Pool and Chess -- strange bedfellows or natural companions?

9BallPaul

9BallPaul

Banned
I'd hoped to illustrate this thread with a picture of Efren -- sitting alone studying a chessboard in the hallway of the old hotel in Louisville during an early DCC, Sorry, couldn't come up with it.

Hard for me to understand, but many of the best pool players I've known have been formidable chessboard opponents. The games don't strike me as similar, certainly not physically and barely mentally.

I know -- one-pocket is often compared to chess on a pool table. But it's hard for me to imagine that players are thinking three or four shots ahead.

What's the connection?
 
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One pocket has a lot in common with chess.

Besides being serious strategy games, chess and one pocket are broken up into beginning, mid, and end games with different objectives for each part of the game.

They are both about controlling the board too. In chess you want to control the middle 4 squares and control long lanes across the board. In one pocket, you want to control your banking lanes and block theirs.


9-ball is more of a puzzle game. After the break, you analyze the layout of the puzzle and decide the best method to solve it.
 
Paul:

I think the connection may be that chess players don't "time out" or "space out" during a pool game. While it's easy (and common) to "go on auto-pilot" during a pool game (at certain points, anyway), it's not common -- nor recommended -- to go on auto-pilot in chess. If you make an "auto-pilot" move in chess, you're done -- history. Chess is not like 9-ball where a pattern is dictated for you "by the numbers on the pieces." In chess, you make your own patterns, you make your own choices, and you live/die by the results. One badly-chosen or hasty move, and you've sealed your fate for the rest of the game -- the sad part being, you may not even know it until a few moves later.

Chess players are therefore in the habit of "thinking" more than the average pool player. They think for longer periods, at a sustained concentration level. A pool player is only thinking about the shot in front of him/her, perhaps a shot or two beyond that (and that's stretching it, in many cases). When the pool player goes back to his/her seat, that's often the end of the "thinking." A chess player is "used to" (accustomed to) strategizing far beyond just one or two moves.

Chess players are also very good at what I like to call "immersion thinking" -- being able to so thoroughly sink him/herself into concentrated thought at a second's notice, that it's like stepping off the side of a pool and dropping into the pool, disappearing from view. This is a practiced skill -- it comes from just playing the game of chess. Not many pool players (other than One Pocket or 14.1 players) ever get a chance to develop this skill. Certainly not rotation players, anyway.

It's often been said that chess is a game that rewires the human mind to be more focused and sustain that focus over longer periods. I tend to believe that.

-Sean <-- loves to play chess
 
Great players sometimes see the runout from start to finish, especially if they are not packed up.
Chess players 2100 and above see 'Lines" in the openings that are 20 or 30moves deep by each player.
These are a series of moves that have been proven over time to be the best sequence of moves to a specific opening.
Nearly every player who has achieved the ranking of "Master" at chess , will know 50 or 100 or more of these openings at least 20 moves deep.
I used to listen to Larry Christiansen {an American Grandmaster} commentating games and he would rattle off possible lines of 20 moves deep and would give several important games where the sequences had been played in a tournament over and over.
He had a phenomenal memory.
With all that said , against a player of Garry Kasparovs talent , he would have been like me playing Efren 1 Pocket.
{1 out of 200}
I would highly recommend chess to anyone who played serious 1 Pocket and for them to try to concentrate on being patient as well as learing to figure out your opponents weaknesses and strengths and then figuring out the best way to capitalize on that information.
I have watched a lot of pool in my life and the main thing I see that holds people back is that they play too fast or don't look at all options.
Shortstop level sometimes but usually below.
 
1pocket is far more like war then chess.
Let your head stick out and your dead.
Bunker down,be patient,flank them.
No draws,stalemates,just winning shot.
And last but not least...WAY HIGHER % of players packing heat.
 
Your brain is a muscle..... excercise it. The longer and harder you train, the stronger it will be. It's just too bad beer isn't 'brain' food! ;)

Bobby Hunter also played chess.

td
 
thrash attack said:
I was reading this yesterday. Anyone know if Karpov was any good?http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/chessbilliards.html
Click to expand...

Karpov was a great player. In his prime he was the best on the planet.
He became world champion by default because Bobby Fischer would not play. At the time Fischer was still the better player.
After that Karpov racked up tournament win after win, unprecedented in history.
His main opponent was Korcznoj who wasn't as good but close.
When Kasparov came into picture he liked to paint Karpov as being a child of communism and himself as child of change and a new era.
The two played some marathon championships. In the first one Karpov was a mile ahead but physically collapsed and allowed Kasparov to comeback.
Karpov was a positional player with somewhat dry style, Kasparov was a tactical genius.
 
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People like to compare any activity that requires thinking to chess, in most cases it is just a comparison without substance.

When I was teaching chess I always liked to point out to the parents the benefits of chess for the development of a child.
We did that to make a living, not believing it to be 100% true.

The truth is that chess is chess and everything else is everything else.

Chess and pool have a few things in common.
Both games require prolonged study and practice and certain level of isolation.
Both games require certain amount of knowledge in order to fully appreciate it.
Both games allow for creativity and self expression, ability to build something greater from a small set of laws.
Both games are marginalized and hardcore followers looked down on by the society.

Most of all chess and pool can be used as an escape from reality.
No matter how bad your life is, you can always escape for moment, completely emerge yourself in a different world thus creating a new reality in which you are the master.
And in the end you can wipe the slate clean and start over and over again.

I think chess is more extreme.
 
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With fear of being criticized for being negative, I have a feeling many are making a leap in thought here. I don't think there are any top pool players that also cross over and play championship chess. From my experience chess is commonly played in pool rooms by people with a lot of time on their hands. Some of the best chess players I have known were in prison one time of another and took up the game.

People in prison also often are well read and can come across as intelligent with their ability to drop authors names and parrot quotes form various works. In the main stream I am sure we would find many people who would excel at the game of chess were they to take it up but they are usually too busy busting their a$$es making a living. I know a lot of pool players love to fish as well as play golf but don't think there are any conclusions to jumped to or analyzed there either.

To Quote Weenie Beenie regarding one of our best known super star pool players.

"That man is lucky he can play pool or he would be behind a plow".
 
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The question begs to be asked - 'Why did they end up in prison?'.
Odds are those were pool players.

So, logically => pool leads to prison which leads to chess. :)
 
Wolven said:
Karpov was a great player. In his prime he was the best on the planet.
He became world champion by default because Bobby Fischer would not play. At the time Fischer was still the better player.
After that Karpov racked up tournament win after win, unprecedented in history.
His main opponent was Korcznoj who wasn't as good but close.
When Kasparov came into picture he liked to paint Karpov as being a child of communism and himself as child of change and a new era.
The two played some marathon championships. In the first one Karpov was a mile ahead but physically collapsed and allowed Kasparov to comeback.
Karpov was a positional player with somewhat dry style, Kasparov was a tactical genius.
Click to expand...

I thought he was asking if anyone knew if Karpov was a good pool player?
 
macguy said:
With fear of being criticized for being negative, I have a feeling many are making a leap in thought here. I don't think there are any top pool players that also cross over and play championship chess. From my experience chess is commonly played in pool rooms by people with a lot of time on their hands. Some of the best chess players I have known were in prison one time of another and took up the game.

People in prison also often are well read and can come across as intelligent with their ability to drop authors names and parrot quotes form various works. In the main stream I am sure we would find many people who would excel at the game of chess were they to take it up but they are usually too busy busting their a$$es making a living. I know a lot of pool players love to fish as well as play golf but don't think there are any conclusions to jumped to or analyzed there either.

To Quote Weenie Beenie regarding one of our best known super star pool players.

"That man is lucky he can play pool or he would be behind a plow".
Click to expand...

Both games usually take an unfathomable amount of time to master, for someone to be at the top levels in both would be nearly impossible.
I have no idea what Efrens rating is but I would think that he is at a higher level att both games than anyone else I have heard of.
I know Steve Davis was the President of a British Chess Organisation but I thinbk I read somewhere that he was rated about 1400. I have watched Efren play a few games and he is at least 400 points higher than that, probably more.
 
Berko,

You must have skipped a step, so we will just call you a fast learner.

Anyway any exception to a rule, justifies it as being a rule, thus proving the validity of the rule in the first place.
 
book collector said:
I know Steve Davis was the President of a British Chess Organisation but I thinbk I read somewhere that he was rated about 1400. I have watched Efren play a few games and he is at least 400 points higher than that, probably more.
Click to expand...

I heard a rumor as well that Efren would be in 1800-1900 elo range which makes him a decent player.
 
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