regardless. :(

then that is the fault of the player making a booboo, therefore he deserves the lower bpi as a result.
 
Steve Lipsky said:
Bob, I didn't want to hijack your other thread, so I figured I'd start a new one.

You mentioned that there are other problems that crop up when certain innings are excluded. Since there are really no two way shots in straight pool, I'm trying to think of what you meant by this. Can you clarify?

To those of you who haven't seen the other thread, I am on a campaign to change the Balls-Per-Inning stat :). As it's presently calculated, innings consisting entirely of a safety are counted in the formula, bringing the overall number down heavily. To provide a quick example, someone who runs three 50s, but gets bogged down with a tight opponent during the safety battles, can easily have a BPI around 7. To delve further, take two players who ran the same 3 50s - one who did it in consecutive innings and another who was forced to engage in lengthy safe battles - they will have wildly different BPI calcs. I'm not sure what value, if any, this provides.

If discounting the safes made it such that official scorekeepers were necessary, I'd understand the difficulties. But you need scorekeepers to calculate a BPI as it is - and if you don't trust them enough to recognize a safe, you shouldn't be trusting them with your score.

OK, there it is. Who agrees and who doesn't?

- Steve

i must be missing something. all shots must be called. if you don't call a safe, it's nor a safe,,,just a fortunate roll on an attempted shot.
 
bruin70 said:
i must be missing something. all shots must be called. if you don't call a safe, it's not a safe,,,just a fortunate roll on an attempted shot.

Bruin,

The only time I would actually vocally call a safe in a game, even in a world championship, would be if I'm playing safe in a way where a ball might unintentionally go in. A classic example might be a safe where I'm banking a ball uptable, leaving the cueball frozen on an object ball, and there is a danger that the ball I bank might actually go in a pocket. Here I would actually say out loud, "safe".

On 95% of safes, since there's no danger of a ball going in unintended, what is the point of saying out loud, "safe"?

So my point with that post was, if you don't trust a scorekeeper enough to recognize these obvious, uncalled safes, you shouldn't be trusting them with your score.

- Steve
 
Steve Lipsky said:
On 95% of safes, since there's no danger of a ball going in unintended, what is the point of saying out loud, "safe"?

In refereed matches in the days when a straight pool event decided the world championship, the referee always announced the intention of the player. As you note, often, the fact that the player is not attempting to pocket a ball will be obvious in the context of play to both players and to the referee. However, it may be less obvious to fans, some of whom may not be sitting where whether any ball is playable is as clear, and some of whom are watching straight pool for the very first time.

I have always felt that the announcement of a safety is a very fan friendly practice.
 
When playing 14.1 the shooter must designate ball and pocket. While obvious shots are often not spoken aloud, the player calls all non-obvious shots such as a bank, etc.

If a player does not call a shot and the shot is not an obvious line to a pocket then it must be a safe. Isn’t this correct?


Here is a suggested scoring sheet that probably needs revising. The categories should be obvious where "S" means “safe.” All numbers represent the quantities of balls pocketed or penalties. Any inning could be accompanied by the letter "S" indicating that the inning ended with a safe. The sheet is a variation of the counters on a Gold Crown.

Number of racks 7 = (50+42)/14

John won 50 -41 in 5 innings. John played 3 safes or 60% of the time. His BPI= 12.5 or (15+30+0+5) / 4 the first inning is not counted as it was a safe with no score.

Frank lost and played safe 75% of the time (He only played four innings). His BPI = 10.5 or (10+3+27+2) /4



score2.jpg
 
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JoeW said:
When playing 14.1 the shooter must designate ball and pocket. While obvious shots are often not spoken aloud, the player calls all non-obvious shots such as a bank, etc.

If a player does not call a shot and the shot is not an obvious line to a pocket then it must be a safe. Isn’t this correct?


Here is a suggested scoring sheet that probably needs revising. The categories should be obvious where "S" means “safe.” All numbers represent the quantities of balls pocketed or penalties. Any inning could be accompanied by the letter "S" indicating that the inning ended with a safe. The sheet is a variation of the counters on a Gold Crown.

Number of racks 7 = (50+42)/14

John won 50 -41 in 5 innings. John played 3 safes or 60% of the time. His BPI= 12.5 or (15+30+0+5) / 4 the first inning is not counted as it was a safe with no score.

Frank lost and played safe 75% of the time (He only played four innings). His BPI = 10.5 or (10+3+27+2) /4



score2.jpg


Joe,

I think you're on to something, but I also feel it's important to keep a rack-by-rack score, which accomplishes two things:

1) If a math mistake is made, it's pretty easy to figure out where it happened.

2) When there is a midrack change-of-inning, your scoresheet above (unless I am missing something) makes it tough to figure out how many balls you've made (during that rack).

If you can figure out a way to add that, I think we're there.

- Steve
 
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Numbers in parentheses following the inning score would indicate the number of balls on the table at the end of the inning. A "1" means that a re-rack was needed. The rack count could be in a seperate column or in a parenthetical note. I will revise the table later today if I have time.

On the other hand one could use a small set of string counters for scoring and enter the results on a sheet similar to the one shown above. Now it just so happens that we have been discussing the creation of minature string counters in another thread :D
 
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Here is a revised scoring sheet. The center colums indicate the number of balls left on the table. It is similar to a rack score without the messiness. Rack scores can be reconstructed from the "Score" column.

score3.jpg
 
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JoeW said:
Here is a revised scoring sheet. The center colums indicate the number of balls left on the table. It is similar to a rack score without the messiness. Rack scores can be reconstructed from the "Score" column.

score3.jpg

Please don't make us switch to the wacky European way of scoring! There is something inherently confusing about writing a number down on a scoresheet which is not your score. If I make 6 balls, I should be writing down "6", not "9".

Europe has many wonderful things. Please let us keep our straight pool scoring system. It's better. :)

- Steve
 
OK - back to the drawing board. I think that I can set up something like a bead counter on paper. Just need a little time to do it.
 
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