Give Shane a break (no pun intended)
If you are talking a true "room full of cash" then there we go.
That should be the end of the thread chit chat. Where is Marsman? There is the Blackball action. Everyone who thinks SVB can win in any game, Voiceofreason wants him on a Blackball table.
Pool together your money
send SVB over the pond
profit.
Honestly, on a Blackball table in England SVB will have a lineup of people waiting to try him. He can start low and work his way all the way up to Potts.
If SVB EVER wants more action then he knows what to do with then all he has to do is go to Europe and hang out on a Blackball table or a Snooker table. He will have action for life. The only problem is he might not like it.
SVB basically has to be willing to man up and do what Appleton did. Change from the game he grew up with, move overseas, and start competing and climbing the ladder in the new game. Appleton managed to become a multi-time world champ doing just that. Can SVB make the trip in the other direction with nearly as much success? There is certainly some rewards for him if he wants to give it a shot in between his American pool events.
People here in America always think that the foreign players should come over to America and prove themselves in American games on American soil. Guess what, planes fly both directions, and it is a lot easier to get played if you are willing to do the traveling.
Road players of old used to travel into other peoples turf to get action, now America, the birthplace of the road players and that way of life think all the action should come to them. Plane are the new cars, England, the Philippines, and Asia are the new towns with the top local talent. Get out there and get the action like the old guys did. Don't wait for it to come to you, go get the money.
I think that's a bit harsh, don't you? Don't confuse Shane's lack overseas titles with his unwillingness to take a flight to get played on someone else's home turf. Who do you think spent several months in the Philipines playing all of their champions in all of their home rooms? Shane did it before Darren.
And honestly, Shane made over $1,000,000 USD in the past 6 years, just in official tournament winnings alone. That's excluding after-hours action and calcutta money, from which he is WAY ahead as well I would think. Why would he give up that sure payday for just a CHANCE of a big payday that may only come years later, if at all. This has nothing to do with "being a man", but being intelligent.
Frankly, although I suspect Shane has played very little snooker or E8B, I'm sure he knows enough about the games (and cuesports in general) to know just how hard the switch would be in that direction. A level of difficulty that would make it folly to even try playing professional snooker, or even professional E8B for that matter.
With regards to the rest of this thread, there are so many individual comments I wanted to make, but I'm too lazy to quote each individual person. So I will distill my thoughts in a few points:
(1) Shane has no chance of ever breaking into the top 50 of world snooker rankings. He's too old and that ship has already sailed.
(2) If he dedicated himself to playing JUST snooker full time for at least 5 years, with knowledgeable coaching/competition he MIGHT be able to beat some top 10 snooker players in the occasional short race. But I don't consider a race to 9 to be particularly short.
(3) As someone who has played a fair amount of snooker myself (and live in a place with people who have run many perfect games, and who also play quite a bit of American Pool games), the cut of the snooker/E8B/C8B pockets are a huge hurdle to overcome for a pool player, more so than the size of the balls, hardness of the rails, or slow/knappy cloth.
(4) Some of the snooker players are not giving the difficulty/importance/effectiveness of Shane's break it's proper due. It is not something that Potts, Ronnie or anyone else could achieve with less than years of practice. Darren has been playing exclusively American pool games for what must be 10 years now and his break pales in comparison. As great as Darren's game is at A8B (such as his amazing performance in the USBTC), in a long race against Shane, Darren might still lose even if he never missed a ball. The dry breaks and extra balls he would need to navigate to run out would catch up with him eventually.
An analogy regarding Shane's break would be golf. You can't compare the ability of two golfers with the stipulation that you have to ignore the drive. The drive is an extremely important shot. Driving distance and accuracy take years to perfect. I could argue that Potts is the best in the world on 8-ball's equivalent of a par-3 course, and Shane is the best in the world on a regulation course.
