I agree with the youth movement as it will increase the base. However we can all remember growing up and playing baseball, basketball, football ect. We had our heroes that inspired us from the pro level. I strongly feel that we need to have a strong pro tour developed that the youth can aspire too. We talk about alcohol and things like that. What if Budweiser for example became the large corporate sponsor? They sponsor many high level sports and pool could be no different. Just my 2 cents
Four Contributors To The Death Of Pool
- Thread starter David Marcus
- Start date
They could be
Well they could be but if my memory serves me correctly there is codicil in law in this state in which alcohol distributors have to pay over any monies directly to the governing body of the sport.
So do you think we would see any trickle down on that one?
Well they could be but if my memory serves me correctly there is codicil in law in this state in which alcohol distributors have to pay over any monies directly to the governing body of the sport.
So do you think we would see any trickle down on that one?
I agree that the guy is portraying the future of pool as an instructors wet dream...The truth is that pool has many sides to it. There is bar pool, hustling, amateur handicaped leagues and serious competitive leagues as well as the professional side to it. In the US the two latter categories are suffering at the moment. Because of the pool halls closing and the tables being changed to 7 footers you get serious recruitment and talent development problems. He is not wrong on that point.
The truth is that pool has to compete with a million other recreational activities for the attention of young people, and it must be said that some of those activities will look and be more exciting than pool to the average young person. The bad reputation pool has does not help sell the sport to parents, and with nowhere to practice except at home (if the kid is very lucky indeed), it will be hard to develop a strong talent base.
On the professional side pool in the US has been plagued by the worst mass of con men, crooks, thieves and other men of ill repute of any sport. It makes boxing look like kindergarten! I don't even live in the US and I can name half a dozen MAJOR figures in the pool world that are nothing short of BANDITS, many of them promoters. Every time a small step is made in the right direction, there is an avalanche pulling everybody down with them to ever lower depths...There is no solution other than the biblical way : "Kill" everyone and start over. Not literally of course, but having the worst crooks go bankrupt is a good start. Without a fundamental paradigm shift, nothing good can ever be acomplished in pool. I truely believe that.
I pity the young idealistic fool who dreams of a career as a pro in the US...May God have mercy on his soul.+
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mostly billiard room owners are not good business people. they hold back the growth,
second as far as the pro circuit it is not growing. having tournaments with 500 and 1000 entry fees is too small and old school. you need big purses and excitement. that brings in new blood.
another thing with the game is that the best players take off all the top money every single tournament. no fun to watch except for die hard players, and no reason for others to waste time to come and play. you have to handicap them or have the game and rules changed so that more have a real chance of winning. look at poker.
second as far as the pro circuit it is not growing. having tournaments with 500 and 1000 entry fees is too small and old school. you need big purses and excitement. that brings in new blood.
another thing with the game is that the best players take off all the top money every single tournament. no fun to watch except for die hard players, and no reason for others to waste time to come and play. you have to handicap them or have the game and rules changed so that more have a real chance of winning. look at poker.
What he says ^^^^^^^^
I love the sport of pool. I love the gambling aspect as well. Hope no one actually believes that the common golfer doesn't gamble to an extent. Golf is huge
I believe that pool is not dead. It's just a too skillful sport to let 'just die'
We do need help tho. I agree. It probably starts with each other's attitude and conduct but ... it can happen ... eventually
Schools can't even afford paper towels and toilet paper! What makes him think they can afford a Diamond? He is also overlooking the fact that many parents utilize their teens as babysitters for their younger children after school.
Four Contributors to Pool's US Demise
1 - Americans are lazy and impatient and don't want to invest a lot of time and energy into learning a game that's hard. It's the same reason the amount of people playing golf has declined.
2 - Poker.
3 - The dumb decisions that allowed pool to completely vanish from television as every night I can turn on my TV and see five guys dressed like the Unibomber playing poker.
4 - The economy. People don't have the disposable income right now to invest hundred to thousand of dollars on a cue, cue case, break stick and, oh yeah, table time to use all of this stuff.
At least, that's my opinion.
1 - Americans are lazy and impatient and don't want to invest a lot of time and energy into learning a game that's hard. It's the same reason the amount of people playing golf has declined.
2 - Poker.
3 - The dumb decisions that allowed pool to completely vanish from television as every night I can turn on my TV and see five guys dressed like the Unibomber playing poker.
4 - The economy. People don't have the disposable income right now to invest hundred to thousand of dollars on a cue, cue case, break stick and, oh yeah, table time to use all of this stuff.
At least, that's my opinion.
Good statement...
So which game do you want to support or are most of you into most games, if not all, of them..? I like to play them all, plus Snooker & Golf on a Pool Table. 14.1 is not my best game, but it's fun to try & fun to watch a player run racks. 48 balls is my best.
Are we, as males, going to ask the women to play, do they even want to play with the men..?
How about a big tournament that features 8,9,10 & One-Pocket & straight pool, would you want to play in all events or just one..?
Would adding good money to the game really help it..? Would the players that went to the card rooms, come back if there some regular money being paid out?
Nobody complains to Nascar & the PGA about their payouts, they are not condemned for their gambling, because putting 200K in a race car, just to have another driver slam you in the wall is gambling in my mind. But the spectators & the sponsors are the ones footing the bill.
Making Pool an exciting thing to watch, starts with educating the masses. Back when Pool was in it's heyday, the joints were full & so were the big event centers when they had the world's best show up. But people knew about Pool N Billiards in them days & they know about Snooker & Pool TODAY, in other countries.
Back in 2002, the Sporting Goods Assoc said there was an estimated 34 million players on the planet, when China came on to the scene, The association modified to the numbers to 92 million
Would you want to practice more, if there was a big tournament once a month that you had a chance to win $5K to $20K. We all know that just going to a 2-3-4 day tournament is a questionable endeavor, if you can only win $1000 or so.
Do you want to go to Vegas or would you like a tournament somewhere in one of the USA Time Zones...
Whose rules do you want to play by.... BCA, APA, VNEA, TAP or World Pool. I suppose that if an organization wanted to become international, maybe World Pool Rules might be the chosen format.
Do you want the venues to be in the Casinos , like Las Vegas or be in a convention facility in the big towns across the country or a combination of both.
Pool is already in some communities. Players that want to encourage the game being taught should approach the school boards in their communities
Except for the occasional cuss words & the cigarette smoke, Magoos in Tulsa is a good clean place to go to for fun & games.
it's somebody else's turn....
Pool is a sedentary "sport" where if you aren't walking around a table, you are sitting down watching somebody else walk around a table.
The younger generation that wants to play something sedentary plays videos...online.
Google paid just under a billion dollars to buy Twitch the online gaming stream site. It absolutely dwarfs by magnitudes of 1,000's the viewership of pool streams.....
OOOPS Edit. Looks like Amazon was the final purchaser at just under a billion
The younger generation that wants to play something sedentary plays videos...online.
Google paid just under a billion dollars to buy Twitch the online gaming stream site. It absolutely dwarfs by magnitudes of 1,000's the viewership of pool streams.....
OOOPS Edit. Looks like Amazon was the final purchaser at just under a billion
You seem to be oblivious to snooker's long history and your exalting of it over pool/other billiards games speaks to your bias of all things English being inherently better than anything else.
Snooker was completely irrelevant for three quarters of the 20th century until Higgins saved it. The great Joe Davis was winning a whopping 6 pounds for winning the snooker world championship, while Ralph Greenleaf was rivaling Babe Ruth for sporting fame in the US and Willie Hoppe was the biggest cue sport star in the world. There's nothing dramatically different about snooker's game design than any other pocket billiard game. Shoot ball into the pocket, score points. If anything, snooker is much less television friendly than other games, you think otherwise because you've grown up with it, but it would die a faster death here than 14.1.
I spoke about this earlier in the thread, and snooker and cue sports are popular in the UK because of your "pub culture" and weather that has translated into indoor games being more popular than here in the States. It's why Phil Taylor is respected as a sporting legend over there, while the average American would laugh at the notion of darts being televised and taken seriously as a professional "sport."
Even the stalwart bowling, which is pretty tv friendly, has fallen out of favor here.
Nothing to do with which game is better or pool's tarnished "image." Cue sports/pub games aren't culturally relevant enough here anymore to build a professional televised tour around.
They did have a pool table in my school in the 70's
It was for obese kids that simply couldn't participate in anything resembling a strenuous activity during gym class
Speaking of handicapped tournaments. When they have those, what do they do about handicapped parking? I've always wondered about shit like that.
Anyhow, nothing "killed" pool in the U.S.
Sports are a trend, like anything else, they rise, they fall, and it usually takes a perfect storm of events to get something to trend "upward" again. I'll bring up snooker again. It was irrelevant before Higgins, and snooker players lived leaner than pool players. Higgins won a whopping 400 pounds for the 1972 World Title, but he captivated the UK public and modern snooker was born. A perfect storm. If pro pool is to be revitalized here, we need a significant cultural event (like a great movie or television series) alongside a marketable/interesting personality to spearhead that movement.
That perfect storm happened in the Philippines with Efren, and if they were an affluent country, I have no doubt the country would be the epicenter of a lucrative pro tour and our modern pool heroes would be making a healthy 6 and 7 figures per year.
Taiwan/Taipei is another possible place to base a pro tour out of, and unlike the Philippines, they are affluent and a desirable market for advertisers to go after. No idea why the pro tour isn't based out of there. The PGA is based out of the States, and the world's best golfers move here to compete on it, so if Taiwan/Taipei created a strong pro tour, players would just have to commit to moving there. The US can't be the center of everything.
The game, its image, and such are fine. They've tried to clean up pool's image. Didn't work. Tried to make the game faster. Didn't work. Tried to standardize. Didn't work. Americans simply don't like to watch ANY cue sport, and we just have to accept that fact.
Time for whoever the powers that be are to explore other markets where pool is actually popular as a spectator sport and has cultural penetration (Philippines, Taiwan, etc).
Sports are a trend, like anything else, they rise, they fall, and it usually takes a perfect storm of events to get something to trend "upward" again. I'll bring up snooker again. It was irrelevant before Higgins, and snooker players lived leaner than pool players. Higgins won a whopping 400 pounds for the 1972 World Title, but he captivated the UK public and modern snooker was born. A perfect storm. If pro pool is to be revitalized here, we need a significant cultural event (like a great movie or television series) alongside a marketable/interesting personality to spearhead that movement.
That perfect storm happened in the Philippines with Efren, and if they were an affluent country, I have no doubt the country would be the epicenter of a lucrative pro tour and our modern pool heroes would be making a healthy 6 and 7 figures per year.
Taiwan/Taipei is another possible place to base a pro tour out of, and unlike the Philippines, they are affluent and a desirable market for advertisers to go after. No idea why the pro tour isn't based out of there. The PGA is based out of the States, and the world's best golfers move here to compete on it, so if Taiwan/Taipei created a strong pro tour, players would just have to commit to moving there. The US can't be the center of everything.
The game, its image, and such are fine. They've tried to clean up pool's image. Didn't work. Tried to make the game faster. Didn't work. Tried to standardize. Didn't work. Americans simply don't like to watch ANY cue sport, and we just have to accept that fact.
Time for whoever the powers that be are to explore other markets where pool is actually popular as a spectator sport and has cultural penetration (Philippines, Taiwan, etc).
Good point, maybe we should get rid of the lit club, chess club, and arts & crafts too while we're at it.
That is the most idiotic thing I've heard so far in this conversation. So you believe that if a kid plays pool, he or she won't play or participate in any other activity? How the hell do you conclude that?
That's like saying if you drive a car you will never walk again. WTF kind of brain dead logic does that follow?
Just another example proving what my daddy said to me when I was a kid. He said... "As you grow up you will realize that there's more horses asses than there are horses"
Absolutely! Whether you are skinny or fat, tall or short, male or female.....its a game (endevor) that can be participated by anyone. It is very possible that the top player in any school could be a girl!
It is a game that everyone can play.... and play well with instruction and practice.
Think about it. How many of us that played basketball, football or baseball in high school play it now. 2 percent of us? The game of pool can be played for a lifetime, even on your bad knees from playing football.
Texas has an excellent billiard program in their school systems. They are teaching ethics, sportsmanship, and fair play. Kids that normally don't participate in normally accepted sports will get involved. With work, they can perform at the top of their class. And they don't have to have size or strength to compete.
Best of all, it can be done extremely reasonable on price. How much does it cost to build and maintain a football field.....or a baseball diamond.....or a basketball court.
A school could make due with 2 valley pool tables (more if the interest is high). With balls, thats less then 5000 new. I believe new valleys are still around $2500.00 apiece. Maintainence will be around 400 per year. Should need recovered only once a year. How much does it cost to maintain a football field almost year around? And how many girls are playing in football.....despite all the money thrown at the sport? It would be good for the kids, ALL kids....not just the few male, athletic types.
And it would be good for the game. And best of all, It might get them to lay down the cell phone for a while.
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I grew up in a pool room. Smoke. Booze. Even the occasional whore hung out there from time to time. Now the funny thing is I don't smoke, only drink if I'm at home and have never used the services of any whores. But god forbid I take my own 10 year old to a pool room so he can beat the shit out of grown men playing nine ball. No no no! We can't have our yutes breathing in smoke, seeing men drink or let their pure eyes see a loose woman who makes her living getting nekked!!
As for the gambling, if you don't like it don't do it. But I'll tell you this, the most money I've seen a pool room make is when big action is taking place. More beer sold. More folks playing. More food.
Pool's so called bad image is not the problem. American bullshit laws, do-gooders trying to tell everybody how to live, and video games are the issues IMO. Colonel is right on. The irony is that many kids when I was young, myself included, got into pool because the room owners put a couple arcade games in. No Nintendo or Xbox or such thing back then. So the video games got us in. The beauty of the greatest game on earth kept us in along with the gambling that eventually followed.
As for the gambling, if you don't like it don't do it. But I'll tell you this, the most money I've seen a pool room make is when big action is taking place. More beer sold. More folks playing. More food.
Pool's so called bad image is not the problem. American bullshit laws, do-gooders trying to tell everybody how to live, and video games are the issues IMO. Colonel is right on. The irony is that many kids when I was young, myself included, got into pool because the room owners put a couple arcade games in. No Nintendo or Xbox or such thing back then. So the video games got us in. The beauty of the greatest game on earth kept us in along with the gambling that eventually followed.