Dechaine just chopped up Busty, but he's not even considered for MC.

De420MadHatter said:
Well, only if you are opposed to facts. Facts don't lie.
1. As a species, our hand eye coordination is no better than the 60's, or anytime previous. (No athlete has ever surpassed Babe Ruth's hand eye coordination imo).
2. Our brains are no more skilled today than the 60's. (Einstein is still holding his own, as is Galileo, DaVinci, and Socrates).
3. These are the only 2 points that can be argued in regards to players of the past. Everything else is semantics. Period, end of story.
Your scenario says players of the past couldn't get there today, yet everything you base your opinion on, is simply some form of acquired knowledge, not skill. Your opinion also says players of the past, don't posses the mental faculties, to acquire knowledge or learn new things. (Wonder how they learned in the first place. My opinion is based on physical skill, which is what we are arguing about. You and all your ilk, argue knowledge, then deflect and call it skill :confused:
So are today's players more knowledgeable, yes, skilled, show me how.
Lassiter, Buddy, Etc...had it, end of story. They rose as high as was possible during THEIR time, with what was available, at the time. Were they alive today, they would do it again. They are the .0001% of the world, that would stand at the top, no matter what time, age or conditions.
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lol@Babe Ruth

Let's see how his fat ass would do against the likes of Chris Sale or Jacob DeGrom.
 
If you learn correctly, play correctly and play at a high level, pool is much easier on today's equipment. Fast cloth, true balls and Diamond tables make for a much easier race track. Its not even close. So sure more people play great now and probably at higher levels.

Our problem is with less people playing at all levels, far fewer champions will be made. The pool public chops up 25%of them anyway....like a blood sport.
 
BasementDweller said:
Like many -- De420MadHatter just doesn't get how progress works.

Nobody doubts that if Earl, Buddy, Varner, or any of them in their primes were transported to today that they would certainly still be great players and probably even rise to the top. However, they would be BETTER than their historically accurate selves. That's just how things work. The bar is constantly being raised ever so slightly over time provided there's an equal amount of participation (or greater).

I just heard today that there was a marathoner that averaged around 4:25 minute miles for the whole thing. That's just crazy. Something happens within all of us when we see things that we previously thought were impossible and the bar just keeps getting raised. The exceptional becomes the norm.
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You're obviously missing the point. Yes Buddy may be better, because there is so much more knowledge these days. Buddy would possess no more physical skill now, than he did back then. I'm dumbfounded that you believe otherwise.
Once again deflection, to hold onto your illogical point.
 
De420MadHatter said:
You're obviously missing the point. Yes Buddy may be better, because there is so much more knowledge these days. Buddy would possess no more physical skill now, than he did back then. I'm dumbfounded that you believe otherwise.
Once again deflection, to hold onto your illogical point.
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Players are fundamentally better today.

That's a physical skill.
 
BeiberLvr said:
lol@Babe Ruth

Let's see how his fat ass would do against the likes of Chris Sale or Jacob DeGrom.
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He would make fools of them. No one before or since has done what Ruth did. Big, fat ass, out of shape, Ruth. No PEDs, no working out everyday, etc...he had absolutely unbelievable hand eye coordination.
 
BeiberLvr said:
Players are fundamentally better today.

That's a physical skill.
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Negative, fundamentals are acquired knowledge. I can take someone with no hand eye coordination and teach them fundamentals till the end of the world, wont matter, they'll never get there. You could take Buddy for instance, and coach him, proper fundamentals etc..and you probably could make him better, but fundamentals aren't a skill. It's knowledge of the fundamentals, that improves your physical skill. A 5 yr can do all the proper fundamentals if I coach him, requires no skill, other than being able to stand on 2 legs, and perform these actions just like I tell you.
 
It's not impossible.

There are plenty of states and places with a ton of gamble for anyone not in the top 20 players in the world.

ShortBusRuss said:
And.. There is not as much free money to be gambled away as in years past.. Without that easy money to go after, there is no incentive for the cream to rise to the top.

You hear plenty of stories of road players having a house bought and paid for, supporting a family for 30+ years, and sending multiple kids to school. Absolutely impossible these days.

There is simply no monetary incentive for young people with good hand-eye coordination to take up the game. And the U.S. doesn't have the Bundesliga type system to make up the difference, the way Europe does.

Europe has a culture of supporting ALL sports pursuits in a structured way, and the laws are structured in such a way as to support this. Pretty much every pool/snooker club in Germany has a cheap liquor license, to be able to support themselves. This, again, is impossible in America due to burdensome laws.
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Meucciplayer said:
[sarcasm mode on]Wow, yep, I can see a lot of that in the world today. Politicians are a great example of people becoming smarter every day. [/sarcasm mode off]

BTW, the Flynn effect is one of those many theories which can be debated all day long. I remember many great theories that were accepted over times and have now been debunked, entirely. It is always nice to believe you are now living in the smartest generation, the most powerful athletes are living in our times, the best writers, singers and actors and what not. This BS theory was supported by every single generation - even the people in Hitler's Germany believed that. History will tell how really dumb we were approaching 2020.

Here is something someone posted on AZB a while ago - way better than the unsupported assumptions in this thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8COaMKbNrX0

It is a discussion about the evolution of sports. The narrator has put some real arguments behind his own findings.
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That was great. Thanks :thumbup: The data doesn't lie.
 
u12armresl said:
It's not impossible.

There are plenty of states and places with a ton of gamble for anyone not in the top 20 players in the world.
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And anyone coming in and performing well enough to take down 60K+ per year will get fingered, and all their easy money dries up, and they either have to give up massive spots and outrun them, or nobody gambles them. Not necessarily a sustainable model.

To support a family and send kids to college, requires a 120K+ per year income in this economy. And there is nowhere in America that is to be found on an ongoing basis.

ShortBusRuss
 
Meucciplayer said:
[sarcasm mode on]Wow, yep, I can see a lot of that in the world today. Politicians are a great example of people becoming smarter every day. [/sarcasm mode off]

BTW, the Flynn effect is one of those many theories which can be debated all day long. I remember many great theories that were accepted over times and have now been debunked, entirely. It is always nice to believe you are now living in the smartest generation, the most powerful athletes are living in our times, the best writers, singers and actors and what not. This BS theory was supported by every single generation - even the people in Hitler's Germany believed that. History will tell how really dumb we were approaching 2020.

Here is something someone posted on AZB a while ago - way better than the unsupported assumptions in this thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8COaMKbNrX0

It is a discussion about the evolution of sports. The narrator has put some real arguments behind his own findings.
Click to expand...

This is the smartest generation, and next generation will be smarter. Because it will build on the knowledge we now are expanding on. This is why athletes are more tuned, hardware is more advanced, cars are more reliable, glass is stronger, metals are better overall, music recordings are clearer, performers have better coaching and backing in the studio and equipment.

People in the past can't be better than now because we build on what they knew and mostly advanced that knowledge. Einstein back then knew only so much, current science built up on what he knew, and thus the people that followed are better. They may not be purely smarter in the sense that the capacity for learning is larger, but what they know and can do is greater.

So while Greenleaf may have been talented, he can't do what Shane or Jayson can do, especially with what they have. He did not have coaches and drills and 30 different shafts and cues to pick from that. Now if Greenleaf was born today, he may be the Shane or Jayson of our time. But he is not and they are.

Like the video, TED talks is great, they get you thinking without a lot of arguing.
 
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Someone should do a crowdfunding project to raise funds and hire elite research team to do proper scientific study to settle this debate. Can publish into potential best selling book later :thumbup:
Too many subjective opinions, anecdotal "evidence" , too many assumptions and parameters.
More like blind talking to deaf. :D
 
Did you believers in today's greatness watch the video I posted above?

Yes, it is obvious that today's players have better equipment and a few things have been better analyzed since Mosconi's and Greenleaf's days. The nutrition and training factor - which makes a difference in some sports does not count in pool. You don't need to be Schwarzenegger and you don't need a diet that makes a difference in a marathon.

The IQ being higher today than it was 50 years ago? IQ tests rely on abilities trained daily in modern times.There were no computers 50 years ago for the general public. For further info read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

There is debate about whether the rise in IQ scores also corresponds to a rise in general intelligence, or only a rise in special skills related to taking IQ tests.
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Another quote from there:
Research suggests that there is an ongoing reversed Flynn effect, i.e. a decline in IQ scores, in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France and German-speaking countries,[4] a development which appears to have started in the 1990s
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So, how does that factor in?

Yes, you can also quote parts of the Wikipedia article to make your case. But all of that only proves to me that the basis of the IQ tests just doesn't support anything if you want to compare generations past with today's generation.

Send a few city dwellers out in the woods and wait how long they survive. Compare them to cave-men or soldiers in Stalingrad. Would that prove that the people back then were more skilled? Certainly they were more skilled in some ways because they had to put up with their environment on a daily basis. A person who can only survive with central heating and a McDonald's close by won't last anywhere near as long in such an environment. It does not prove, however, that people were generally more intelligent or tougher back then. The same is true for the opposite when you take computer skills and stuff that has been trained in schools in the past 20-30 years and compare people from times when those skills were never needed.
 
AtLarge said:
Danny DiLiberto has addressed this subject 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. That sounds reasonable to me.
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Danny cant even see the table.
Jason
 
That's amazing! He's running fast all the way. Fast enough to win a big high school track meet in the Mile. I'm wondering now if there will ever be a two hour marathon runner.
 
WRT pool there is another angle, too. I suppose we all agree that back in the old times there were a lot more pool players than nowadays. 5-fold, 10 times as many, 100x or even more? Whatever. How likely is it that from a pool (pun intended) of 5 times or more as many than nowadays there will be less skilled players at the top?

If you don't believe it - why would a German football (US football) team not stand a chance against any US college team? Why do tiny countries (even if they are rich enough for all the most modern sports equipment and medical attention) not show up significantly in Olympic medal statistics? And why do some relatively small countries make an impact in some athletic competitions which can be considered a national past-time?

Yep, the answer is always: If there is a larger base of people seriously committing to some activity, they are highly likely to have many record holders, medalists etc.

The same concept can be applied to pool over time. It is not an intelligent assumption that the top players from yesteryear were in any way worse than today's players.

If you could make them compete directly a fair competition would involve both sets of players either play 50/50 on old and new equipment or on totally new equipment which neither group ever played on. Something like Russian pyramid tables :-)
 
Meucciplayer said:
[sarcasm mode on]Wow, yep, I can see a lot of that in the world today. Politicians are a great example of people becoming smarter every day. [/sarcasm mode off]

BTW, the Flynn effect is one of those many theories which can be debated all day long. I remember many great theories that were accepted over times and have now been debunked, entirely. It is always nice to believe you are now living in the smartest generation, the most powerful athletes are living in our times, the best writers, singers and actors and what not. This BS theory was supported by every single generation - even the people in Hitler's Germany believed that. History will tell how really dumb we were approaching 2020.

Here is something someone posted on AZB a while ago - way better than the unsupported assumptions in this thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8COaMKbNrX0

It is a discussion about the evolution of sports. The narrator has put some real arguments behind his own findings.
Click to expand...

This video pretty much sums it all up, why we have better performances by today's athletes. It also carries over to Pool with our increased technology. The one thing this speaker glosses over is the mental factor. The stronger willed and more unflappable competitor also has an edge over someone with less similar qualities.
 
jay helfert said:
The one thing this speaker glosses over is the mental factor. The stronger willed and more unflappable competitor also has an edge over someone with less similar qualities.
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True. However, the mentally strong were in existence in the old days as well as today. I don't see a significant difference there. There may be some pool players getting better psychological counselling nowadays but I doubt that would be a large number. Might be different in snooker where I heard rumors of such psychological training top players are getting.
 
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