Please do it. Put an event togeather and go for it. I am not goating you. I really want to see if the concept takes hold and see if more events follow with bigger and bigger fields of players and stands full of spectators.
Derby 9ball rack mechanics
- Thread starter nathandumoulin
- Start date
Please do it. Put an event togeather and go for it. I am not goating you. I really want to see if the concept takes hold and see if more events follow with bigger and bigger fields of players and stands full of spectators.
Battling for that first shot, making it and running out is much more skillful
You're the tournament promoter, not me, I will only promote televised events. This thread is about professional tournaments and players, and that's the way I would match up and play them....as far as promoting tournaments with big fields, I think I stated pretty clearly I have no interest in being involved in that endeavour.
My points are only about making the game as pure and skillful as possible. Playing a "break and first shot" match doesn't appeal to me and it takes all the best shots and strategies away.
Battling for that first shot, making it and running out is much more skillful than breaking, hanging the one ball and running out. Again, we have different agendas, nothing wrong with that.
You're the tournament promoter, not me, I will only promote televised events. This thread is about professional tournaments and players, and that's the way I would match up and play them....as far as promoting tournaments with big fields, I think I stated pretty clearly I have no interest in being involved in that endeavour.
My points are only about making the game as pure and skillful as possible. Playing a "break and first shot" match doesn't appeal to me and it takes all the best shots and strategies away.
Battling for that first shot, making it and running out is much more skillful than breaking, hanging the one ball and running out. Again, we have different agendas, nothing wrong with that.
You may be a good player but you cannot know what it means. You have never played it. You can only imagine.
Thanks for the numbers. These percentages are based on how many breaks?
You say "I do not value breaker wins stats. That is a function of a weaker or stronger opponent." While that can be true, I think such stats can also be informative. With the No Conflict Rules, the breaker is always the first player to have the options to shoot, push, or play safe. I imagine that would raise the breaker-wins percentages compared to the normal situation where he has those options only if he makes a ball. Do you have such information, or do you not collect it?
But most of us have no opportunity to play in events with the No Conflict Rules let alone run events using such rules. You are the guy with the experience. If you are reluctant to spend the time (I acknowledge you have already spent a good deal of time on this) to answer all questions about it and to volunteer additional information to support the use of the rules, prospects for their future elsewhere are reduced.
Do you know whether any of the players who have entered your events have gone off and run their own events with those rules, or convinced other tournament directors to use them? If so, do you know how the events were received?
No comment on the No Conflict Rules conflict.
But I will say that I never thought about the break being a controlled shot to deliberately make a ball until I got to China. The players here can make the head ball in Nine Ball consistently in the side when using a regular rack. If the Magic Rack then wing balls no problem with a medium speed break.
I started practicing to make the one ball in the side and now I can do it pretty regularly as well.
Pittsburgh events have only been able to draw 15 to 30 players for any of their events over the most recent years. Shane Jackson of Steel City Billiards adopted the No Conflict Rules for one event and filled 64 spots two weeks prior to the tournament.
Chris Szuter, owner of Fiddlestix in Canton OH ran a bar table event with the rules last fall.
At my last event I suggested to one well traveled player that he sugest the rules at players meetings for the tournaments he attends. He said "I bring it up every time."
The tale of the tape is the follow up tournament.
"keep practicing and you'll be a darn good shooter one day."
I've haven't been called a "good Player" in awhile....and you're right, I don't know what it means.
I'm not sure if you're joking, but that actually made me laugh .....it reminds me of Jimmy "Pretty Boy Floyd" Mataya, who used to walk by when I was practicing and say "keep practicing and you'll be a darn good shooter one day." .... :thumbup: Thanks Jimmy!
I've haven't been called a "good Player" in awhile....and you're right, I don't know what it means.
I'm not sure if you're joking, but that actually made me laugh .....it reminds me of Jimmy "Pretty Boy Floyd" Mataya, who used to walk by when I was practicing and say "keep practicing and you'll be a darn good shooter one day." .... :thumbup: Thanks Jimmy!
What?!!
I'd imagine that at some point CJ has played the ghost without taking ball in hand, not made a ball on the break, and kept shooting.
It's not a hard concept to imagine. Just a horrible one.
I've haven't been called a "good Player" in awhile....and you're right, I don't know what it means.
I have no idea who the guys on the sides of the one in the middle are, but the guy in the middle is Jimmy "The Philly Flash" Fusco.
Do it. Go for it. I want to see it. I am interested in seeing how it goes. Our industry needs visionaries who willing to take chances.
Last edited:
looks like Jay Helfert on the left.
on the right Jimmy "Pretty Boy" Mataya, and on the left Jay "Thunderdome" Helfert
That's right "SUPERSTAR", Jimmy Fusco in the center and on the right Jimmy "Pretty Boy" Mataya, and on the left Jay "Thunderdome" Helfert
Jimmy is my all time favorite TV Pool Commentators. We also had a guy named Joe Roggen, that was pretty good himself.
I have no idea who the guys on the sides of the one in the middle are, but the guy in the middle is Jimmy "The Philly Flash" Fusco.
That's right "SUPERSTAR", Jimmy Fusco in the center and on the right Jimmy "Pretty Boy" Mataya, and on the left Jay "Thunderdome" Helfert
Jimmy is my all time favorite TV Pool Commentators. We also had a guy named Joe Roggen, that was pretty good himself.
Jay, in his younger days (when he had hair), looks a lil like Roger Estelle
Roger Estelle, Wow
Roger Estelle, Wow, I haven't heard his name in years. I'm drawing a blank, was he from Tulsa? I've been around him a lot and can picture him clear as day, just can't remember if he was in OK, or MO. Hmmm...
Roger Estelle, Wow, I haven't heard his name in years. I'm drawing a blank, was he from Tulsa? I've been around him a lot and can picture him clear as day, just can't remember if he was in OK, or MO. Hmmm...
mountain out of a mole hill?
I'm not sure this is as big an issue that some folks are making it out to be. This started with the OP pointing out some rack mechanics manipulating the rack. That's relatively easy to fix.
Others are assuming that most contests today are runout derby's because everyone (or many of the players) are breaking and running out most of the time and putting large 'packs' together - 80% - 90% of the time?
That sounds like a false premise. I believe the break and run for an average 9-ball tournament is closer to 20-30% (where is Atlarge when you need him?). 10-ball is probably 20% or less. If that's true, then what is the problem? 20-30% sounds fine to me.
It may be true that the champion at the event is running more (40-50%??) but shouldn't that be true anyway for the person that is "on" that week?
If my guesses are wrong, and the break and run is closer to 80-90% for the average person then there is a problem. But I don't think that's true.
I'm not sure this is as big an issue that some folks are making it out to be. This started with the OP pointing out some rack mechanics manipulating the rack. That's relatively easy to fix.
Others are assuming that most contests today are runout derby's because everyone (or many of the players) are breaking and running out most of the time and putting large 'packs' together - 80% - 90% of the time?
That sounds like a false premise. I believe the break and run for an average 9-ball tournament is closer to 20-30% (where is Atlarge when you need him?). 10-ball is probably 20% or less. If that's true, then what is the problem? 20-30% sounds fine to me.
It may be true that the champion at the event is running more (40-50%??) but shouldn't that be true anyway for the person that is "on" that week?
If my guesses are wrong, and the break and run is closer to 80-90% for the average person then there is a problem. But I don't think that's true.
It isn't about runout percentage, which is just a statistic.
It's about one player breaking the rules to give himself an advantage.
The rules explicitly say to rack as tightly as possible.
If you know this, but make a gap anyway to give yourself an advantage,
it's cheating.
It doesn't have to give you a 90% runout rate to work.
It just has to give you more runouts than the other guy.
I've haven't been called a "good Player" in awhile....and you're right, I don't know what it means.
I did not call you a good player. I said you "may be". I am not joking. Are you saying that you are so experienced that you know everything there is to know on a pool table. You would not try anything new because you already know what you are going to like and what you are not going to like?
Last edited:
Your numbers are pretty good. For the streamed matches I've tracked over the past couple years, the B&R percentages for 9-ball have ranged from roughly 15% to 30%, with an overall average of about 22%. For 10-ball (smaller number of games), the percentages have ranged from roughly 10% to 40%, with an overall average of about 18%. Conditions that can affect the results vary considerably from event to event.
That solves the rumor that we're having epidemic runout derby problems. There isn't one. Thanks AtLarge. I've always found your stats interesting after the matches and forgot to say so. I think they're very useful, especially for discussions like this.
I agree with you. As I stated in my first post, if the issue is simply rack manipulation - that's an easy fix.
Many others took that and ran with it as though this fixing is creating an epidemic of runouts - that's just not true.
Fix the rack mechanic BS that is becoming epidemic but the games themselves are fine. The notion that everyone is running out and putting packs together is simply not true.