how many levels of skill in pool?

S

smashmouth

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
say the next level up from you beats you 90% of the time, and they get beat by that same margin one level up from them, on a global scale

how many levels total from casual player to top pro?

How many players do you believe your levels incorporate?

how many levels out of the top 100 pros?
 
I would guess there are about 20 different levels.

Here in AZ we have a breakdown from a 3 all the way up to a 10-2 (12) rating and there are still top and bottom players in each category.

http://azpoolscene.com/ratings.aspx

I think players could really be broken down into .5's of each category too, but that is just way to hard to manage. Players flux in a rating over time and depends on how much they play on whether they are at the top of their rating or bottom.

At the Top of the Pro category, you probably have 3 or 4 different levels or tiers just like you do for football players at different positions.
 
smashmouth said:
say the next level up from you beats you 90% of the time, and they get beat by that same margin one level up from them, on a global scale

how many levels total from casual player to top pro?

How many players do you believe your levels incorporate?

how many levels out of the top 100 pros?
Click to expand...
Unless you specify the length of the match, "90% of the time" is meaningless. If you want to talk about 8, 9 or 10 ball, I think a good way to separate levels is that a player is one level up if he wins twice as many games in a long series. Or he would be one level up if he scores twice as many balls in straight pool on average.

Based on that standard, I have played matches where I was giving up roughly 8:1 in straight pool which is a three-level difference. I would describe that opponent as around an APA 4. (I went to 140 and he got to 16). I suppose there might be a couple of levels below APA 4s. On the other end of the spectrum, I'd guess that there are at least two levels above me. That is, there are some players who would have to give up 200:50 to make the game fair. I'd like to think that there is no one who could give me 200:25, but that might be wishful thinking. So, for 14.1 on that basis we have 8 or 9 levels.

At nine ball I have played in a handicap system that gives fairly accurate ratings on a similar 2:1 basis, and the number of levels works out about the same way. There was one player in the system who was rated about three "ratio of 2" steps below me, and there are probably two steps above me, if I had to guess. If you add on a couple of steps on the low end again for people who play twice a year, that gets to about 8 levels.

Another way to rank levels is to just say that a single person is in the top rank (pick your favorite), and 10 are in the next rank, and 100 are in the next rank, etc. If you assume there are about 100 million players, that results in 9 levels. This method of ranking doesn't depend on any particular difference in skill -- only a better/worse determination is needed for each pair of players.

Unfortunately, we have no universal ranking/rating system as they do, for example, in chess. I think this would be a good thing for the national and international pool federations to do.
 
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smashmouth said:
say the next level up from you beats you 90% of the time, and they get beat by that same margin one level up from them, on a global scale

how many levels total from casual player to top pro?

How many players do you believe your levels incorporate?

how many levels out of the top 100 pros?
Click to expand...

In our local pool hall we have a range of 9 levels from the best to the worst. The best beat Archer once, the worst couldn't beat your kid sister, even if she didn't ever see a pool table.

The handicaps get a bit ridiculous. We do ball and game handicaps. 1 level called 8, 2 levels 8+ a game with 7 games to 6, 3 levels 7 +8 called, 4 level difference is 7+8 called and a game and so on. Plus we make the called balls wild on the break. We rank as AA2, AA1, AA, A, B+, B, C+, C, D. So the AA2 will give our one D playere the 5 out called and a game, he still should not win.

Spotting the 6 out called can get pretty hairy, especially with 4 of 9 balls wild on the break, but the person giving the spot still wins most of the time. The wider the spot, the more it seems to be the case. Low level player just can't outmove or outluck the better players.

The other pool hall in the area does game spots from 14-4. So the best goes to 14 and the worse to 4, pretty insane, but again the best player still usually wins.
 
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smashmouth said:
say the next level up from you beats you 90% of the time, and they get beat by that same margin one level up from them, on a global scale

how many levels total from casual player to top pro?

How many players do you believe your levels incorporate?

how many levels out of the top 100 pros?
Click to expand...



I don't think that pool can be measured in levels, placing a standard or level upon yourself can be more harmful than helpful, kinda like saying that anyone only has a single place in life.

JIMO
 
Different skill levels of pool

stuckart said:
I would guess there are about 20 different levels.

Here in AZ we have a breakdown from a 3 all the way up to a 10-2 (12) rating and there are still top and bottom players in each category.

http://azpoolscene.com/ratings.aspx

I think players could really be broken down into .5's of each category too, but that is just way to hard to manage. Players flux in a rating over time and depends on how much they play on whether they are at the top of their rating or bottom.

At the Top of the Pro category, you probably have 3 or 4 different levels or tiers just like you do for football players at different positions.
Click to expand...


I'm like you , I say there are alot of different skill levels of pool and each skill level has different levels.

Say there are levels 1-10, until you reach level 5 your average or below, then levels 6-8 has 10 different levels each to attain before you go to the next level, and levels 9-10 have 5 levels between each level. I think as you get better the difference between levels becomes smaller.

I don't know how you would mathematically come up with calculations, but I see the difference everyday and have all my life between players of the same speed or level of play.


David Harcrow
 
just 2..

people who can accurately apply spin to a cue ball while sinking an object ball because they practiced and developed the skill to do so..

and those who put $25 chalk on a $40 tip on a $250 shaft on a $2700 one of a kind butt inlayed with a few select crown jewels and wrapped with the skin of the Roswell alien. yet still can't hit a stop shot;)

sorry couldn't resist:thumbup:
 
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