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

A comment I heard a long time ago was women don't use enough defense. That's leveled out over the years but still observable. That and the unnecessary pressure of having something to prove in "the man's world", makes for the dog show you come to expect from the women. The female player would kick me and my dick's ass but that has little to do with this analysis. The men just have more headroom - at least so far.
 
Mensabum said:
Men are naturally more aggressive in their thinking due to that little hormone called testosterone. It affects how we see patterns, ball position and shot selection as well as execution.
Women are the nurturers, for want of a better word and they see things from a totally different perspective, thus affecting their approach to all of the above listed ways men tackle the game. Neither good nor bad, just is.
Click to expand...
I'm going to start reading all the way thru a thread B4 commenting. I'm sure someone else has already said what I was going to and did it better than I could have anyway.😂
 
Jimmy_Betmore said:
I agree. And that's why I said we need to be compassionate and understanding towards all parties involved. That includes not only the trans gender athlete but the biological women who would have to compete against them.

Like many of us have mentioned already, it's a complicated situation that's unlikely to end with everyone being happy. But that's life. I've been through some pretty bad stuff the past few years with the sudden loss of two of the most important people in my life as well as the ensuing shit-show that has been their estate. And I developed a saying -a mantra if you will- to keep me sane when garbage things happen to my in daily life. "If this is the worst thing that happens to me today, I'm living a blessed life." Honestly, keeping that in mind has given me a perspective that I wish I could share with everyone. And I can't help but think that if not being able to compete in their preferred gender class is the worst thing that happens to a trans gendered person on any given day, they'd still be living a blessed life. Even though that may sound harsh to some, I say it with love, compassion, and understanding. Some of the best and most helpful things I've ever heard were hard for me to hear for the first time. And I'm thankful for the people who told me.
Click to expand...
It wouldn't hurt if it didn't apply. That's my litmus test.
 
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:

Click to expand...
Very nicely researched and written article. The height section could have used a reference to mechanical doping. I would be curious to know the improvement in Fargo rating that Earl witnessed with his platform shoes. /s :)
 
Dr. Dave - thank you for this very interesting topic and the fascinating discussion that evolved. This is a thread that I read with joy. Now here are my 2 cents:
  • This article is very well written. I especially like the fact that 95% of the text is stating facts and statistics and only 5% of the text is used to state an opinion. Many of the following answers are doing the opposite.
  • Everybody that starts a discussion with "men are better at ..." and "women are better with ..." has not understood the basics of the article. For me, it states that at the very top, men and women are having different abilities. That means that in 95% of the cases, the individual abilities have a bigger impact than the sex. Only in the top 2 to 5% is the combination of sex AND relativ individual ability the distinguishing factor. So men are not playing generally better chess or pool than women. Only the top 5% of men are playing better than the top 5% of the women. So just the top performers in pool and chess are male, but that doesn't mean any man is performimg better than any women.
  • The above point encourages that, if tansgender women are excluded from tournaments, we need controls about the genetics only in the top tournaments. In the medium level tournaments, many women can compete with men.
  • Finally, I would state that we all here in the forum can have an opinion and a very nice discussion. The vote, however, to decide if trangender women should be allowed to compete in tournaments - this vote should be only done by women (maybe with 0.6% of transgender women amongst them). Why should men decide what women want?
Best regards and thank you

Gerhard
 
gehawe said:
  • Everybody that starts a discussion with "men are better at ..." and "women are better with ..." has not understood the basics of the article. For me, it states that at the very top, men and women are having different abilities. That means that in 95% of the cases, the individual abilities have a bigger impact than the sex. Only in the top 2 to 5% is the combination of sex AND relativ individual ability the distinguishing factor. So men are not playing generally better chess or pool than women. Only the top 5% of men are playing better than the top 5% of the women. So just the top performers in pool and chess are male, but that doesn't mean any man is performimg better than any women.
Click to expand...
Hard to really base any reliable conclusions based on proprietary data with unknown sources or reliability. I would imagine a huge chunk of this data is based on US league pool players, which I doubt is very comparable to Europeans and Asians. But who knows, it is closed source?
 
dr_dave said:
The FargoRate plots and data in the article also show that average males are also much better than average females.
Click to expand...

The data that you presented shows, that the average male that has a fargo rate is much better than the average female that has a fargo rate.

Generally, I think that your theory is absolutely sound and solid and the addition of sjm is very valuable and explains a lot of the background. It also explains, why somebody as slim as Alex P. can beat much taller and physically stronger players. There will surely be also female players that are physically stronger than Alex.

The only addition that I would like to make that if a male billard player walks into a pool hall and is there playing with a female player, there is a certain probability, based on statistics, that he will win overall. But as an insolated event, the average male player might also loose, as there are many good female players (playing above average) around. It would not be wise to feel superiour, just because he is male. Only the top male players can be sure that they will win against any female player.

And all that is a snapshot of today, as the data is collected within a certain time frame. It will be interesting to see, if female players will adapt to this scenario and will close the gap in the next, say 20 to 30 years.
 
Of all the factors that have been mentioned as reasons for why the top men are better than the top women pool players, the one that makes least sense to me is raw physical strength. How strong is Nick Varner? How strong is Jose Parica? How strong was Boston Shorty?

Maybe when people talk about "physical strength" as a factor in pool playing ability, they're simply referring to testosterone levels that give men more natural stamina and aggressiveness. That part I won't dispute. And I think SJM's point about pattern recognition also has merit. I hadn't thought of that before.

But muscular strength per se seems like a very small factor, if in fact it's even a factor at all. Today's top pros are often condition freaks, and some of them like Thorpe are big into weights and other exercises. OTOH it wasn't that long ago that many of the top players were seriously overweight, with more flab than muscle, and their stamina owed much to those magical little pills. And yet every one of them would beat the top women players of today.
 
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 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.
Click to expand...

I just can't help but wonder. Is comparing the on-the-table difference between top men and top women a gender thing or a skill difference thing?

I would assume shot conceptualization and decision making between a male 500 and female 500 to be about the same. And between 600 and 600. 700 and 700. But it happens no 830 level women have emerged to compare against 830 level men. So when we're comparing top men to top women you're comparing 830 men to a pool of 760-790 women and those on-the-table differences are astute observations but also expected.

It just makes you wonder if something is making them lack that key component to an elite game because their gender hinders their ability to do so or if it's really just a matter that a generational talent at that most elite level hasn't emerged from their population. Kinda feels like a chicken-egg situation that leaves the big questions unanswered.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top