Fargo on Bar boxes

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InsertCleverNameHere

Well-known member
Not sure if this has been discussed or not yet but I can't understand how Fargo can be as accurate on bar tables as on 9'.

While I'm no champion I am a pretty solid player and you have to be very good to beat me. I've done lots of gambling on all sorts of equipment in my time. At this point of my life pool is just a hobby and most of my play is in leagues on bar tables. I said all that to say this...

In my experience the bar table game has much more volatility results wise than the big table game. I'm much more likely to beat a player I shouldn't on paper in a tournament match on a bar box than I am on a 9'. Likewise a player below me has a better chance to win a set on a 7' than 9'. I'd venture to say that if I play 200 games vs a person one level below me on each that the score would be something like 110-90 on the bar table and more like 130-70 on the big table.

Doesn't that skew numbers a lot? I know Fargo just dropped "situational results" or whatever they call it but I just don't think it's nearly the same at all.

I know nothing is perfect but this is just something a couple friends and I were discussing...
 
InsertCleverNameHere said:
Not sure if this has been discussed or not yet but I can't understand how Fargo can be as accurate on bar tables as on 9'.

While I'm no champion I am a pretty solid player and you have to be very good to beat me. I've done lots of gambling on all sorts of equipment in my time. At this point of my life pool is just a hobby and most of my play is in leagues on bar tables. I said all that to say this...

In my experience the bar table game has much more volatility results wise than the big table game. I'm much more likely to beat a player I shouldn't on paper in a tournament match on a bar box than I am on a 9'. Likewise a player below me has a better chance to win a set on a 7' than 9'. I'd venture to say that if I play 200 games vs a person one level below me on each that the score would be something like 110-90 on the bar table and more like 130-70 on the big table.

Doesn't that skew numbers a lot? I know Fargo just dropped "situational results" or whatever they call it but I just don't think it's nearly the same at all.

I know nothing is perfect but this is just something a couple friends and I were discussing...
Click to expand...
I suppose if you lose some more to the lesser player, and win more to better player, your Fargo will be about the same. But, I hear what you’re saying.
 
InsertCleverNameHere said:
Not sure if this has been discussed or not yet but I can't understand how Fargo can be as accurate on bar tables as on 9'.

While I'm no champion I am a pretty solid player and you have to be very good to beat me. I've done lots of gambling on all sorts of equipment in my time. At this point of my life pool is just a hobby and most of my play is in leagues on bar tables. I said all that to say this...

In my experience the bar table game has much more volatility results wise than the big table game. I'm much more likely to beat a player I shouldn't on paper in a tournament match on a bar box than I am on a 9'. Likewise a player below me has a better chance to win a set on a 7' than 9'. I'd venture to say that if I play 200 games vs a person one level below me on each that the score would be something like 110-90 on the bar table and more like 130-70 on the big table.

Doesn't that skew numbers a lot? I know Fargo just dropped "situational results" or whatever they call it but I just don't think it's nearly the same at all.

I know nothing is perfect but this is just something a couple friends and I were discussing...
Click to expand...
this has been covered a bunch on here. do a search. Page at Fargo says that FR's on both table sizes don't vary much. I tend to believe the opposite but he says his reams of data don't lie. https://www.playcsipool.com/fargo-ratings-and-table-size.html
 
InsertCleverNameHere said:
Not sure if this has been discussed or not yet but I can't understand how Fargo can be as accurate on bar tables as on 9'.

While I'm no champion I am a pretty solid player and you have to be very good to beat me. I've done lots of gambling on all sorts of equipment in my time. At this point of my life pool is just a hobby and most of my play is in leagues on bar tables. I said all that to say this...

In my experience the bar table game has much more volatility results wise than the big table game. I'm much more likely to beat a player I shouldn't on paper in a tournament match on a bar box than I am on a 9'. Likewise a player below me has a better chance to win a set on a 7' than 9'. I'd venture to say that if I play 200 games vs a person one level below me on each that the score would be something like 110-90 on the bar table and more like 130-70 on the big table.

Doesn't that skew numbers a lot? I know Fargo just dropped "situational results" or whatever they call it but I just don't think it's nearly the same at all.

I know nothing is perfect but this is just something a couple friends and I were discussing...
Click to expand...

If you do a search here you can find a lot of discussion. Mike has explained it a number of times...
 
InsertCleverNameHere said:
[...]

In my experience the bar table game has much more volatility results wise than the big table game. I'm much more likely to beat a player I shouldn't on paper in a tournament match on a bar box than I am on a 9'. Likewise a player below me has a better chance to win a set on a 7' than 9'.
Click to expand...

FargoRate agrees with this, and this is built into the system

InsertCleverNameHere said:
I'd venture to say that if I play 200 games vs a person one level below me on each that the score would be something like 110-90 on the bar table and more like 130-70 on the big table.
Click to expand...

The evidence from lots of data is the score is still 110 to 90 on average. But if you did those 200 games a lot of times, the score would stray further from 110-90 more often on the 7-foot table. This means the second players (the 90) is going to actually get over 100 more frequently.

It is common to conflate a sense of this effect with expecting the average to change.
 
I don't know the FargoRate algorithm, nor do I care about it too much to dive into it. But just like everything else in life - nothing is perfect.
For me, when I see two players play and I know their rates, it gives me a general idea, who is stronger on paper.
I wouldn't use it for handicaping or anything else for that matter.
 
How do you win more against a better player and lose more to a worse player?

If you're winning more against a better player you should be winning a lot more against a worse player.
 
jasonlaus said:
How do you win more against a better player and lose more to a worse player?

If you're winning more against a better player you should be winning a lot more against a worse player.
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I certainly didn’t phrase it perfectly but the point I was trying to make is that on the bartable any 2 players are closer together and therefore upsets more likely. Every single rack.
 
mikepage said:
FargoRate agrees with this, and this is built into the system



The evidence from lots of data is the score is still 110 to 90 on average. But if you did those 200 games a lot of times, the score would stray further from 110-90 more often on the 7-foot table. This means the second players (the 90) is going to actually get over 100 more frequently.

It is common to conflate a sense of this effect with expecting the average to change.
Click to expand...
What you are suggesting is that for a binominal distribution (n=200, p=.55) you actually get two different standard deviations even though the actual standard deviation of a binominal distribution is sqrt[np(1-p)]. Therefore, the only conclusion is that p != .55 in one of those cases.

The only way for there to be more variation in the outcomes, even if skill is constant, is for there to be more luck involved. That is, you are suggesting there is more luck involved in the outcome of a game/match on a 7' table than a 9' table. In which case p would be smaller for the better play on a 7' than a 9' table because more games would be decided by luck.

Can you address? Because it sounds like you just supported the conclusion that a player's probability of winning changes based on table size, even if skill is constant, and therefore using straight Fargo ratings to evaluate races in handicapped matchups would be erroneous and would need additional modification based on table size (and probably other variables as well).
 
InsertCleverNameHere said:
I certainly didn’t phrase it perfectly but the point I was trying to make is that on the bartable any 2 players are closer together and therefore upsets more likely. Every single rack.
Click to expand...
I've been playing around with the fargo situational rating because I have felt like I don't play as well against lower skill level players as I do against higher.

The data seems to support my feelings. My fargo against lower fargo players is 20 points lower than my actual fargo. And against higher skill level opponents my fargo is about 25 points higher.

But when I look at the win percentages the numbers are not very far apart. Meaning, my win percentage against lower skill players should be around 73%, but the actual is closer to 70%. So what we might call variance is only 3%. This is with about 700 total games. And all 8 ball on barboxes.
 
Apologize for not being great at searching. I tried(admittedly not very hard) but there seemed a lot to sift through so I just started a thread don’t really see the harm in it?

I thought the whole point of forums is to have discussions? Don’t want to discuss a topic, that’s cool just keep scrolling right. Nobody needs to be reprimanded for using a forum in their own way.

And yeah if “it’s all the same at any size” is what this forum determined in old threads then I can confidently say the folks on here aren’t as enlightened or sharp as they think they are(myself included sometimes).

I appreciate the replies that people put effort and thought into!
 
Rocket354 said:
What you are suggesting is that for a binominal distribution (n=200, p=.55) you actually get two different standard deviations even though the actual standard deviation of a binominal distribution is sqrt[np(1-p)]. Therefore, the only conclusion is that p != .55 in one of those cases.

The only way for there to be more variation in the outcomes, even if skill is constant, is for there to be more luck involved. That is, you are suggesting there is more luck involved in the outcome of a game/match on a 7' table than a 9' table. In which case p would be smaller for the better play on a 7' than a 9' table because more games would be decided by luck.

Can you address? Because it sounds like you just supported the conclusion that a player's probability of winning changes based on table size, even if skill is constant, and therefore using straight Fargo ratings to evaluate races in handicapped matchups would be erroneous and would need additional modification based on table size (and probably other variables as well).
Click to expand...

how about a hypothetical future scenario where 6ft tables becomes increasingly more popular in the US, and 10ft tables in the rest of the world. is it still the same game being measured?
 
Rocket354 said:
What you are suggesting is that for a binominal distribution (n=200, p=.55) you actually get two different standard deviations even though the actual standard deviation of a binominal distribution is sqrt[np(1-p)]. Therefore, the only conclusion is that p != .55 in one of those cases.

The only way for there to be more variation in the outcomes, even if skill is constant, is for there to be more luck involved. That is, you are suggesting there is more luck involved in the outcome of a game/match on a 7' table than a 9' table. In which case p would be smaller for the better play on a 7' than a 9' table because more games would be decided by luck.
Click to expand...
Your analysis focuses on p, that, for example, luck would benefit both players equally and thus reduce the no-luck advantage the better player enjoys. But there is something else going on here, and we call it the runlength effect. n in this distribution is the number of INDEPENDENT trials, and the degree to which the trials are independent changes when there begin to be packages. When there are multiple "points" scored without skill-based changes in control, there becomes effectively a separation between "n," scoring units and "N," effective number of independent trials. The net effect is a higher variance in scoring units than you would expect. A race to 7 on a bar box is kind of acting statistically more like a race to 5 in the chance of an upset, even without p changing.
 
mikepage said:
Your analysis focuses on p, that, for example, luck would benefit both players equally and thus reduce the no-luck advantage the better player enjoys. But there is something else going on here, and we call it the runlength effect. n in this distribution is the number of INDEPENDENT trials, and the degree to which the trials are independent changes when there begin to be packages. When there are multiple "points" scored without skill-based changes in control, there becomes effectively a separation between "n," scoring units and "N," effective number of independent trials. The net effect is a higher variance in scoring units than you would expect. A race to 7 on a bar box is kind of acting statistically more like a race to 5 in the chance of an upset, even without p changing.
Click to expand...
An extreme pool example of this is straight pool where a match between two equal top players might end 150-23. That's not likely to happen at nine ball.
 
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