New Respect For Snooker Players.

Scaramouche · Dec 17, 2007

worriedbeef · Dec 17, 2007

How many pool players have finished that high in a world snooker championship?

Steve Davis has placed 2nd at the World Pool League, losing in the finals 9-5 to Efren. He has been a member of two winning Mosconi Cup teams. He also has done very well at the WPC. Tony Drago has never won a snooker world championship, but he has won a top-level pool tournament (2003 World Pool Masters) and managed to go 4 for 4 in singles at this year's Mosconi Cup (earnng MVP honors). Daryl Peach couldn't make a living at snooker, but he's this year's World 9-ball Champ. We all know about all the women who have switched from snooker to pool. I'm not sure what Davis's best finish is at the WPC, but I believe just last year, he placed tied for 13th. One year, he beat Reyes, Souquet, and Takahashi in succession (all former world champions at the time). Can you name a pool player who could take on the likes of Ronnie O'Sullivan, Graeme Dott, and John Higgins in snooker matches and beat all of them in succession?

With all the money available to top-notch snooker players (especially in the not-too-distant past), you would think the greatest pool players would jump ship to snooker to chase that money since pool money is pale by comparison. For some reason, that never happened successfully, even during the glory years of snooker. I think the reason is obvious - it's better to play pool and eke out a living than try to play snooker and starve. There are quite a few players have gone from snooker to pool, and done very well, but I find it difficult to name any former pool players who have won a snooker world championship.

-djb <-- agrees with the OP - snooker's harder than pool

but the problem is the length of the matches. the snooker players you have mentioned wouldn't stand a chance in a race to 50 ten ball with earl, harriman, schmidt, archer etc. the nature of pool means we need longer races to get the true winner sometimes, but unfortunately this doesn't lend itself to the logistics and organisation of a tournament. fortunately for snooker it doesn't have this problem.

in any case all this snooker vs pool debating is kind of beside the point anyway. a game isn't better because it's harder. difficulty is not nessecarilly a factor in how good a game is. hell sex is my favourite game in the world and that isn't that hard! so if snooker is harder, which i don't for a second believe it is to play world class, it still doesn't nessecarilly mean it's a better game.

DaveK · Dec 17, 2007

Quite often our Canadian Snooker and 9 Ball championships are held back-to-back. A friend who is a Canadian snooker champion and no slouch at a 9 ball table once told me that there was no way he would play the 9 Ball event if it was held first (and mostly it has been). If they held the snooker first, then 9 ball, he'd consider entering both, but the other way 'round messed too much with his stroke to be competitive at his favorite snooker.

First impressions have merit smashmouth.

Dave

raybo147 · Dec 17, 2007

Guys this one is easy to explain. Pool players learn how to play the game with a margin for error when pocketing the balls. What this means is they play a lot if their shots into the left side or the right side of the pockets. Also good pool players use a lot of english to force angles etc. Snooker players learn how to play their game with almost no margin for error. Good snooker players can put english on the ball just as well as the pool players can but they need to focus on ball pocketing as it is much more difficult on a snooker table. Therefore it is much easier to switch to a game with greater margins for error than to a game with less. I am not saying that snooker players are better, just that pool players have a technique that does not transfer so well to snooker. All snooker players have to do is learn the nuances of pool (breaking,kicking,jumping etc). The rest of it they already do well. If somebody like Earl started his life playing snooker, with his natural talent he probably would have done quite well.

DoomCue · Dec 17, 2007

worriedbeef said:
in any case all this snooker vs pool debating is kind of beside the point anyway. a game isn't better because it's harder. difficulty is not nessecarilly a factor in how good a game is. hell sex is my favourite game in the world and that isn't that hard! so if snooker is harder, which i don't for a second believe it is to play world class, it still doesn't nessecarilly mean it's a better game.

I don't think anybody said it's a better game than pool - we're talking about difficulty here.

If you think it's easier to become world class at snooker than at pool, why hasn't a pool player successfully crossed over to snooker? There is, after all, a HUGE difference in money between pool and snooker. Why would a pool player continue to grind out $1,500 1st place tourneys when there's so much money in snooker?

Again, plenty of snooker players have gone into pool and done well - I can't think of a pool player who has done well in the world of snooker. The great Efren himself, a master at all billiards games, hasn't tried to cross over into the richer world of snooker, and that speaks volumes to me.

-djb

Bob Jewett · Dec 17, 2007

smashmouth said:
if you are to gauge the size of the field when judging difficulty, then Pool is enormous, and carom tiny, with snooker somewhere in the middle ...

I'm not quite sure what you're saying here, but I think more people play carom world-wide than either of the other two disciplines.

As for which discipline is "harder," there is a systematic way to determine the relative difficulties of sports/games and maybe we could try to apply it here. Or we could leave the divergent opinions unperturbed by fact.

Drew · Dec 17, 2007

smashmouth said:
years ago I used to long for a round robin type tourney with all the best carom, pool, and snooker boys

now, after playing all three extensively, watching, reading, conversing with pros on the matter, and learning from those who have participated in more than one discipline, I'm convinced, more than ever that no pro on earth can ever be world class in two disciplines

to me, it's like hoping for the world's top soccer player to become the world's best baseball player

I simply cannot count Allison and Karen (despite their phenomenal achievements-remember size of fields? women's snooker in the Uk has less participants than women's darts)

Lol, just tell that to Efren.

Bob Jewett · Dec 17, 2007

Drew said:
Lol, just tell that to Efren (about not playing world class in two disciplines).

While Efren did win the gold medal in snooker in the 1986 SEA Games, I think he was never ranked among the snooker professionals. At carom, so far as I know, he is about a 1.0 player. That is to say, he plays both disciplines far better than 99.9% of the people who play them, but he does not play competitively at the pro level in either one.

ShootingArts · Dec 17, 2007

how hard anything is to be best at

Bob Jewett said:
I'm not quite sure what you're saying here, but I think more people play carom world-wide than either of the other two disciplines.

As for which discipline is "harder," there is a systematic way to determine the relative difficulties of sports/games and maybe we could try to apply it here. Or we could leave the divergent opinions unperturbed by fact.

Bob,

Surely you don't want to bring facts into one of these opinion threads?

I played over seven hundred hours of snooker a year for several years while playing more hours of pool. Snooker may be slightly harder but not nearly as much harder as a newcomer to a snooker table believes. They have forgotten how poorly they played when they first shot on a pool table.

I think my earlier post started the thoughts about the number of people playing defining how hard it is to be world class. An example, some of my fellow local competitors went to a national event and set six or eight world records. That sounds fantastic until you learn that the sport was fairly new and there were only about sixty people in a position to attempt to set a world record. In a similar sport that is more mature there are about 20,000 people who can set a world record and a friend of mine has one that has stood for over twenty years. Obviously, it is much easier to be world class in the sport with fewer serious competitors and the twenty year old record that has been fiercely challenged all of that time is much more meaningful. I think that holds true in any endeavor.

To say the same thing a bit differently, in most forms of competition a very small number of people will separate themselves as the true elite at any one time. It is easier to be a member of that group if you are one of two thousand competitors than if you are one of two hundred thousand competitors and of course the thought holds true regardless of the actual numbers. Much easier to be the big fish in a little pond than the big fish in the ocean.

Hu

Drew · Dec 17, 2007

Bob Jewett said:
While Efren did win the gold medal in snooker in the 1986 SEA Games, I think he was never ranked among the snooker professionals. At carom, so far as I know, he is about a 1.0 player. That is to say, he plays both disciplines far better than 99.9% of the people who play them, but he does not play competitively at the pro level in either one.

Even though he doesn't compete in snooker and carom tournaments, I would still consider him to play both games at a world class level.

Here's a couple other names that competed at a world class level in multiple disciplines:
Deion Sanders won 2 Superbowls and played for the Braves, Yankees, Reds and SF Giants
Bo Jackson won the Heisman in 1985 and played for the Raiders, Royals, White Sox, and Angels.
And then there's Jim Thorpe, Olympic gold medalist and professional football, baseball, and basketball player.

pdcue · Dec 17, 2007

mnorwood said:
I consider myself a decent pool player and have even crossed over and played snooker on the 10 foot table and felt good about how I played.

Yesterday I got the opportunity to play on a 12 footer with the felt that the professional game is played on. Its almost a cliche for people to point out how much harder snooker is than pool, but it takes on a whole new meaning when you actually play it. I learned there are no hangers in snooker, there is no grazing a rail or hitting the side of the pocket. You also don't play english at all. You don't move, you don't jump up you don't have any technical slop. With that said I believe that snooker is indeed the superior cueing game. Some experienced posters may see this as a statement of the obvious, but for this self taught 8 foot table with buckets player, yesterday was quite an epiphane.

This also magnifies my admiration for guys like Stephen Hendry, Ronnie O and Alex Higgens.

Not all 6 x 12s are created equal.

What type of table did you play on
English Billiard Table<aka international>
American vintage/antique or a dreaded Golf table.

There is a world of difference between the options
with tables that Hendry, Higgens, and don't ever forget Steve Davis
played on being the easiest by a long way.

FWIW - Steve Davis played quite a bit of pool, even before his game declined, and was not even close to competitive with top pool players.
So much for your opinion on which is the superior cue game.

Dale<who is equally mediocre at pool, Snooker(s), and even Billiards>

Bob Jewett · Dec 17, 2007

Drew said:
Even though he doesn't compete in snooker and carom tournaments, I would still consider him to play both games at a world class level.

...

OK, but I would set the bar higher.

smashmouth · Dec 17, 2007

Bob Jewett said:
.

As for which discipline is "harder," there is a systematic way to determine the relative difficulties of sports/games and maybe we could try to apply it here. /QUOTE]

I'm all ears

mnorwood · Dec 17, 2007

You have to admit that a smaller number of shots are high percentage on the snooker table than a pool table. That alone makes snooker harder to play. Also the cut of the pockets do not allow for a shot to hit anything but the center of the hole.

ShootingArts · Dec 17, 2007

not quite true

mnorwood said:
You have to admit that a smaller number of shots are high percentage on the snooker table than a pool table. That alone makes snooker harder to play. Also the cut of the pockets do not allow for a shot to hit anything but the center of the hole.

Shots are a bit higher percentage on the snooker table than you first believe once you learn how to shoot the pockets with rounded corners into the inner rails. I shot on an older snooker table with very deep shelf small radius pockets. I honestly have never found one with pockets cut tougher. Pocket speed and favoring or no english could still sneak some shots in that wouldn't go with the slightest bit of the wrong spin or a little extra speed on an object ball when it hit an inside rail.

Another thing, as I mentioned earlier, for most of the game you are playing on a six foot table with your choice of any red ball to shoot at and then the seven. If you lose shape you can use the six or even the five to bail out. The five in the side is an almost always available insurance ball if you get in trouble. Once the red balls are gone you have to make one major move with the cue ball and then bridge balls take you back down the table again.

I'm not disagreeing that snooker is a little harder, but it seems far harder than it really is when a pool player first starts playing because we have all of these built in expectations of how we should be able to shoot balls into a pocket. Spend a couple hours on drills on a snooker table to discover what is and isn't a makeable shot and it gets much easier.

I suspect that the 14.1 players will find snooker not too different. It's mostly tight work and close patterns.

Hu

worriedbeef · Dec 18, 2007

here's a great video of the great willie thorne talking us through as he makes a maximum break (a 147)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ircz2oF1I4g

Bob Jewett · Dec 18, 2007

As for which discipline is "harder," there is a systematic way to determine the relative difficulties of sports/games and maybe we could try to apply it here. ...

The basic idea, so far as I know, is due to Ron Shepard.

As a first example, take tic-tac-toe. This is clearly an easy game. Once you know the "trick" there is no chance for someone to beat you, and the trick -- or rather, technique -- is easy to learn.

Chess is a hard game. Most moves are hard to judge with just a knowledge of the rules. There are lots of different levels of play, from the high school team to those Russian guys.

The proposed system for relating difficulty of a game estimates how many different levels of ability exist in people who regularly play the game. A simple way to do this is to say that players (or teams) are one level apart if the stronger player is a 2:1 favorite to win a standard match. Let's set a standard match length to be about 2 hours.

In the case of tic-tac-toe, there are only two levels -- everyone who knows the standard technique is in the top level, and everyone else is in the lower level.

In the case of chess, a match would be one game, and the standard chess rating system (devised by Arpad Elo -- see wikipedia) says that if two chess players are 120 points apart, the stronger is a 2:1 favorite to win a particular game. (There are also draws in chess, but that's a minor wrinkle.) The range of chess players is well established, with the 12-year-old who plays a game against his grandfather every Sunday rated at about 600 and the best player in the world rated at 2800. (The minimum permitted chess rating is 100, but I think that is for people who don't know a horsey from a house.) That gives about 18 levels of chess player. (The named levels are wider ranges.)

By this measure, chess is an 18-level game while TTT is a 2-level game. I suppose you could further say that TTT is probably at the bottom end of 2-level games. I think that paper-rock-scissors and coin flipping are 1-level games by this definition.

At pool and carom, rating systems like Elo's system have already been implemented.

pdcue · Dec 25, 2007

Boro Nut said:
Mosconi made a lot of claims. Unfortunately he never envisaged the internet and the ability of future generations to check them. Don't kid yourself that Mosconi could play snooker.

Boro Nut

Except that, on an exhib tour,
after a few matches, he DRILLED one of the top
British players of the day - this after being retired for 20 years.

I'm vague re details, Think it was Pullman.

Dale

raybo147 · Dec 26, 2007

pdcue said:
Not all 6 x 12s are created equal.

What type of table did you play on
English Billiard Table<aka international>
American vintage/antique or a dreaded Golf table.

There is a world of difference between the options
with tables that Hendry, Higgens, and don't ever forget Steve Davis
played on being the easiest by a long way.

FWIW - Steve Davis played quite a bit of pool, even before his game declined, and was not even close to competitive with top pool players.
So much for your opinion on which is the superior cue game.

Dale<who is equally mediocre at pool, Snooker(s), and even Billiards>

Steve Davis was not even close to competitive????? He beat Efren,Souquet and I think Takahashi 3 straight matches at the World's. Who do you consider top players because if Efren isn't we have all been idolizing the wrong guy. The current World Pool Champion is a snooker player who never made it into the top 64 and the long time World number 1 lady player is a snooker player who never made it into the top 200 in the pro rankings. I think pool players have just as much ability as snooker players as I explained in an earlier post but please give Davis some credit as a guy who only ever played the game part time. Also Tony Drago has been a snooker pro for 20 years and he has never won a ranking tournament(World Pool Masters Champion and MVP of Mosconi Cup)

raybo147 · Dec 26, 2007

worriedbeef said:
but the problem is the length of the matches. the snooker players you have mentioned wouldn't stand a chance in a race to 50 ten ball with earl, harriman, schmidt, archer etc. the nature of pool means we need longer races to get the true winner sometimes, but unfortunately this doesn't lend itself to the logistics and organisation of a tournament. fortunately for snooker it doesn't have this problem.

in any case all this snooker vs pool debating is kind of beside the point anyway. a game isn't better because it's harder. difficulty is not nessecarilly a factor in how good a game is. hell sex is my favourite game in the world and that isn't that hard! so if snooker is harder, which i don't for a second believe it is to play world class, it still doesn't nessecarilly mean it's a better game.

Why would they not stand a chance?

New Respect For Snooker Players.

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