Savannah's home table?

Wow, thanks Mark for those "time capsule" matches. Those were the days. Although the WPBA formed in 1976, the tour as we know it today, called the "Classic Tour" kicked off in 1992, so these matches came at the very beginning of the heyday of women's pool.
 
Great question!

If you mean "is the standard is higher?" then it is yes, but being the best is outrageously difficult in every era of pool. I think people overlook just how tough fields were a couple of generations back in women's pool.

Let's look back thirty years to 1995, Allison Fisher's first full year playing pool in America. What did it take for her to become and remain the best? For starters, her game had to pass those of Loree Jon Jones, Robin Dodson. Jeanette Lee, Belinda Bearden Calhoun, Ewa Laurance, and Gerda Hofstatter. They were six future BCA hall of famers.

By 2003, Allison still had to contend with all of them, but also future BCA hall of famers Karen Corr and Kelly Fisher and soon to be hall of famers Ga Young Kim and Jasmin Ouschan, so there were ten future BCA hall of famers in every field at the majors. There were also stone-cold killers Xiaoting Pan, Jennifer Chen, Helena Thornfeldt, Vivian Villareal and Monica Webb to negotiate, but Allison was usually the top ranked player. The fields were crazy tough 20-30 years ago, and it was super-tough to navigate one's way to the top of the heap or anywhere near it,

Yes, it's brutally tough to get to the top today, but it has always been. Let's not set the bar too high for Savannah, for if she is ever a top 10 player in the world based on Fargo with at least a few titles at the majors, she will be in the conversation for a BCA hall of fame spot.

As you rightly suggest, Savannah will have to play better pool than that displayed by the last generation of women to get to or near the top but reaching top ten in the world was brutally difficult in Allison Fisher's day and it's probably no more difficult today.

We all hope Savannah will make the grade and will delight in her future major accomplishments.
I agree, being the best means you are one of the best, no matter the era. If Jean was 13 today, she would still rise to the top, or at least be close. It's the 25-100 that changes the equation. The 100th best, in almost all endeavors, is just better now than thirty, fifty, 100 years ago. Climbing that ladder, fighting that traffic, you have to be a flat out beast.
 
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Yeah on GC's with Diamond rails and tightened pockets there's basically no shelf. I wonder if anyone ordered a custom slate with longer shelf and put it on a GC. After all it's just rock.
yep, rather than spend money on the GC3 should have traded it for a Diamond, Silk purse, sows ear :)
 
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This appears to be Savannah's home table. I found it interesting that given her age she chose a GC1. At any rate, she did get one of the best to calibrate the rails and set it up. One very nice home table.
That's a beautiful looking table, and I'm sure that the rail work is second to none.

However.......
While I try very hard to not be overly critical, that bed cloth installation makes me cringe.
 
Yeah on GC's with Diamond rails and tightened pockets there's basically no shelf. I wonder if anyone ordered a custom slate with longer shelf and put it on a GC. After all it's just rock.
I had the pockets tightened and rails recalibrated for K55 cushions on my GCI, there is no doubt I lost shelf depth but the table had very deep shelfs in original configuration, over 1/2 the ball still fits in the jaws with tight pockets. This isn't a good picture to represent shelf depth, I just put the 1 ball deep enough to get the 3 ball equator even with the pocket point. You can see that there is quite a bit of slate depth beyond the equator of the 1 ball.
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That's a beautiful looking table, and I'm sure that the rail work is second to none.

However.......
While I try very hard to not be overly critical, that bed cloth installation makes me cringe.
Mind if I ask what you didnt care for on the bed cloth installation? I noticed that it didnt look like he trimmed it before putting the rails on and pocket "cuffs" would have been a nice touch.
 
Yeah on GC's with Diamond rails and tightened pockets there's basically no shelf. I wonder if anyone ordered a custom slate with longer shelf and put it on a GC. After all it's just rock.
Yes, Glen (RKC) over in the mechanics forum did that for a customer a few years ago. If I get a chance to find the thread I’ll post a link here.
 
Yes, Glen (RKC) over in the mechanics forum did that for a customer a few years ago. If I get a chance to find the thread I’ll post a link here.
That’s got to be the dumbest thing possible. A tight gold crown with a shallower shelf is how Diamond should have made their pro cut pocket. The mile deep shelf they ended up with is asinine.
 
Mind if I ask what you didnt care for on the bed cloth installation? I noticed that it didnt look like he trimmed it before putting the rails on and pocket "cuffs" would have been a nice touch.
The corner pockets look horrendous. If the corners are that bad, you can bet that the side pockets are even worse (though not visible in the video). This install could certainly have benefited from the pocket Band-Aids that Glen promotes.

The angle of the video and the gray cloth make it difficult to see how straight the grain is, or how even the stretch is. Since they didn't get enough slack to finish the corners, I would guess that it's overstretched across the width. I wouldn't be surprised to see some nasty stretch shadows along at least one side rail.

Just an educated guess.
 
If you mean that Jean, playing at the speed she displayed circa 1985, could not have beaten Han Yu or Siming Chen, the two best players of this era in women's pool, of course you are right.

That said, in her day, Jean was considered about 30th best in the world including the men. Neither Han Yu nor Siming Chen are in the Fargo Top 100, so relative to their contemporaries, I'm not willing to put them in the discussion with Jean.

Jean often beat future male BCA Hallof Famers, and you cannot say the same of today's top two.

I think Jean, given the time and resources available to today's top players, would have been just as dominant today as she was in the 1980s. She is the greatest champion we have ever seen in women's pool, not to mention that she was a world class athlete. Still, as we've often noted on the forum, these "time travel" comparisons are, for practical purposes, impossible.
Do you think that maybe that was more about lack of knowledge of play outside of the U.S. at the time, though? I am not sure that Jean would have been able to deal with even the second tier Filipinos at the time, due to the influence of Efren and Parica (and Rotation) on how the game was played there. Jean was maybe top 30 amongst the players "who played the game the way the Americans did".

Not trying to be argumentative or anything.. Just something to consider.. Even the male American top players at the time really had no idea that they were not really as much "top of the heap" as they thought they were... Sure.. The Phillipines only really sent Reyes and Parica out internationally... And those two pretty much murdered most of the American pros they played in gambling matches... But there were likely a significant number of Filipino players a notch or two under those two, who played a similar type of game, but the Filipino sponsors looking to make some easy money gambling in the U.S. decided to back "only" Reyes and Parica.... Andam and Luat, for example... I wouldn't have liked Jean's chances against those two for example, or anyone else in the Philippines who played maybe half a ball under them, simply due to the different philosophy on how 9 ball was supposed to be played.
 
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Do you think that maybe that was more about lack of knowledge of play outside of the U.S. at the time, though? I am not sure that Jean would have been able to deal with even the second tier Filipinos at the time, due to the influence of Efren and Parica (and Rotation) on how the game was played there. Jean was maybe top 30 amongst the players "who played the game the way the Americans did".

Not trying to be argumentative or anything.. Just something to consider.. Even the male American top players at the time really had no idea that they were not really as much "top of the heap" as they thought they were... Sure.. The Phillipines only really sent Reyes and Parica out internationally... And those two pretty much murdered most of the American pros they played in gambling matches... But there were likely a significant number of Filipino players a notch or two under those two, who played a similar type of game, but the Filipino sponsors looking to make some easy money gambling in the U.S. decided to back "only" Reyes and Parica.... Andam and Luat, for example... I wouldn't have liked Jean's chances against those two for example, or anyone else in the Philippines who played maybe half a ball under them, simply due to the different philosophy on how 9 ball was supposed to be played.
Yes, well said, Russ. Jean was top 30 among those competed regularly, which did not include the Asian players, who were not yet coming to America very often during her career. On the European side, not even Ortmann and Souquet were on the American pool scene during Jean's prime.

Although Reyes first showed up in 1985, the truth is that the "Filipino invasion," as it is so often called in pool vernacular, didn't really happen until the early 1990s, and it wasn't until the mid-1990s until we had more than a few of them competing on American soil. FYI, while Reyes was a superstar on arrival in America who could seemingly beat anyone not named Sigel, the same cannot be said of either Parica or Bustamante. Most of the Filipinos who came to America became really polished players AFTER they got here, not before.

I am in no position to tell you what the level of play in Asia was during Jean's prime, 1975-88 by my reckoning, so it is not easy to say how many of them could have competed with some of the American greats of that period, like Mizerak, Sigel, Varner, Rempe, Strickland, Hall and others.

Today, we are lucky. Pool 's majors always feature diverse, international fields consisting of the cream of the crop worldwide. It was not always that way, and you are right to point it out.
 
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That’s got to be the dumbest thing possible. A tight gold crown with a shallower shelf is how Diamond should have made their pro cut pocket. The mile deep shelf they ended up with is asinine.
Here is a link to that thread. I have no opinion one way or another. I can certainly see how someone who is a loyal Brunswick fan would want their GC to play as close to what they typically play on during tournaments.

 
Yes, well said, Russ. Jean was top 30 among those competed regularly, which did not include the Asian players, who were not yet coming to America very often during her career. On the European side, not even Ortmann and Souquet were on the American pool scene during Jean's prime.

Although Reyes first showed up in 1985, the truth is that the "Filipino invasion," as it is so often called in pool vernacular, didn't really happen until the early 1990s, and it wasn't until the mid-1990s until we had more than a few of them competing on American soil. FYI, while Reyes was a superstar on arrival in America who could seemingly beat anyone not named Sigel, the same cannot be said of either Parica or Bustamante. Most of the Filipinos who came to America became really polished players AFTER they got here, not before.

I am in no position to tell you what the level of play in Asia was during Jean's prime, 1975-88 by my reckoning, so it is not easy to say how many of them could have competed with some of the American greats of that period, like Mizerak, Sigel, Varner, Rempe, Strickland, Hall and others.

Today, we are lucky. Pool 's majors always feature diverse, international fields consisting of the cream of the crop worldwide. It was not always that way, and you are right to point it out.
Are we talking gambling, or tournaments? I really don't know, since I did not get to watch any of them play live until much later, but the word on the street was that Parica murdered a lot of champions on the gambling tables way before he started winning tournaments.

Granted... I think your take is that tournament wins are "the ultimate measure of the man/woman", as that is the only thing that gets put in the record books, and how good a gambler a specific player was is very much a matter of opinion, and there's always the idea that a player can "pick and choose" their engagements to artificially inflate their win rate, i.e. waiting until a player has been in action for 8-10 hours+, and then coming in fresh as a daisy and well-rested.

And realistically, I don't think the level of play in the Phillipines would have been able to stand up in the period you are talking about, simply because Efren hadn't changed the game yet over there. For others in the thread who may not know.. Efren got so good.. So fast, that he killed all his action in the Phillipines, and had to switch to billiards to be able to gamble. Many of the higher level, "eyes popping out of your head" shots he pulled out on TV in later years, were born from two sources: Efren's time learning/gambling at straight rail and three cushion billiards, and sitting on the sidelines watching less talented players get lucky on shots, and Efren trying to figure out a way to incorporate these shots "on purpose" into his game.

Specifically.. He got his phenomenal speed control and knowledge of angles/position play from billiards. And het got a lot of his kicking patterns both from there, and watching lesser players.

And as far as Parica is concerned.... Meh. I think he had a lot of nerve, and had a great stroke and knowledge of the game... But I never put him in quite the same tier as Reyes. I know it has always irritated him that Efren got so much more credit than he did, but I for one believe that was deserved. Efren was a much more well-rounded player. Full stop.
 
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Are we talking gambling, or tournaments? I really don't know, since I did not get to watch any of them play live until much later, but the word on the street was that Parica murdered a lot of champions on the gambling tables way before he started winning tournaments.

Granted... I think your take is that tournament wins are "the ultimate measure of the man/woman", as that is the only thing that gets put in the record books, and how good a gambler a specific player was is very much a matter of opinion, and there's always the idea that a player can "pick and choose" their engagements to artificially inflate their win rate, i.e. waiting until a player has been in action for 8-10 hours+, and then coming in fresh as a daisy and well-rested.

And realistically, I don't think the level of play in the Phillipines would have been able to stand up in the period you are talking about, simply because Efren hadn't changed the game yet over there. For others in the thread who may not know.. Efren got so good.. So fast, that he killed all his action in the Phillipines, and had to switch to billiards to be able to gamble. Many of the higher level, "eyes popping out of your head" shots he pulled out on TV in later years, were born from two sources: Efren's time learning/gambling at straight rail and three cushion billiards, and sitting on the sidelines watching less talented players get lucky on shots, and Efren trying to figure out a way to incorporate these shots "on purpose" into his game.

Specifically.. He got his phenomenal speed control and knowledge of angles/position play from billiards. And het got a lot of his kicking patterns both from there, and watching lesser players.

And as far as Parica is concerned.... Meh. I think he had a lot of nerve, and had a great stroke and knowledge of the game... But I never put him in quite the same tier as Reyes. I know it has always irritated him that Efren got so much more credit than he did, but I for one believe that was deserved. Efren was a much more well-rounded player. Full stop.
I rarely consider action matches in any of my posts of the most part, Russ. I have always believed that greatness is measured in titles, and in particular, world titles.

If money is the measuring stick, the greatest player of all time is Jack Cooney, or possibly even the billionaire Fargo 520 who beat another Fargo 520 out of $10,000,000 in a friendly match. A real champion is one who can beat seven champions in a row on seven different tables, not one hand-picked opponent on a single known table.

A few things. For the record, Parica's greatest successes in action came in the 1990s more than in the 1980s. He was a stone-cold killer in the early 1990s, but he was a slightly later bloomer than Efren, not reaching the number one ranking in the world until he was in his late forties. Second, Jose was the better 9ball player of the two during the 1990s.

Efren was, of course, the better all-around player of the two.
 
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