Is this the same guy who won some reality show of Simon Cowell? LOLOLOL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bskw0fLqYyM
Paul Portier should NOT be in the booth!
- Thread starter 9andout
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Is this the same guy who won some reality show of Simon Cowell? LOLOLOL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bskw0fLqYyM
John has been exceptional, and has often deferred to his commentary partner. The best commentating teams in many sports have one guy who focuses on the play and another who keeps it light, is supportive of the analyst, and keep things moving along. Mark Wilson and John Schmidt have been a truly wonderful team because they both understand their respective roles.My favorite commentator so far at the Open this year is John Schmidt.
Let's hope we get some more of John in the booth. He's great, not to mention funny as hell.
:thud::killingme: That was funny! I have to assume you're kidding. Listening to that guy talk makes me want to inject his tongue with novocaine just to see if those contortionary vocal sounds coming from his mouth rely on any acrobatic tongue movements. He might be the only commentator that I actually have to mute. The guy makes me want to rip open all my wife's tea bags in the kitchen. :speechless:
Anyway ... on another, different note ..... I tried to watch last night. I have a hard enough time watching 9 ball, but far worse than any commentary were the antics of examining the racks.
What a bunch of shit. I'm from the Danny D school of it's neurotic and futile to try to worry about that crap. You aren't never ever going to align the balls, their numbers, their position over the spot, or the tiny spaces that may exist time after time after time of racking.
There has to be thousands and thousands of variables that will affect the angles the balls come off each other and at what speed they do so.
Let alone you are never going to position the CB in the exact same spot on the table, in the exact resting point of the CB on that spot ... or are you ever going to hit the exact same spot on the rack with the exact same english at the exact same speed to make ANYTHING they were ridiculously trying to adjust make a rat's ass difference.
Not to mention how these ten balls bounce off each other or rails at any exact repeatable way. The concept is stupid considering even further they're not calling shots during the game, they're using clubs to jump over balls like a frigging pinball machine ... that whole display was disgusting.
Ironically, a high percentage of the time they THINK they have it right, they either fly the cue ball off the table.... or into a pocket... or break dry regardless, or get stuck behind a ball, all of which are just another set of thousands of variables not worth laboring over hair line spaces in balls.
To think any of those antics were worth the wasted time it took to labor over such a random event as smashing 9 balls to hell and back was the nauseating part.
Thing is, though, that racking disputes have been few and far between in this US Open.
I agree that nothing makes our sport look worse than racking disputes.
Still, Danny D is wrong here. The break is repeatable. America's three best breakers in the event are, arguably, Shane, Corey Deuel and Mike Dechaine.
Remarkably, last night's streaming triple header showed all three of them playing and winning against three very strong opponents.
FYI, Mark Wilson, in in his commentary, has proposed the perfect solution. Neutral racker, rack inspection permitted, rerack not permitted.
I switched the volume to OFF on the stream and ON for my TV 
BINGO!!!!
Even a new set of thee highest quality balls, have different tolerances/specs per mfg. I like the way you expressed nauseam on a pool table :thumbup:
Well, not much to commentate about a snooker match.
"Now, he's going to pot the black, then the referee is going to put it back and the player will attempt a shot on a red and leave himself in position to pot the black again..." Lol
Aside from the fact that last night was one of the most painful matches I've ever endured (both in the poor play and in the terrible commentary from Potier), I disagree about the need for silence allowing tension to build. If this sport is to grow the way many wish it to, we have to accept that the vast majority of those in the TV viewing audience will be clueless compared to almost everybody here on AZB. Their only way to understand the game will be to learn via expert commentary. Personally, not having grown up inside a pool hall, I know I learned a ton from listening to Billy and Grady and Danny D.
My wife is a recent convert to watching pro pool. She doesn't play, can't make a straight in shot two feet away from the pocket, but she is becoming a moderately knowledgeable viewer based on the knowledge she gets from astute commentary. She now knows at least enough to follow the play, whereas left on her own to figure it out she would have quit watching with me a long time ago. As tedious as some of the detailed commentary is to many (not me, heck, I'm still learning), I think you have to embrace it if you expect to grow pro pool into mass viewership.
I don't disagree with the thrust of what you are saying, but Corey jumping up and inspecting every one of Jayson's racks with a microscope bordered on sharking to me. I'm sure he suspected that Shaw was leaving gaps to make the 9 on the break (a foolish strategy to try to win a high-level match IMO), but it sure affected JS's pace of play, if not his break itself. I'm not sure Corey would have behaved quite this way if he himself wasn't missing simple shots by half a diamond.
And, yes, Mark has the cure IMO. Just need to find a way to pay all those neutral rackers. There aren't too many tourneys that can financially absorb that kind of cost.
I think for the TV table, they should be able to find one person to do the racking. It looks better on TV, for one thing.
Disagree. When you watch NASCAR, do they try and cater to viewers who know nothing about auto racing? Absolutely not. To me the less time the commentators spend explaining the game and the more they spend describing the action the better the webcasts will be. It's only pool fans tuning in anyways, especially on a ppv stream.
As for Paul, agreed that he had a bad match, but he's actually not that bad a commentator. His chemistry with the other guy (Bill Gibbs?) was definitely off, and that's a big part of doing a good job, and being totally unfamiliar with Jayson Shaw also hurt him a lot. It's a tough job, though.
Jayson started the rack inspection before Corey did. Jayson had an issue with one of Corey's racks and had him re-rack the balls. After that, Corey started inspecting Jayson's racks. From what I saw, he never said a word, only looked. Jayson took offense to that, and re-racked the balls without Corey saying anything, and even broke the balls once while Corey was looking at the rack. I think that pissed Corey off, so he simply kept looking at every rack Jayson had.
Well, I don't watch NASCAR myself, but what is there to learn about the sport? They go around and around, and the first guy to go around the track 200 times wins. Anybody can understand that and enjoy the race.
There has been a move in several major sports to explain more of the nuances of the game. Baseball in particular has used advanced video technology like extreme slo-mo and overlays to explain pitching and hitting techniques and strategies to the uninitiated. Grow the viewership, grow the sport. But that's just my opinion.
As far a Paul goes, I've never heard him before, so I can't comment on his other commentaries. After listening to him foam at the mouth for two hours, though, I can't help but wonder if you aren't influenced a bit because you are both members of the "brotherhood of the hat"? :wink:
JK, I'm not a Canada basher like some folks.:smile:
Ya know, I didn't catch that first inspection, so maybe I have a skewed viewpoint. In the end, though, neither of them were showing much sportsmanship, with Jayson at one point laying his cue directly across the CB path so Corey couldn't break while he was looking at the rack. It all made the match very unenjoyable to me, but then again, they're not there for my enjoyment, they're there for glory... and a chance at that $24K.
Well what is there to pool except knocking all the balls in the holes? lol
Sure, but that's not like 95% of their broadcast.
Well that's fair enough. Paul is a friend of mine, but I have heard him do good work, I promise. He didn't have a good night but give him another chance. After all, pool's usually double knockout, isn't it?
Last night, he claimed he wrote hundreds of articles in the nineties for a Japanese billiards magazine. I posted that this was a perfect deception because you can't fact check him since how many azbilliard members are pool savvy and fluent in Japanese. Well, my friend, you are the ONE! Please research and see if he really wrote articles on pool in Japanese.