Comparing The Old To The New

Johnnyt

Johnnyt

Burn all jump cues
Silver Member
Who was better, the top player’s from yesteryear or today’s top players? I’ve seen the top players from the late 1940’s to present and I really can’t tell for sure.

Some say the players from before Diamond Tables and the tighter pockets couldn’t win against today’s players. I say BS to that, as most rooms back in the day had action tables with tight pockets and most of the time slow cloth, and were reserved for the better players to gamble on…which they did.

If you have ever spent some time playing rotation games on a tight pocket table with the old slow backed or un-backed cloth, you know what I’m talking about. The shots that you can now just about slow roll in on the fast cloth and bouncy rails and get a few rails to the other end of the table had to be hit much harder on the slow cloth. We all know the harder you need to hit a shot the more likely you will jaw/miss it. A lot of the top players back in the day spun the balls in so they wouldn’t need to pound balls in to get around the table. More spin, more misses.

Today the break shots look like a pinball machine. Good luck with getting the 2 and 3 balls to go around 4 or 5 rails in 10-ball on the slow cloth and old type rubber. I think there are more “A” players and above around today because there is so much info on pool now. But if I had to pick which group would be better playing today I’d say the top old guys would do just fine. Johnnyt
 
no matter how tight the pockets when Louie had the ----- right he would make a diamond look like a bar box.You are right on the old players that were champions would do what it takes now just like they did then .
 
better able to adapt

Johnnyt said:
Who was better, the top player’s from yesteryear or today’s top players? I’ve seen the top players from the late 1940’s to present and I really can’t tell for sure.

Some say the players from before Diamond Tables and the tighter pockets couldn’t win against today’s players. I say BS to that, as most rooms back in the day had action tables with tight pockets and most of the time slow cloth, and were reserved for the better players to gamble on…which they did.

If you have ever spent some time playing rotation games on a tight pocket table with the old slow backed or un-backed cloth, you know what I’m talking about. The shots that you can now just about slow roll in on the fast cloth and bouncy rails and get a few rails to the other end of the table had to be hit much harder on the slow cloth. We all know the harder you need to hit a shot the more likely you will jaw/miss it. A lot of the top players back in the day spun the balls in so they wouldn’t need to pound balls in to get around the table. More spin, more misses.

Today the break shots look like a pinball machine. Good luck with getting the 2 and 3 balls to go around 4 or 5 rails in 10-ball on the slow cloth and old type rubber. I think there are more “A” players and above around today because there is so much info on pool now. But if I had to pick which group would be better playing today I’d say the top old guys would do just fine. Johnnyt
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I'd say that the older players were far more able to adapt and adapt fast to conditions than today's typical American players and typical players from Europe. The Pinoys come up playing on a lot of different tables, some not even having cloth or balls. They play indoors and outdoors, no AC, on and on. I strongly believe that is one thing that gives them an edge. Another thing I see over and over, a hungry population in a nation and then one or two people show them a path out. Then the nation produces a handful of great boxers or whatever the first one or first few found success at.

I don't think we will ever definitively say which players are or were better. I believe the greatest few from any era would be great in any era. I do think that if you brought yesterday's players to today that they would be great a lot faster than today's players would be if you could send them to an older era.

Hu
 
During his match commentary, Danny DiLiberto has addressed this point a number of times. His opinion is that the top players of yesterday and the top players of today are pretty much equally skilled but that more such top players exist today.
 
ShootingArts said:
I'd say that the older players were far more able to adapt and adapt fast to conditions than today's typical American players.......I do think that if you brought yesterday's players to today that they would be great a lot faster than today's players would be if you could send them to an older era.

Hu
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I agree with this.

Guys like Bennie Allen, Frank Taberski, Ralph Greenleaf, Jimmy Caras, Erwin Rudolph, Irving Crane, etc would still be super-great players if they were "time-transported" to modern day play.

Another thing to think about....back in the day, America had far more players than we do today.

I don't have exact numbers on pool, but here's some interesting stats from boxing.....

In 1927 there were 2,000 licensed professional boxers residing in the state of New York, and that over 900 boxing shows were promoted throughout the state. In 2006 the state licensed 50 pro boxers and staged just 38 shows. Or that during the 1920's and 1930's approximately 9,000 professional boxers were licensed annually in the U.S., while in 2006 that figure had dropped to 2,850. In 1925 a fighter had engaged in an average of 84 professional contests before fighting for the title, while in 2007 a fighter had fought an average of only 27 times before receiving a shot at a title.

Nowadays, although we have SOME really top-notch players, we don't have as MANY as we used to. Besides the names I've already mentioned, the 1960's, 1970's & 1980's gave us Joe Balsis, Luther Lassiter, Ray Martin, Ed Kelly, Earl Strickland, Mike Sigel, Buddy Hall, Nick Varner & Allen Hopkins. Those guys won or they often times didn't eat.

Johnny Archer & Shane VanBoening are two great American champions. But when you consider that the population of the USA is so much more now than when it was at any time in the past, you have to wonder where the proportion of champion class players are compared to the numbers in years gone by.

Personally speaking, I think the great players of the past are too soon forgotten by many of todays players.
 
If a player has to win to eat, or to stay warm at night, the conditions will create a better player, hands down, the depression era is a good example. And much like in the Phillipines, conditions are similar in some ways, cept they don't have winters as cold as ours.
 
The games played are too different to make a comparison. The skill set of 9/10 ball and how it is played today includes jumps, kick safes, and the need to go after long tough cuts, not to mention the stamina to last through often times a field of 200 or more of the worlds best players. Players back then were playing 14.1 and had to deal with slow nap cloth, less than perfect balls, and the real pressure of having to starve if they didn't play well.

Skill-level wise, they are probably not so different, if Mosconi were born in the 80's, he would be a top 9 baller today, likewise if SVB were born in the early 1900s, he would have been duking it out with Mosconi and Greenleaf.
 
players now days would crush the players of the past! if the players of the past were to grow up in the present, i would call it a equal match...ijs
 
Well lets start with probably the best American rotation player ever....Earl Strickland. Does anyone actually believe that anyone currently would beat Earl in his prime? He's won 5 US Opens in 3 different decades. Just this year he slaughtered Shane on a 5x10 and spanked Archer in an event that favored Archer. In fact in the portion everyone had Archer favored in(14.1) Earl looked invincible.

He's a man full of issues...and borderline insanity..but you can't ignore his greatness.

How great of a 14.1 player would Earl be if he dedicated himself to that game? He's clearly the best American player ever.
 
Little AL said, " The best players in the world came from San Francisco"

I believe him.
 
krelldog said:
Well lets start with probably the best American rotation player ever....Earl Strickland. Does anyone actually believe that anyone currently would beat Earl in his prime? He's won 5 US Opens in 3 different decades. Just this year he slaughtered Shane on a 5x10 and spanked Archer in an event that favored Archer. In fact in the portion everyone had Archer favored in(14.1) Earl looked invincible.

He's a man full of issues...and borderline insanity..but you can't ignore his greatness.

How great of a 14.1 player would Earl be if he dedicated himself to that game? He's clearly the best American player ever.
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Earl is one of a handful of people who boasts a high run of over 400. I forget the exact number, maybe 408?

I think he would have been ok if he had dedicated himself to the game. ;)
 
K.Mcphee said:
Little AL said, " The best players in the world came from San Francisco"

I believe him.
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I think E. Coast would of been my pick. New York for example, there were five thousand pool rooms there at one time, highly doubt there were that many in San Fran. But in general any of the Port towns would of been tough, Chicago comes to mind.
 
Champions are champions regardless of what era they are from.




Johnnyt said:
Who was better, the top player’s from yesteryear or today’s top players? I’ve seen the top players from the late 1940’s to present and I really can’t tell for sure.

Some say the players from before Diamond Tables and the tighter pockets couldn’t win against today’s players. I say BS to that, as most rooms back in the day had action tables with tight pockets and most of the time slow cloth, and were reserved for the better players to gamble on…which they did.

If you have ever spent some time playing rotation games on a tight pocket table with the old slow backed or un-backed cloth, you know what I’m talking about. The shots that you can now just about slow roll in on the fast cloth and bouncy rails and get a few rails to the other end of the table had to be hit much harder on the slow cloth. We all know the harder you need to hit a shot the more likely you will jaw/miss it. A lot of the top players back in the day spun the balls in so they wouldn’t need to pound balls in to get around the table. More spin, more misses.

Today the break shots look like a pinball machine. Good luck with getting the 2 and 3 balls to go around 4 or 5 rails in 10-ball on the slow cloth and old type rubber. I think there are more “A” players and above around today because there is so much info on pool now. But if I had to pick which group would be better playing today I’d say the top old guys would do just fine. Johnnyt
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No, they just have to stay dry which could be a challenge without a roof over your head.

:thumbup:

Island Drive said:
If a player has to win to eat, or to stay warm at night, the conditions will create a better player, hands down, the depression era is a good example. And much like in the Phillipines, conditions are similar in some ways, cept they don't have winters as cold as ours.
Click to expand...
 
krelldog said:
Well lets start with probably the best American rotation player ever....Earl Strickland.
Click to expand...

And the old-timers will tell you that distinction goes to Luther Lassiter. And Lassiter was quoted as saying that if his life depended on one game of nine ball, that the man he would want shooting that game for him was Don Willis.
 
Winston846 said:
And the old-timers will tell you that distinction goes to Luther Lassiter. And Lassiter was quoted as saying that if his life depended on one game of nine ball, that the man he would want shooting that game for him was Don Willis.
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For some reason my brain read that last line as "that the man he would want shooting for him was Donnie Mills."
 
Island Drive said:
I think E. Coast would of been my pick. New York for example, there were five thousand pool rooms there at one time, highly doubt there were that many in San Fran. But in general any of the Port towns would of been tough, Chicago comes to mind.
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I really don't know all that much about players from the past other than what the guys from now tell me, and some of them played really good. MOsconi, and Hoppe come to mind from the first Gen, then mizerak and that generation. The generation after are the ones that are suppose to have been the most talented and they all ended up in San Fran, then went their ways. Everyone that rolled through there met a guy they couldn't beat at whatever game they wanted to play.
 
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