Is there such a thing as natural talent? Some say yes, I do not think there is?

tableroll

Rolling Thunder
Silver Member
To become a world class pool player or golfer takes hours and hours of dedicated practice. One can not become great on "natural talent". You have to put in the work.
 

Tin Man

AzB Gold Member
Gold Member
Silver Member
Talent is for suckers. No one on this forum has ever been capped by their talent. Maybe if we talk about what separates the #1 and #10 player in history we could theorize but it’s still a debate. People who point to stories of quick or slow learners are talking about short time durations with a small subset of skills, not an overall career. In reality none of us will ever be limited by anything by other than our own attitudes and effort so I believe in focusing exclusively on what we can control. Almost all champions believe this and I’m glad those who don’t are my competition.
 

Poolplaya9

Tellin' it like it is...
Silver Member
Here is my recent post on the topic that I think answers the question truthfully and accurately:

"The simple answer is yes, it more or less is as simple as that [that talent level makes the difference in how great you will be compared to others] if/when everybody has the same drive and is putting the same efforts into their game.

But not everybody has the same drive and is putting the same efforts into their game in the real world, which sometimes (but not always) allows those with less talent, but who want it more and work harder, to surpass those with more talent but who don't put as much effort into their game.

Those that have the most natural ability/talent will always have a higher cap to the potential level they can ultimately reach with enough work though, and will always be able to progress the fastest with equal efforts."
 

lfigueroa

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
To become a world class pool player or golfer takes hours and hours of dedicated practice. One can not become great on "natural talent". You have to put in the work.

Of course there’s natural talent.

It’s the guy walks into the pool room for the first time in months and who, literally, blows the dust off his cue case and plays great. In terms of world class it’s the above plus drive and work ethic. Starting off young doesn’t hurt.

Lou Figueroa
 

Poolplaya9

Tellin' it like it is...
Silver Member
No one on this forum has ever been capped by their talent.
Well yes and no. I think you are likely right when talking about the theoretical limit as few people ever put in enough effort to reach their theoretical limit to begin with because it just isn't practical to do so and few have the drive to do it even if it was. I do think talent adds a practical cap of sorts for most people though because of the fact that you can only devote so much time to pool (far less than what would be needed to reach your full theoretical limit), and those with more talent will progress further based on the same amounts of playing time and identical kinds of work put into their games.

If two people only have say 200 hours per year to play/devote to their games, the one with more talent is going to be a better player with that identical playing time (assuming they are equally motivated and do the same work etc), so talent is still limiting you in some ways/sense.
 

Jaden

"no buds chill"
Silver Member
Of course there’s natural talent.

It’s the guy walks into the pool room for the first time in months and who, literally, blows the dust off his cue case and plays great. In terms of world class it’s the above plus drive and work ethic. Starting off young doesn’t hurt.

Lou Figueroa
Yeah but no one believes me that I haven't played in months.

Jaden
 

measureman

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I've said it before yes there is natural talent.
We all have seen the players that have played for decades and struggle to run a rack of any game and the player that has been playing a couple years that can run multiple racks.
I see this all the time in the room I go to and for the last 60 years I've been playing.
 

white1

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Absolutely-natural talent is real-of course it is-in academia, athletics and most anything-I personally know it’s a faith topic, but do not wish to discuss that piece on this forum.
 

BlueRaider

Registered
I've often wondered if "natural talent" isn't instead just a better understanding/intuition of body mechanics and how to align the body to shoot straight, which may or may not be a conscious thought for beginners. There's also probably some degree of shot visualization that's naturally better in some people. And from there those players are able to hit the ground running and bypass a lot of the frustration and false-starts that might hobble other players or hold them back for years, if not decades.

My theory is that some players pick up the game and have decent mechanics almost immediately. This may relate to better overall hand-eye coordination or athleticism.

We all know people who are good at just about anything that involves hand-eye coordination. I used to play in a pool room with a lot of casual players, and I would notice that every once in a while, a guy who clearly didn't know how to play could break pretty well and had a straight stroke, even though it usually looked a little clumsy. And then I would see other people who couldn't even attempt a break without miscuing and couldn't make a straight-in shot to save their lives.

My own experience playing pool with my group of friends in college when we were all beginners showed me that people definitely develop at different rates. I was the worst among my friends when I was starting out, but ultimately that's what spurred me on to learn the game. If I had been able to just plop down on the table and shoot balls in right away like some of them could, I don't think the game would have grabbed me.
 

skip100

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
"To become a world class pool player or golfer takes hours and hours of dedicated practice. One can not become great on "natural talent". You have to put in the work."

Getting back to the original post itself, this is a complete straw man argument. Literally no one believes or argues that you can become a world class pool player without practicing.
 

slim123

Active member
Talent is for suckers. No one on this forum has ever been capped by their talent. Maybe if we talk about what separates the #1 and #10 player in history we could theorize but it’s still a debate. People who point to stories of quick or slow learners are talking about short time durations with a small subset of skills, not an overall career. In reality none of us will ever be limited by anything by other than our own attitudes and effort so I believe in focusing exclusively on what we can control. Almost all champions believe this and I’m glad those who don’t are my competition.
Not so fast it comes together, the less stress and obligations one has the more they are able to focus. So naturally , someone that has no bad things weighing them down, will definitely move on and play better. Also, a little bit to do with the left brain, spaces, angles, artistic ability etc. The more of that side of the brain the better the talent. For someone predomiately right brain, can be an artist, however it's very hard and they have to work very hard at it, whereas a person that is predominately left brain, they just do it and it comes naturally
Pool is an art
 

tableroll

Rolling Thunder
Silver Member
I've said it before yes there is natural talent.
We all have seen the players that have played for decades and struggle to run a rack of any game and the player that has been playing a couple years that can run multiple racks.
I see this all the time in the room I go to and for the last 60 years I've been playing.
Here is what Matt Syed said about "the myth of talent and the power of practice".
 

sjm

Older and Wiser
Silver Member
Natural talent exists in a big way. Whether it's pool or anything else, if two people make the exact same effort to become proficient at something, one will outachieve the other because they have more aptitude in learning that subject. That aptitude is called natural talent.

Yes, one can become proficient at almost anything with sufficient work ethic, but the path to proficiency will be either shortened or lengthened by natural talent.

When great natural talent hooks up with maximum effort, a level is reached that is unattainable for those with less natural talent.
 
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dquarasr

Registered
I believe the some of the premises stated are incorrect.

Yes, practice is necessary for ultimate success. But is it sufficient soley in and of iteslf?

I am a 5'5" male. I am under no delusions that I can run as fast as a man 6'2", assuming we both put in the practice and training appropriate for our bodies. It is simple physics: given otherwise similar conditions, the longer stride of a taller man will provide an unassailable advantage. Take it to the extreme: a 50' man walking can beat a 6' man running. Let's see an ant outrun a human being.

I stated once here on AZB that as a drummer, no matter how much I practiced, I could not attain the speed and precision exhibited by jazz great Buddy Rich. My physiology did not permit it. Mr. Rich said he never practiced. He was not a good sight-reader. He didn't have to be. He could hear an arrangement once and know how to play drums to it immediately. My brain is not wired to command my muscles to drum like Buddy Rich. My brain is not wired to hear a composition once and remember its intimate details.

Some people are born with eidetic memories. I am not thusly blessed. I propose that something like an eidetic memory can be an advantage to a pool player in that the many instances of a particular very similar shot can be approached using infallible recall on how the shot was hit in the past, based on a sufficient amount of practice. Also, the communication between muscles and the brain, the so-called "muscle memory", just as physiques can greatly vary between humans, so can also similarly vary widely.

I interpret "natural talent" as the brain's innate ability to learn, internalize, and command muscles to act in a specific way. In some humans this connectivity is simply better than in other humans. Yes, the difference can be narrowed with additional practice, but while practice is a necessary component, IMHO, it is not sufficient. There needs to be the innate component to fully leverage the practice, and in some, this "natural talent" is stronger than in others.
 

Fatboy

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
To become a world class pool player or golfer takes hours and hours of dedicated practice. One can not become great on "natural talent". You have to put in the work.
Takes both

When talent goes to work, nothing can beat that.

SVB is living proof, Filler, Nick V worked hard as anyone. It’s a short list of talent who really go to work. SVB hits more balls than you can imagine, so did Nick. Filler has played since he was a kid and paid his dues. These guys have all the talent and all the work ethic. Their success proves it. There are more, but this isn’t a list thread. So those are my examples.

Mark Tadd had the talent but didn’t work as hard, he’s my fiend and had he worked as hard consistently as SVB, he would have had that success. Mark worked hard too, but not consistently.

Then there’s guys with less talent who work hard and never make it.

It takes both.

Fatboy<——-didn’t have the talent, but watched a ton of great players come up right past me-effortlessly on talent. And I passed a few guys with hard work-but never “made it”.

Good luck to you
 

Poolplaya9

Tellin' it like it is...
Silver Member
Here is what Matt Syed said about "the myth of talent and the power of practice".
There are so many leaps of logic in there that it is laughable. At 10,000 hours (or literally any other amount of hours you want to use) there is still a wide disparity in the ability level of all those people who have put in that amount of time, even when they have put in similar work and taken it equally seriously, etc. The reason for that is talent differences. There are also plenty of people who have put in 10,000 serious hours of pool with serious efforts given and have not mastered pool and become world class like that theory claims. The reason for that is they simply don't have the talent.

Yes, I think most people can become at least reasonably decent at most things with a lot of work. Nobody questions that work plays a huge role in success, but the fact that talent also plays a big part in what you can accomplish in what amount of time is indisputable and can be seen everywhere, and in fact is what you see 100% of the time. That all people will be equally skilled with equal work/amounts of that work has never been seen to be the case ever even once in the history of humanity so to believe that to be true is ludicrous. I honestly don't believe that anybody truly believes that talent doesn't matter for something like pool, and don't think a single person would be able to pass a lie detector test claiming that because every last one of us knows without doubt it isn't true even if we are desperate to try to convince ourselves otherwise.
 

CocoboloCowboy

Cowboys are my hero's
Silver Member
Natural talent is real, but it is only an advantage if you build off of it.

Personal without talent be desire and work ethic can also become great.
 
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