Pro statistics: Are they available? Are you interested?

[Cameron Smith]

Phil saw this post and emailed me asking me to post a quick reply. His survey was actually based on matches over multiple tournaments...

Phil Capelle’s 500 Game Study
26 Matches – 18 Tournaments
1990 U.S Open, November
1992 U.S. Open, September
1993 U.S. Open, September
1994 U.S. Open, September (2)
1995 U.S. Open, September
1998 U.S. Open, September
1997 U.S. Open, September (2)
1999 U.S. Open, September (3)
2000 U.S. Open, September
Sands Regency Open 12 (2)
Sands Regency Open 15 (2)
Sands Regency Open 16
Sands Regency Open 17
Sands Regency Open 21
Sands Regency Open 22 (2)
Sands Regency Open 23 (2)
Sands Regency Open 23
Sands Regency Open 29
Bicycle Club Invitational, June, 1992

Oops, I was mistaken then. That's a very good sampling of tournaments.

 

[arsenius]

Arsenius,
I will tell this tired old tale one more time.

One of my instructors spent a couple of weeks in the Philippines with Efren Reyes. They decided to break 100 racks each of nine-ball, take ball in hand for the first shot, and see how many racks they would run "against the ghost."

Efren ran 82 out of the 100 racks (I believe my instructor ran 80).

I think any top pro would be hard pressed to reach the 90% figure you present.

More interesting to me was when I asked what percentage of those 82 racks did Efren run exactly as planned (without getting out of line or wrong-sided and having to make a more difficult recovery shot). I was told about 10% of the 82 racks went exactly as planned. Even the best players in the world must constantly recover from positional "errors." They do so in a fashion well above us mere mortals.

Not a tired old story to me, Willie. I've never heard it!

That is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to hear about in this thread. How often does Player X get out with BIH.

Archer and Strickland had the highest BnR %s... 31.7% and 32.7%, respectively.

This is another example of what I was hoping to hear. I would love to be able to see on the screen at the beginning of a match a side by side comparison like this. That way, instead of just hearing something like "Bustamante has the biggest break in the business" we could hear additionally, "He makes a ball on the break 11.3% more than the average Pro. Today he's playing Thorsten Hohman, who makes a ball on the break an average of 53.2% of the time, which is slightly below average. So Busta has a big advantage on the break today. However, Hohman's runout ability is 5% better, so he regains an advantage there..."

This is a completely false dialog, of course. But I think it would be cooler than just hearing "This is Joe "The Ballbreaker" Smith." What do you like, stupid nicknames or factual statistics for color? My bias should be clear.