FargoRate for One Pocket?

peppersauce

peppersauce

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I’m probably late on this, but I don’t pay much attention to a lot of things anymore, so forgive me if this has been discussed.

When did people start using Fargo ratings for one pocket!?

I’m watching a one pocket tournament streamed from Arizona somewhere and they have the Fargo ratings of the players next to their names. I thought that was kind of goofy, since Fargo ratings don’t include one pocket. Then the commentator mentions an upcoming 700 and under one pocket event. :confused:

I get that it’s a decent overall indicator of skill level, but I know several guys who only play one pocket and they are way stronger than a Fargo rating would suggest if they got out and played enough 9, 10, and 8 ball to have one. What happens in a situation where you have a player with an established Fargo of, say, mid 500s. And they get into something that’s 600 and below, then smash the field because they play way better one pocket than they do rotation? Or...what happens to a player who’s pretty strong when it comes to rotation, but doesn’t have an established Fargo? They just make one up based on their observations? Wouldn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?
 
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Several years back Mike Page said 1P doesn’t count in the Fargo Rate. Probably too many safeties and moves
 
Fargo may or may not be an accurate representation of a player's one-pocket speed, but using Fargo to limit a field of entrants in any discipline is not unreasonable. After all, the data just isn't out there to assess everybody's speed in every game played on a pool table.
 
The math problem of setting up a one-pocket rating system is not hard. The hard part is collecting and maintaining the database of game results.

Perhaps the FargoRate team already has one in the hopes of eventually rolling out a one-pocket rating? Otherwise it will be a massive undertaking.
 
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sjm said:
Fargo may or may not be an accurate representation of a player's one-pocket speed, but using Fargo to limit a field of entrants in any discipline is not unreasonable. After all, the data just isn't out there to assess everybody's speed in every game played on a pool table.
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I see what you’re saying. I could get on board for that, I guess. But I read my original post and I forgot to mention, the tournament I was watching was handicapped. Setting an upper limit based on generalized skill, using Fargo,is ok I guess. But I cannot get on board with handicapping one pocket based on Fargo ratings. And that seemed to be the case with that particular tournament.

But I don’t know for sure. Maybe they just used Fargo for a general limit and used another local system to determine the handicap. If that were the case though, why display their Fargo ratings? I guess it would help if I knew where it was streamed from, lol.
 
skip100 said:
The math problem of setting up a one-pocket rating system is not hard. The hard part is collecting and maintaining the database of game results.

Perhaps the FargoRate team already has one in the hopes of eventually rolling out a one-pocket rating? Otherwise it will be a massive undertaking.
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I think I read something a long time ago where Mike Page explained why other games were not included (1p, banks) but I don’t remember the reasoning. Personally, I feel it would be a more accurate representation of overall skill if all non-handicapped game results were included from all games. Some ratings would go down and others up. The cream would still be at the top overall though.
 
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peppersauce said:
I think I read something a long time ago where Mike Page explained why other games were not included (1p, banks) but I don’t remember the reasoning. Personally, I feel it would be a more accurate representation of overall skill if all non-handicapped game results were included from all games. Some ratings would go down and others up. The cream would still be at the top overall though.
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One pocket play needs a significantly different skill set than the three more common games. Including 1P results would move the ratings around some.

On the other hand, there is no reason that FargoRate or a similar system could not be used to figure 1P ratings separately.

There is a problem setting handicaps by adjusting the ball count. This has been discussed in onepocket.org a couple of times and the general consensus is that a longer game favors the stronger player with the same ball-ratio spot. So, an 8-4 spot is larger than 12-6, even though the simple approach says that both of those would be about fair for players who are 100 rating points apart.

Spotting by games-for-match count should still work like the Fargo-suggested handicaps for other games but very few one pocket players do game spots. Each game takes (or can take) too long.
 
peppersauce said:
because they play way better one pocket than they do rotation
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This is a myth made up by lesser players who cant consistently run balls. They migrate to a game where running balls is not the main part of the game. Then start telling people the better watch out because I understand "moving" lol

I have seen a lot of low level players act like they are sleeper one pocket player! Its just not true... If you play 1P well, you also play the other games very well. Almost impossible to be a good 1P player and not a good rotation/8ball player. So Fargo would be a very good indicator.

Going the other way, however, is much different. An excellent 9 ball player can be a terrible 1P player but never the other way around so Fargo should be good enough to handicap a tournament.

With that said, I dont see why the Fargo system based on W/L would not work the same on 1P.
 
A few years ago someone did track the results of 1 pocket matches along with predicted Fargo results and the 1 pocket games were in the same range as those predicted for 9 ball. So if the Fargo rating said the player would win 5-2 in a race to 5 in 9 ball, the score was about the same in 1 pocket.

Remember that Fargo does not just track how well you make balls in but rather your actual win/loss results against real players. Those win/loss results are also from winning safety battles and "out-moving" players to win. Say in 8 ball where patterns and knowing when and how to play a safe is similar to one pocket. Fargo is not like the TPA that AccuStats uses where they just count your balls made and your mistakes, Fargo uses your wins and losses.

Overall any variances in skill at different games between players evens out, and a few exceptions where a player is great at a game like banks but can't win in rotation games are too rare to cause much change in the statistics.
 
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CaptiveBred said:
This is a myth made up by lesser players who cant consistently run balls. They migrate to a game where running balls is not the main part of the game. Then start telling people the better watch out because I understand "moving" lol

I have seen a lot of low level players act like they are sleeper one pocket player! Its just not true... If you play 1P well, you also play the other games very well. Almost impossible to be a good 1P player and not a good rotation/8ball player. So Fargo would be a very good indicator.

Going the other way, however, is much different. An excellent 9 ball player can be a terrible 1P player but never the other way around so Fargo should be good enough to handicap a tournament.

With that said, I dont see why the Fargo system based on W/L would not work the same on 1P.
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It’s no myth for the most part. I’ve beat or broke even with many far superior 9/10 ball players all over the country. Yes I’ve also got my ass whooped too. Low level 1P players are low level and they won’t play their shadow without weight.

The last two times I was in NY I played at Skyline. No one would play me 1P, I got talked into playing 9 ball. I hung two 8 balls and a 9 ball. That’s automatic losses but in 1P I could have easily won those games. The time after that Jenifer backed out of playing me and called in a ringer rotation player to play me 1P. He just couldn’t hang in 1P. I remember playing this guy before at Clifton Billiards when Vinny had the 3 7/8 corner pocket table. While is was playing Vinny I heard him talking to some guy about how he had Earl but let him get away. Vinny quit me and sent this guy over to play me. After a while I was up four games and it was getting late. I suggested we play race to 3 for what he was down. Crap, this guy started making every bank, super thin cut shots, combos, rail first spin shots, he just made everything. I lost 3-0 in twenty minutes. The tricky part is how the game ends up getting played.

Anyways I hope you enjoyed my little story. I’m so bad with names, I don’t remember his name.
 
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CaptiveBred said:
This is a myth made up by lesser players who cant consistently run balls. They migrate to a game where running balls is not the main part of the game. Then start telling people the better watch out because I understand "moving" lol

I have seen a lot of low level players act like they are sleeper one pocket player! Its just not true... If you play 1P well, you also play the other games very well. Almost impossible to be a good 1P player and not a good rotation/8ball player. So Fargo would be a very good indicator.

Going the other way, however, is much different. An excellent 9 ball player can be a terrible 1P player but never the other way around so Fargo should be good enough to handicap a tournament.

With that said, I dont see why the Fargo system based on W/L would not work the same on 1P.
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This is not so, at any decent level of 1pocket.

If you cannot run balls at 1pocket, beating your opponent to the shot does you little good. When you have earned or have been given the opportunity to run balls you'd better be able to take full advantage or you are a done duck. (Further, I would also argue that running balls to 1pocket is far more difficult that having six available pockets to shoot at but that's another story.)

I started playing 1pocket, not because I couldn't run balls at 9ball, 8ball, or 14.1 but because that's all they play here in STL -- if I wanted action I had to learn. Having said all that, there are guys that aren't very good at any game but because they have learned some strategy and some specialty shots, can hang playing 1pocket with players of a similar level of talent. But if they go up against a player with a full skill set they're going to get clobbered. So IMO that's why 1pocket gets a bad rap in certain quarters: some old guys who just bunt balls around. Nowadays though, that won't get the cheese at most levels of play.

Lou Figueroa
 
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Thought I'd bring this thread back, as... One Pocket has been added to FargoRate.

They posted on Facebook,
"FargoRate is now including One Pocket games. Here is a video that may be interesting to One Pocket fans. This file is created in 2022/04/10 07:00 AM"

and here is the video:

 
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