GENDER IN POOL ... Do Men Play Better Than Woman? ... Recent Legal Trial

dr_dave

dr_dave

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I recently served as an expert witness in a legal trial dealing with transgender women participation in female billiards events. Check out all the details in the following article, excerpts of which appear in this month's issue of Billiards Digest magazine:


And for more info on this topic, see:

 
dr_dave said:
I recently served as an expert witness in a legal trial dealing with transgender women participation in female billiards events. Check out all the details in the following article, excerpts of which appear in this month's issue of Billiards Digest magazine:


And for more info on this topic, see:

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Might want to change attorney to barrister or solicitor.
 
The very top women players in the world wouldnt even make the top 100 in the mens field. The only outlier is siming chen, and she would rank about 86th in the mens field, According to fargo. If women didnt have their own events, there is a good chance we would never have even heard about many of the big names, like karen corr, kelly fisher etc. What a farce this insanity is.
 
This is a nice, well-reasoned and well-presented article, but I have one complaint.

The implication is that the difference between the male player and the female player boils down almost entirely to physical attributes and gender-related physical differences, and much of it does.

I have probably attended 100 WPBA events live over the past 50 years and probably over 200 major men's events. I have seen every female BCA Hall of Famer play live other than Ruth McGinnis and I have played pool against more than half of them, too. As somebody who has been around both men's and women's pro pool since 1976, I feel an enormous difference between women's and men's pro pool has been largely overlooked in the article and that is the difference in general shot conceptualization and decision making.

I believe that in pro pool, the gap in conceptualization and decision making between men and women is as great as the gap in shot execution. The decisions made by women in pattern play, defense, and all tactical areas are miles and miles and more miles below those of the men, and for that reason, I still do not believe that if they had exactly the same abilities as men to execute shots, women would play as well as men.

Hence, while all the noted differences between men and women noted in the article are valid, it falls well short of explaining the difference between the top men and the top women.

Maybe it is politically incorrect to say that women are much less logical in their conceptualization and decision-making skills than men at the pool table, but my roughly 50 years of live observation say it is so, and it is a huge part of the story if women are to be compared with men.
 
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sjm said:
This is a nice, well-reasoned and well-presented article, but I have one complaint.

The implication is that the difference between the male player and the female player boils down almost entirely to physical attributes and gender-related differences, and much of it does.

I have probably attended 100 WPBA events live over the past 50 years and probably over 200 major men's events. I have seen every female BCA Hall of Famer play live other than Ruth McGinnis and I have played pool against more than half of them, too. As somebody who has been around both men's and women's pro pool since 1976, I feel an enormous difference between women's and men's pro pool has been largely overlooked in the article and that is the difference in general shot conceptualization and decision making.

I believe that in pro pool, the gap in conceptualization and decision making between men and women is as great as the gap in shot execution. The decisions made by women in pattern play, defense, and all tactical areas are miles and miles and more miles below those of the men, and for that reason, I still do not believe that if they had exactly the same abilities as men to execute shots, women would play as well as men.

Hence, while all the noted differences between men and women noted in the article are valid, it falls well short of explaining the difference between the top men and the top women.

Maybe it is politically incorrect to say that women are much less logical in their conceptualization and decision-making skills than men at the pool table, but my roughly 50 years of live observation say it is so, and it is a huge part of the story if women are to be compared with men.
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there's nothing discriminating in saying how it is, especially since it's your conclusion based on so much experience.

kelly fisher said something on the lines of women having less killer instinct and natural aggression against the opponent. that makes sense too. they're all hugging each other after the match, you never see any grudge or bitter disagreements.
 
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Think the problem is confusing, most places Birth Certificates on levee a BOX to Check for Two Sexes, MALE, Female.


No Box MARKED CONFUSED.


Better of Sexes in Tennis I think was publicity stunt, also made Money for Bill Jean, and bobby.


Beer commercial was Girl Nigh Out, bottom line it is & was humor, aimed at seeing beer.


In do not believe LEMU the EMU is Real Bird, but I like the Commercials. Best one is of the Bird leaving home, and become successful.
 
sjm said:
This is a nice, well-reasoned and well-presented article, but I have one complaint.

The implication is that the difference between the male player and the female player boils down almost entirely to physical attributes and gender-related differences, and much of it does.

I have probably attended 100 WPBA events live over the past 50 years and probably over 200 major men's events. I have seen every female BCA Hall of Famer play live other than Ruth McGinnis and I have played pool against more than half of them, too. As somebody who has been around both men's and women's pro pool since 1976, I feel an enormous difference between women's and men's pro pool has been largely overlooked in the article and that is the difference in general shot conceptualization and decision making.

I believe that in pro pool, the gap in conceptualization and decision making between men and women is as great as the gap in shot execution. The decisions made by women in pattern play, defense, and all tactical areas are miles and miles and more miles below those of the men, and for that reason, I still do not believe that if they had exactly the same abilities as men to execute shots, women would play as well as men.

Hence, while all the noted differences between men and women noted in the article are valid, it falls well short of explaining the difference between the top men and the top women.

Maybe it is politically incorrect to say that women are much less logical in their conceptualization and decision-making skills than men at the pool table, but my roughly 50 years of live observation say it is so, and it is a huge part of the story if women are to be compared with men.
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You kind of corrected yourself with your last sentence. The difference in conceptualization and and decision making is by and far a gender related difference. Men and women are physiologically and biologically different. And those physiological and biological differences play and build off of each other in each gender.

A single female raised with ninety nine males and as a male would always be, statistically speaking, below average in overall physical strength. Another one would be to take fifty males and fifty females and raise them identically. Again statistically speaking, the top twenty or so in strength would be male and the bottom twenty or so would be female with the middle eighty or so being mixed. (I'm just pulling those number out of my ass, but I hope anyone reading this knows what I mean.) There would be outliers of course. But an overall lower average strength plus the female's need to be with a baby for breast feeding, are two of the key biological traits that have led to traditional gender roles in human culture. And those traditional gender roles affect a human's ability to learn many of the background skills (decision making and conceptualization are just two of them) that are required to perform competitive actions at the absolute highest levels.

Take something like chess which on its surface takes no physical skill beyond moving a piece on a board. Male physiology and biology still play a key role. A male's much higher testosterone level, higher muscle mass, and overall stronger build reduces the speed at which mental fatigue sets in. So learning and playing chess at its highest level is typically easier for a male than a female. And that's not even getting into the fact that the average male will be introduced to the game and better competition earlier and more frequently than the average female due to traditional gender roles. But the above example I gave with fifty males and fifty females would most likely be less top heavy with males simply because it relies less on physical traits.

I'm going to wrap it up with this -and I wish I didn't have to say this- but what I've just said is by no means a knock on transgendered people or anyone for that matter. I'm for anyone and everyone living their best possible life. We are all human beings who deserve a chance to be happy and to pursue our dreams. And like ninety nine percent of things in life, this is a complicated matter that will evolve over time.
 
Jimmy_Betmore said:
You kind of corrected yourself with your last sentence. The difference in conceptualization and and decision making is by and far a gender related difference. Men and women are physiologically and biologically different. And those physiological and biological differences play and build off of each other in each gender.

A single female raised with ninety nine males and as a male would always be, statistically speaking, below average in overall physical strength. Another one would be to take fifty males and fifty females and raise them identically. Again statistically speaking, the top twenty or so in strength would be male and the bottom twenty or so would be female with the middle eighty or so being mixed. (I'm just pulling those number out of my ass, but I hope anyone reading this knows what I mean.) There would be outliers of course. But an overall lower average strength plus the female's need to be with a baby for breast feeding, are two of the key biological traits that have led to traditional gender roles in human culture. And those traditional gender roles affect a human's ability to learn many of the background skills (decision making and conceptualization are just two of them) that are required to perform competitive actions at the absolute highest levels.

Take something like chess which on its surface takes no physical skill beyond moving a piece on a board. Male physiology and biology still play a key role. A male's much higher testosterone level, higher muscle mass, and overall stronger build reduces the speed at which mental fatigue sets in. So learning and playing chess at its highest level is typically easier for a male than a female. And that's not even getting into the fact that the average male will be introduced to the game and better competition earlier and more frequently than the average female due to traditional gender roles. But the above example I gave with fifty males and fifty females would most likely be less top heavy with males simply because it relies less on physical traits.

I'm going to wrap it up with this -and I wish I didn't have to say this- but what I've just said is by no means a knock on transgendered people or anyone for that matter. I'm for anyone and everyone living their best possible life. We are all human beings who deserve a chance to be happy and to pursue our dreams. And like ninety nine percent of things in life, this is a complicated matter that will evolve over time.
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Nice post. What's confusing for me is that women are every bit as logical in men in decision making skills in most areas in life and they keep proving it, especially in the world of business.

The top women pool players put as much time and effort into honing their craft as the males. They do have the time and the resources to become as good as the men at the conceptualization skills but have, for some reason, CHOSEN not to focus on that aspect of their development. The best women pool players are all great cueists by the time they reach eighteen, so I don't think traditional gender roles explains why they fail to develop in conceptualization skills along the way. Yes, numbers and gender-related differences in lifestyle, explain why there are so many fewer great female players than men, but numbers do not explain why almost none of the women that become elite cueists develop in some of the more qualitative areas of the game.

I am still left with the question "Why do the elite women pool players traditionally place so much less priority on studying and learning the conceptualization and decision-making skills than men?"
 
Actually I am kind of neutral on this topic, but I always wondered if hormone treatment and other medical procedures affect the performance of transgender athletes and how their performances are compared before their gender reassignment.

For me personally the easiest solution would be an own transgender division at big tournaments. At the European Championship they have women, men, several youth divisions, seniors and wheelchair, so why not a transgender division.
 
sjm said:
Nice post. What's confusing for me is that women are every bit as logical in men in decision making skills in most areas in life and they keep proving it, especially in the world of business.

The top women pool players put as much time and effort into honing their craft as the males. They do have the time and the resources to become as good as the men at the conceptualization skills but have, for some reason, CHOSEN not to focus on that aspect of their development. The best women pool players are all great cueists by the time they reach eighteen, so I don't think traditional gender roles explains why they fail to develop in conceptualization skills along the way. Yes, numbers and gender-related differences in lifestyle, explain why there are so many fewer great female players than men, but numbers do not explain why almost none of the women that become elite cueists develop in some of the more qualitative areas of the game.

I am still left with the question "Why do the elite women pool players traditionally place so much less priority on studying and learning the conceptualization and decision-making skills than men?"
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I don't think it's that women have chosen to not focus on those aspects of the game as much as that the average female isn't as good at it as the average male. That's why I included chess in my examples. It is by all accounts one hundred percent decision based. But making those decisions -the right decisions in a competitive scenario- is less difficult for the average male than the average female because of our overall average higher physical limits. Side note, I think it's worth the time to think about and ask the question why we haven't seen or heard of anyone having a problem with a transgender male competing in male sports.

As far as upbringing and such, can you imagine how difficult it could be for a young woman to just hang out and learn the game in a pool hall? She's never going to be treated exactly the same as "one of the guys." That in and of itself is putting her at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to learning the game at its highest level. And Skogstokig mentioned Kelly Fisher saying something about killer instinct. And I say this tongue in cheek, but there's a reason why WAY more men are in prison for murder than women. We're built differently.

Great discussion, by the way. And I think it's unlikely we'll find a solution in our lifetimes that makes everyone happy. But we can at least try to look at things logically and with a degree of compassion for everyone involved.
 
Oze147 said:
Actually I am kind of neutral on this topic, but I always wondered if hormone treatment and other medical procedures affect the performance of transgender athletes and how their performances are compared before their gender reassignment.

For me personally the easiest solution would be an own transgender division at big tournaments. At the European Championship they have women, men, several youth divisions, seniors and wheelchair, so why not a transgender division.
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The simple answer to that complicated question is that transgender athletes don't want to be viewed as anything other than their trans gender. And in a way I get it. Would you want to be lumped into a division outside the "norm?" I know I wouldn't feel as good about my title if it was "US Open Champion - 51 Year Old Male Division" as I would "US Open Champion." I realize that's oversimplifying it. But that's the long and short of it.
 
Jimmy_Betmore said:
The simple answer to that complicated question is that transgender athletes don't want to be viewed as anything other than their trans gender. And in a way I get it. Would you want to be lumped into a division outside the "norm?" I know I wouldn't feel as good about my title if it was "US Open Champion - 51 Year Old Male Division" as I would "US Open Champion." I realize that's oversimplifying it. But that's the long and short of it.
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That is a good point. When I was thinking about the topic, I had in mind that people just want to play.
I know that this is not true on the professional level, where people want to make a living competing in their sport. But sooner or later most professional sports will have some kind of ruleing on this question and in most cases I think gender athletes just will be banned from womens competions.
But many amateur sports get their rules from the professional scene and I think in this environment the whole transgender topic is even harder to answer.

As I think about it...the article provides data for men and women, but is there any fargo data for transgender?
I wonder how the avarage transgender performs compared to the avarage women or men fargo wise.
 
Jimmy_Betmore said:
I don't think it's that women have chosen to not focus on those aspects of the game as much as that the average female isn't as good at it as the average male.
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Another great post, and your input has been valuable, but this is where our observation differs, and I am not generalizing. My observation pertains to pool alone. I have played pool and been around male pro players for my whole life.

I have also been around and socialized with many of the greatest female cueists that ever lived over the years. There are a few with whom I have played over a hundred hours of pool. I have talked with them and observed them. My experience is that, with a few exceptions (BCA Hall of Famer Karen Corr being the most obvious) they CHOOSE to place less emphasis on learning the conceptualization and decision-making skills than the men. I have no idea whether that CHOICE is due to preferences that are gender-specific or not, and it is an interesting question.

There are numerous possible explanations, but to me the most likely are: a) they don't understand how much advancement is available through the furtherance of these skills, or b) you can get to (or near) a women's world class level without elite conceptualization, as many have already proven, which makes such development seem less urgent.

I believe that women can be as good as men in the areas of conceptualization and decision-making skills at the pool table and I even believe that the day will come when they are, but for now, the gap between the men and women in this area is huge and it is not narrowing as much as it could or should.
 
The simple explanation is that more strength produces more control. I don't understand how people don't get this. Everybody knows that when they have to put more power on a shot accuracy decreases for most players. In a game like 8 or 9, maybe 80%-90% of the shots require little to no power and most everybody will be able to execute them at a high level. The other 10-20% are where the differences are the differences lie.

Read this article: https://www.espn.com/shooting/story...e-sport-tokyo-olympics-where-women-outgun-men

This story is important because men and women are virtually equal in 10m air rifle shooting. Rifles aren't heavy enough that the average 9-y/o has a problem lifting them, it takes no strength to pull the trigger. Two paragraphs from this article:

One factor, Lopez suggests, is the stiff jacket and trousers that all rifle shooters wear, which provides stability and reduces the need for strength. While most sports require dynamic strength, rifle shooting needs isometric strength -- the ability to overcome resistance. The jacket, Lopez reckons, helps in this regard. "When you are shooting rifle in these clothes, you are using a very low level of strength relative to your maximum strength. Then your precision becomes more important," he says.

This jacket is also why other precision-based sports like pistol shooting and archery don't see a similar narrowing of the gap. "In pistol, men and women use pistols weighing about 1.1 kg but women in general have a lower grip strength compared to men, so they have to use a higher relative percentage of their maximum strength," says Lopez. "In rifle shooting, you are using only about 30 percent of their maximum strength."

Average female strength is about 60% of average male strength. Ask yourself honestly: As a man, if you lost 40% of your strength, could you play as well as you do now? I know from personal experience that I couldn't. When I was 20 I had a medical problem that led to months of weight loss--I started under 7% body fat and lost almost 25% of my body weight. I know my mental acumen hadn't declined, I was still carrying a 3.8gpa in junior level ME curriculum. I absolutely could not play pool as well due to my loss of strength (yes, stamina was down, also, but even in short sessions my skills were lacking). After a surgery and a couple of months rehab time during which I played no pool, my level was back to where I had been within a week, playing the same group of players with the same average results.

Personally, it is obvious--power and precision are directly linked. What is it that Johnny Archer and Earl have lost? Have they gotten dumber and forgotten how to play? Neither is obese. Earl actually stays in shape. Studies suggest that between the age of 30 and 60 the average man will lose about 25% of their strength.
 
I don't believe it is strength that makes the most significant difference. I believe it is these things, and these things won't change based on surgeries and/or hormone treatments.
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I think it is these things that sjm is referring to, but I don't believe men study shot choices/conceptualization more, they don't have to, it comes to them naturally. Having to think/study them _is_ the disadvantage.


Would have been nice to see some sources on these claims.
 
Badpenguin said:
I don't believe it is strength that makes the most significant difference. I believe it is these things, and these things won't change based on surgeries and/or hormone treatments.
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I think it is these things that sjm is referring to, but I don't believe men study shot choices/conceptualization more, they don't have to, it comes to them naturally. Having to think/study them _is_ the disadvantage.


Would have been nice to see some sources on these claims.
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Use those examples to explain decline with age, please. Tell me why those explain why Earl today couldn't compete with 1995 Earl.
 
This conversation again 🙄
right now ..yes. but with the talent pool growing in women players I’m not sure that will last. I think sooner or later they will catch up.

BUT as long as there are tournaments that are women only then people born with a penis with a mental disability that makes them think they are women shouldn’t be playing in them . if the women think there are no differences then combine them but we know that won’t happen because 99% of the women pro’s wouldn’t make it out of the first round.
 
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