If you call a hard shot and the ball goes into the pocket, why is it luck?

sometimes it depends on who is taking the shot.

The perspective of the people watching and concluding if it was luck or skill, has alot to do who is shooting the shot. If Reyes does it, its expected, he is the Magician. If the apa four does it, its luck.

I have made a number of shots in tournaments or during money games that Reyes would be proud of.

I beat a top local player in a tournament about a year ago. I had quit playing pool fifteen years ago and started up again about four years ago. I don't play in alot of tournaments so when I beat this top player, he said I got lucky. He had not seen me around before so his conclusion was that I got lucky. What happened was that on the nine ball shot to win the match, I hit a tough shot soft and it stopped right in the jaws of the pocket. Then, before he could shoot, it fell in. He said, wow, you sure got lucky and not just on that last shot. I told him, no, I made a number of very tough shots and they all went in the pocket intended, not like I hit a ball for one pocket and it rocketed around to some other hole.

He was not very happy and acted cold towards me when I would try to start a conversation with him but in the following few months I beat a number of other top players in tournaments and I guess he figured I was not so lucky afterall. Now he is very friendly with me.
 
If you call the shot, aim the shot, and the ball does what you intended, it is not "luck." It might not be a high-probability shot, but that does not mean you needed "luck" to make it. You made every intentional effort required to pocket the ball and were successful. ZERO LUCK.

If you walk up to the table and swing at the cue ball without making any real effort to aim or think about what you're doing and you make the ball, then you got lucky.

To answer the question raised in the original post, people will attribute "luck" to their opponent's performance because it helps them to maintain the belief that they can beat them. If they watch you drill a hard shot and think "this guy is good" it's going to get into their thinking and mess them up. It's also a bit of sharking. If you drill a hard shot, you're probably going to feel pretty good about it. If I dismiss your effort with "you got lucky", that may chip away at your self-confidence a bit. (I'm using "you" in a general sense, not to specifically address LNL.)
 
Certain shots are called "low percentage" simply because even if they are executed perfectly things have to "go just right", the margin of success is really thin in those cases.
What happens with players like Mr Reyes is not exactly "magic" only, it's a combination of talent and knowledge among other things like character and concentration abilities.
That 4 cushion shot is really a good example, a "medium" player could do it in a slightly different way, but the "feeling" cannot be duplicated enough, so Reyes is most likely making it more times if he and any "medium" player take the shot for the same number of times.
Petros
 
I admit not reading the entire thread, so sorry if someone else offered this as a reason for the OP , but what came to my mind was, it's luck for the same reason picking winning lottery number is. :smile:
 
I think there are 2 kinds of good luck that we recognize in pool.

The first is the blind luck variety, where the balls do something unintended that result in you making a shot, getting a leave, hooking your opponent, etc.

The second kind is the type of luck that causes you to either guess correctly at how to execute a difficult shot and succeed or guess incorrectly but execute correctly by accident and succeed. In either case, the balls did what you intended, but not because you knew exactly what to do and did it.

With experience, players tend to get more and more of the second kind of luck. That's "feel", or intuition. There are still a lot of shots that I can't say for sure that I'm hitting correctly until I see the results (odd-angle banks, 3-rail banks, kicks where I have to spin the CB...), but I succeed a lot more often now at those shots than I did 10 years ago.
 
It depends on your level. Set the shot up, shoot it 10 times and see what happens. That should tell you if it was a lucky shot or not.
 
Lock N Load said:
Meaning, you shot a hard bank, kick, cut, or long shot and you make it people watching say you made a lucky shot. How could it be luck when you called the shot?
Many Regards,
Lock N Load.
Click to expand...

If a player pulls off a 100 to 1 shot, it should be worthy of applause.
The people that disparage such an event should really take a good hard
look at themselves......the reason is usually jealousy.

The great Ben Hogan said "The more I practice, the luckier I get."

regards
double hemlock
 
I think nathan got it right. If part of the shot contains some variable that's basically
out of your control, or impossible to control, then it's luck when everything works out.

For example, 8 on the break, you might know how to hit it in order to improve your chances,
but there are a million little variables that are beyond your control...
Like fifty potential gaps, different sized balls, divots in the racking area, etc.

No matter how smooth and perfect you hit a ball, all of those things can cause
the ball to miss and are out of your control (unless you're lucky enough to have
brand new perfect equipment).

So a shot like that is more luck than skill.

You can make an argument that some shots require such absolute perfection in the hit
(like a combo involving 5 ball, each a foot apart) that it's beyond human control
and would need basically a robot to hit perfectly. I would also say it's luck to make that shot.
 
pt109 said:
If a player pulls off a 100 to 1 shot, it should be worthy of applause.
The people that disparage such an event should really take a good hard
look at themselves......the reason is usually jealousy.

The great Ben Hogan said "The more I practice, the luckier I get."

regards
double hemlock
Click to expand...

What he just said!
To me, when you call a shot and it falls in the pocket where you call it, you made the shot period! I am not speaking of slop either. Where you call the ball 2 rails and it goes 4 rails......
Many Regards,
Lock N Load.
 
To call a tough shot and make it doesn't necessarily mean the player knew what she/he was doing.
Most of the cases "medium" players will make that kind of shots once, when this happens in a match it's quite luck for them and the opposite for their opponents.
Even between Pros situations come along when they can consider themselves lucky for making a really low percentage shot in competition.
In World team championship 2010 Great Britain against Greece (8ball), after a tough 4 cushion position shot Daryl Peach was hooked behind almost a full ball and had to play a 3/4 table masse shot for a thin cut on the 8 going in a specific pocket 3 diamonds away. The 8 was nowhere near any cushion and the desired contact point was too specific as well.
He took his time, figured out a few things that can be figured about this type of shot (beyond that nothing else can be done), he took the shot and just made it...
Even by top pros that kind of shot is really hard to be made again, especially in competition...
Petros
 
This thread raises yet another question: At what percentage does a called-shot made become luck? In other words, a hard shot was made. Set the shot up over and over again and shoot it 100 times and see how many times it's made. Figure a percentage.

At what percentage does it become luck? And who's authority do we have this on?

Another thread question with varying opinions, but it makes for good conversation!!!

Maniac
 
riedmich said:
I know what you mean. But again: The far most inconsitent factor in billards game is the player itself, its technique, its skills and abilities. I call it wrong to think like this in principle.

--> You have a plan --> you call a shot based on this plan --> you hit it. That's in principle no luck. That's a skill. --> You try the same shot again and you miss it --> you did something in another way than efore when you hit it. We are talking about your skill and how consistent you can hit a ball. But this is NOT a thing of luck in my understanding.

Of course you can take such examples of extremely difficult shots, and the more difficult it is the more you tend to think about luck. Bit it is still a question of the ability, and of intelligence to know when it is time to play a safety for strategic reasons. Or do you think holding a cuestick in ones hand can be called "luck" ? No. That's not the meaning of "luck". Luck means in my understanding: something happens that you weren't able to have an influence on, that you did't have the chance to control it.

Many people that I played with, call it also luck if they loose a set of nineball. Th those I always say: We both use same rules, same balls, same table. Every mistake you make can be the one that decides the set. But you do your mistakes by your own. If you think a mistake was bad luck: Then you are lying to yourself, the better answer is: I was not good enough, I make my mistakes because of MY OWN lack of abilities.
Click to expand...

I agree with you. If you attempt something, and accomplish it, it is skill. You may not yet have enough skill to repeat it a number of times, but you have enough skill to do it once. Those that call it luck, are the least likely to actually improve because they don't understand what skill is, and want to attribute everything out of the ordinary to luck.

According to some on here, skill wouldn't be involved until you had at least a 51% make percentage. If you can't do it half the time, it was luck. Now, apply that same reasoning to the entire rack. I guess it's luck when they actually run a rack out, because they can't do it at least half the time. No credit to actual skill, no matter how small that may be at the time, the guy that ran out on you just got lucky. :rolleyes:
 
FranCrimi said:
It depends on your level. Set the shot up, shoot it 10 times and see what happens. That should tell you if it was a lucky shot or not.
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So, at what make percentage do you tell your students that you have now helped them improve their skill and should therefore not demand their money back, since anything else they obviously just got lucky?
 
Take a wastebasket and put it across the room, say, ten or so feet away. Now, wad up a piece of paper and try and toss it into the basket. Do it ten times. How many times did you make it?

Each time you did make it, it was skill. It may have been only once that you made it. That just means your skill level was very low.

Now, practice doing that every day for a month for several hours. At the end of the month, try it ten times again. Unless you started at 10-10, your skill level has now improved.

Let's say at the start of the month, you got it 1-10. At the end of the month, you succeeded at the rate of 4-10. Has your skill level improved, or has your "luck" factor improved?

Now, take the same person at the same distance from the basket. Blindfold them, and turn them around several times and then stop them. Tell them to now throw the paper in the basket. Now, when they toss it, it is pure luck. They no longer have any control on actually getting it in the basket.
 
Not luck

If you know your game and what you are capable of, it's not luck. What one guy thinks is a 20% shot another guy makes 80% of the time.
 
Using the word luck in that statement is a way of psychologically dampening the fact that you just made a low percentage shot.

You won't make it most of the time. The guy is just upset you made it on him because the other larger percentage of the time he would be back at the table.
 
Neil said:
I agree with you. If you attempt something, and accomplish it, it is skill. You may not yet have enough skill to repeat it a number of times, but you have enough skill to do it once. Those that call it luck, are the least likely to actually improve because they don't understand what skill is, and want to attribute everything out of the ordinary to luck.

According to some on here, skill wouldn't be involved until you had at least a 51% make percentage. If you can't do it half the time, it was luck. Now, apply that same reasoning to the entire rack. I guess it's luck when they actually run a rack out, because they can't do it at least half the time. No credit to actual skill, no matter how small that may be at the time, the guy that ran out on you just got lucky. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

This post tells it like it is! In my opinion. Nice input, Neil.
Many Regards,
Lok N Load.
 
All of the input is good. It is a fact that we all have different opinions about things one way or the other. Thanks.
Many Regards,
Lock N Load.
 
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