Fargo question- could be a dumb one…

Maybe you should look at it as its largest strength A careful observer can notice such people and arrange a wager at favorable odds.
The way I told it to my 650 friend was; The good news is my Fargo is 565. The bad news is I earned it.
I then drew him in the 8-ball mini. I had to go to 3 he needed 5. So I felt obligated to beat him 3-2.🤷
 
I don't lie about pool and what I've done. No need to. I played many great players for money and if I hold my own it's an accomplishment. So many guys never get out and see what they can do under pressure.
You can't win, playing as a Fargo 690 or 680 or 670 or 660 or......

Brian
 
Maybe you should look at it as its largest strength A careful observer can notice such people and arrange a wager at favorable odds.

Usually, imo, when people think they're seeing "sudden improvement," they're more likely seeing a fluctuation--hot streak-- perhaps riding on top of modest improvement, like the storm surge that happens to come to shore at high tide.

There are also reasons in addition to confirmation bias why people tend to overestimate the rate at which players improve. Consider how our intuition develops on this issue.

Think of the APA4 who is working hard on his game and becomes a 5 and maybe a 6 by the end of the season.
Think of the player in the B-only tournaments who has success and then graduates to the A division and then the next season to a AA or A+

We feed our intuition with these apparent examples of rapid improvement and fail to consider the player allowed in the B-only tournaments was performing above B-speed all along. With our data we can go back on many of these "graduating through the ranks" scenarios and see that frequently the only thing changing fast was the ASSESSMENT of the player's speed.
 
Here’s another reason I’m not a big fan of Fargo. They say a players rating is an average. How do you get an average? You take the total rating and divide by total games. I see some players rating change by several points over a short period.

Take Josh Filler 839 about a year they were talking about him taking the number 1 spot from SVB at that time at around 831. Josh has around 8500 games in the system. With 8500 games if he play 100 games at 1500 speed basically twice as good as his average it would not raise his average at all.

SVB with over 18000 games in the system his rating would not change if he played perfect or if he beat nobody for years. With that many games it takes a whole lot one way or the other to change an average but fargos change all the time so it can’t be an average.
 
Here’s another reason I’m not a big fan of Fargo. They say a players rating is an average. How do you get an average? You take the total rating and divide by total games. I see some players rating change by several points over a short period.

Take Josh Filler 839 about a year they were talking about him taking the number 1 spot from SVB at that time at around 831. Josh has around 8500 games in the system. With 8500 games if he play 100 games at 1500 speed basically twice as good as his average it would not raise his average at all.

SVB with over 18000 games in the system his rating would not change if he played perfect or if he beat nobody for years. With that many games it takes a whole lot one way or the other to change an average but fargos change all the time so it can’t be an average.
It is not a normal average. You can think of it as like a WEIGHTED average in which the most recent games have the most influence. Here, for example are SVB's number of games in FargoRate from different years (blue) and their influence on his rating (orange). So the Orange is like the effective number of "today" games.

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Here’s another reason I’m not a big fan of Fargo. They say a players rating is an average. How do you get an average? You take the total rating and divide by total games. I see some players rating change by several points over a short period.

Take Josh Filler 839 about a year they were talking about him taking the number 1 spot from SVB at that time at around 831. Josh has around 8500 games in the system. With 8500 games if he play 100 games at 1500 speed basically twice as good as his average it would not raise his average at all.

SVB with over 18000 games in the system his rating would not change if he played perfect or if he beat nobody for years. With that many games it takes a whole lot one way or the other to change an average but fargos change all the time so it can’t be an average.

Fargo is "what have you done for me lately". It gives a higher weight to newer games than older games. Mike has explained this dozens/hundreds of times since 2015, and its on the FAQ on his site.
 
My thinking is in the middle. I'd say to be at a level to consistently beat the ghost in a race to 9 on a 9' diamond, one would need to be 675+. I'd bet even money or better below that imo. I doubt I can beat the ghost anymore and my Fargo supports that.
But if you think of it this way. Your winning 6 out of ten games, who's losing. :)
 
I was in a small room where Fedor Gorst was practicing once. Nobody else there except me and another guy cleaning the tables. I didn't know who Fedor was at the time but figured out he was quite a player pretty fast.

Fedor missed once or at most twice in an hour playing the ghost. Pro-style without picking up the cue ball. His focus in practice was more intense than what I'd seen from anyone else in competition.

Reminds me of what Wimpy Lassiter once said about watching someone for an hour and if they missed, he knew that was someone he would beat.
But first, Luther was Wiley. He knew when a miss was/not intentional. Lookin' for loopholes.
 
Archer in his prime, B&R average race to 11 was around 25-26%. Johnnie was also known for small and medium size packages.
 
Here’s another reason I’m not a big fan of Fargo. They say a players rating is an average. How do you get an average? You take the total rating and divide by total games. I see some players rating change by several points over a short period.

Take Josh Filler 839 about a year they were talking about him taking the number 1 spot from SVB at that time at around 831. Josh has around 8500 games in the system. With 8500 games if he play 100 games at 1500 speed basically twice as good as his average it would not raise his average at all.

SVB with over 18000 games in the system his rating would not change if he played perfect or if he beat nobody for years. With that many games it takes a whole lot one way or the other to change an average but fargos change all the time so it can’t be an average.

It seems almost all the issues people have with the Fargo system comes from not knowing how it works in many cases or how accurate it is without going into gut feelings or pointing out two guys someone knows that have the wrong rating out of thousands of players. Older matches have very little effect on the rating. All someone needs to do in order to see if the system works is track it. Take 1000 matches, see what the Fargo rating prediction is. If a majority of them go the way of the prediction, the system works. All it does is "predict" what "should" happen, not that someone will beat someone with 100% certainty all the time and if they don't the earth will sunder apart. 60% chance of winning tracked over like 10 matches is not much to get accuracy from, 60% chance of winning done over 100 games will be closer.

I just played a night of races to 5 with a friend of mine, I was giving him 2 on the wire, so a 5-3 race. I won the first set, and he won the second. If we stopped there you would think that was were even at that handicap. However, we went on to play two more sets and I won both of those. What someone "feels" is the right result will not ever stand up to math. I won 3/4 sets, but if someone just looked at the results after the first two you would end up with a false conclusion.
 
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You can't win, playing as a Fargo 690 or 680 or 670 or 660 or......

Brian
Yawn
So me giving you 7 out, all the breaks and a game on the wire isn't enough?
Wtf does that make you?

Come bet in Aaron vs the ghost. Anyway you want.

Said it 3 times now...."at my best I played 690 speed". You get that hanfincap and more, but you still won't play. You say you'd be stealing. Come take my money. Why wouldn't you?
 
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It seems almost all the issues people have with the Fargo system comes from not knowing how it works in many cases or how accurate it is without going into gut feelings or pointing out two guys someone knows that have the wrong rating out of thousands of players. Older matches have very little effect on the rating. All someone needs to do in order to see if the system works is track it. Take 1000 matches, see what the Fargo rating prediction is. If a majority of them go the way of the prediction, the system works. All it does is "predict" what "should" happen, not that someone will beat someone with 100% certainty all the time and if they don't the earth will sunder apart. 60% chance of winning tracked over like 10 matches is not much to get accuracy from, 60% chance of winning done over 100 games will be closer.

I just played a night of races to 5 with a friend of mine, I was giving him 2 on the wire, so a 5-3 race. I won the first set, and he won the second. If we stopped there you would think that was were even at that handicap. However, we went on to play two more sets and I won both of those. What someone "feels" is the right result will not ever stand up to math. I won 3/4 sets, but if someone just looked at the results after the first two you would end up with a false conclusion.
If you are signicantly better you can give a ton. I beat some decent players with the 3 or 5 out. Control the table and don't sell out. Play safe if there's a chance you will give up the table on a tough shot.

Had many people over the years tell me I can't win giving this or that....they don't know what they don't know.

I learned alot at SBE from years back seeing what people give up to decent players and still win. Basically if somebody better that you offers weight...ask for more.
 
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If you are signicantly better you can give a ton. I beat some decent players with the 3 or 5 out. Control the table and don't sell out. Play safe if there's a chance you will give up the table on a tough shot.

Had many people over the years tell me I can't win giving this or that....they don't kniw what they don't know.

I learned alot at SBE from years back seeing what people give up to decent players and still win. Basically if somebody better that you offers weight...ask for more.
I beat plenty of people gambling who were the same handicap as me for cash, giving the 8 or 7 ball, just to get them to gamble. If you run the last 3 balls at a big percentage, it doesn't make a huge difference.
 
All these data points are just that data. We are getting in our own way in life with too much data.

Count up the cash, that’s who played the best or trophies or titles

Putting numbers on everything we do is just becoming a obsession of the human race-in pool and everything else.

Pool was fine before numbers and would be just fine without them.

I’m bored with this…..
 
All these data points are just that data. We are getting in our own way in life with too much data.

Count up the cash, that’s who played the best or trophies or titles

Putting numbers on everything we do is just becoming a obsession of the human race-in pool and everything else.

Pool was fine before numbers and would be just fine without them.

I’m bored with this…..
What about all the top locals who donkeyed their winnings to the poker machine? The poker machine must have a 10,000 Fargorate:)
 
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