8, 9, and 10 ball only. Table size is not taken into account.
Shane losing his #1 Fargo spot
- Thread starter benjaminwah
- Start date
Shane will rise again. He's still elite and is often found in contention in the late rounds of major events. He just needs to get over the finish line the way he could just five short years ago.
That said, the quality at the top of our game now is higher than ever before, and Europe showed that it has a lot of muscle to flex at the Derby: 1) Bank Pool Final: Gorst over Shaw, 2) One Pocket Final: Gorst over Roberts, 3) 10-ball Final: Filler over Gorst, 4) 9-ball Final: Sanchez-Ruiz over Filler
Winning the premier events has never been more difficult in the nine-ball era, but we are entering a period in pool where more prize money than ever before is available, and if that's not enough to motivate an elite player still in his prime to go for it more than ever before, it will be both a surprise and a shame.
Go get 'em Shane!
This I agree with. Although I'm sure all the top dogs would like to have fargo braggings rights. Until there is something that rides on being the #1 player at say the end of some imaginary season. It's nothing more than a feather in someone's cap.
I don't relate to the concept of fargo being a handicap system. I don't play in tournaments that use handicapping in match play. Using rating ranges to limit player skill levels sure, but that isn't handicapping me. Just only prevents me from playing to begin with.
For those inclined to pooh pooh Fargo Rate ....
Matchroom has unveiled its own new ranking system and I'm very excited about it. That said, Matchroom has been very candid about how it will take a while for those rankings to really mean something, at very least a full complement of Matchroom ranking events. Equally clear is that the WPA rankings have become a complete joke, in part due to penalizing those who skipped events due to COVID. If you believe in the WPA rankings, you are fine with Josh Filler at #28, Dennis Orcullo at #29, JL Chang at #65 and, lest we forget, Tyler Styer at #16.
At this moment in time, Fargo is, by a country mile, the very best method for measuring pro players against each other, and it looks like it will be for quite a while.
Put as ridiculously as possible, I could care less whether pro players could care less about their Fargo Ratings. Fargo offers the most dependable measure in the game today of past performance in competition.
One day, the Matchroom rankings may well prove an excellent measure of past performance, but until we get there, Fargo gets the job done better than any ranking system in the game today.
Fargo has added, is adding, and will continue to add great value in our sport.
Matchroom has unveiled its own new ranking system and I'm very excited about it. That said, Matchroom has been very candid about how it will take a while for those rankings to really mean something, at very least a full complement of Matchroom ranking events. Equally clear is that the WPA rankings have become a complete joke, in part due to penalizing those who skipped events due to COVID. If you believe in the WPA rankings, you are fine with Josh Filler at #28, Dennis Orcullo at #29, JL Chang at #65 and, lest we forget, Tyler Styer at #16.
At this moment in time, Fargo is, by a country mile, the very best method for measuring pro players against each other, and it looks like it will be for quite a while.
Put as ridiculously as possible, I could care less whether pro players could care less about their Fargo Ratings. Fargo offers the most dependable measure in the game today of past performance in competition.
One day, the Matchroom rankings may well prove an excellent measure of past performance, but until we get there, Fargo gets the job done better than any ranking system in the game today.
Fargo has added, is adding, and will continue to add great value in our sport.
Thanks Stu.
That "measure of past performance" you mention we call PERFORMANCE
Finish places in actual competitions and associated points we call COMPETITION
Between
(1) the nature of our competitions where even within a single event competitors have different paths to the high-point rounds, and
(2) the modest frequency of our major competitions (even if those increase the way we hope they will),
using mere COMPETITION points for ranking will, imo, always fall short of your expectations.
The cases you mention above are all situations where there is a large gap between COMPETITION (points) and PERFORMANCE (Fargo Rating).
While COMPETITION alone is not the right answer for rankings, neither is PERFORMANCE, i.e., Fargo Ratings.
There is a lot of benefit of having competition points. Available points tell top players which events are must-be-there events. The rankings shuffle a lot after each event increasing fan engagement. This year's emerging talent can shine through.
What's desirable is to keep these benefits of competition points without having Styer shoot to the top rungs because he won Kremlin cup playing races to 8 and beating nobody over 800 and without having Filler plummet because he missed an event or some other top player plummet because he lost close matches to Ouschan and Pagulayan first two rounds of a big event. We blend COMPETITION and PERFORMANCE in a way that honors the COMPETITION but dulls the swings away from a PERFORMANCE measure.
Here is a somewhat analogous tension. You have four separate HEATS of the 800 meter run, and you want to decide which 12 runners to advance to the finals.
A COMPETITION approach would be to advance the top 3 from each heat
A PERFORMANCE approach would be to advance the 12 fastest times overall
A BLENDED approach--the kind of thing you actually see--might be
-- advance top 2 from each heat regardless of time
--advance next 4 fastest times regardless of which heat they were in
The PERFORMANCE measure could be a specific absolute performance (like time in this run) or it could be a season best time or or could be some sort of average measure of recent past performance like a batting average.
These are all new ideas because pool has never before had a global measure of past performance. But it has one now and will moving forward. In the approach we use for the Pro Billiard Series, the PERFORMANCE measure is constrained to be no more influential than the COMPETITION measure.
US Pro Billiard Series
I believe Gorst V. Kaci opening round starts in 40 minutes (10am central)
Thanks for a well-presented and thoughtful post, Mike. I sometimes wonder whether I might be even more sold on Fargo rate than you are, but I know we are both great believers in the value they add.Thanks Stu.
That "measure of past performance" you mention we call PERFORMANCE
Finish places in actual competitions and associated points we call COMPETITION
Between
(1) the nature of our competitions where even within a single event competitors have different paths to the high-point rounds, and
(2) the modest frequency of our major competitions (even if those increase the way we hope they will),
using mere COMPETITION points for ranking will, imo, always fall short of your expectations.
The cases you mention above are all situations where there is a large gap between COMPETITION (points) and PERFORMANCE (Fargo Rating).
While COMPETITION alone is not the right answer for rankings, neither is PERFORMANCE, i.e., Fargo Ratings.
There is a lot of benefit of having competition points. Available points tell top players which events are must-be-there events. The rankings shuffle a lot after each event increasing fan engagement. This year's emerging talent can shine through.
What's desirable is to keep these benefits of competition points without having Styer shoot to the top rungs because he won Kremlin cup playing races to 8 and beating nobody over 800 and without having Filler plummet because he missed an event or some other top player plummet because he lost close matches to Ouschan and Pagulayan first two rounds of a big event. We blend COMPETITION and PERFORMANCE in a way that honors the COMPETITION but dulls the swings away from a PERFORMANCE measure.
Here is a somewhat analogous tension. You have four separate HEATS of the 800 meter run, and you want to decide which 12 runners to advance to the finals.
A COMPETITION approach would be to advance the top 3 from each heat
A PERFORMANCE approach would be to advance the 12 fastest times overall
A BLENDED approach--the kind of thing you actually see--might be
-- advance top 2 from each heat regardless of time
--advance next 4 fastest times regardless of which heat they were in
The PERFORMANCE measure could be a specific absolute performance (like time in this run) or it could be a season best time or or could be some sort of average measure of recent past performance like a batting average.
These are all new ideas because pool has never before had a global measure of past performance. But it has one now and will moving forward. In the approach we use for the Pro Billiard Series, the PERFORMANCE measure is constrained to be no more influential than the COMPETITION measure.
US Pro Billiard Series
usproseries.fargorate.com
I believe Gorst V. Kaci opening round starts in 40 minutes (10am central)
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Just my $.02 here but i think the WPA is nothing but a paper tiger of an org. staffed by a bunch of stuffed shirts. Does anybody really give a rodent's behind what they do/say? Looks to me that Matchroom is the big dog on the block and is the org. that's going to lead pool forward. Not knocking what Pred/CSI/Fargo are doing but MR seems to have much more global reach. Really hope that MR and the ProSeries find common ground as pool needs them both.
While it's easy to take this view, and despite a growing number of reasons to do so, WPA's importance is not so easily dismissed. The reason is that WPA sanctioning of an event is still a big deal, because, in countries where national Olympic money goes to pool players, the players can usually get funding when they participate in WPA sanctioned events.
Hence, while I see WPA Rankings as useless and so grounded in fiction as to belong on the endangered list, I still think that WPA sanctioning of events is important. I applaud both CSI and Matchroom for continuing to try to work with WPA in mapping out pool's future, but if Matchroom develops a near stranglehold on pro pool somewhere down the road, they themselves will probably be the ones writing the rules for the administration of pool globally, provided they wish to do so.
Let's see how things evolve in our sport before prematurely dismissing the importance of WPA. After all, WPA sanctioning fees collected are reinvested in pool globally. Similarly, the WPA event calendar adds value to pro pool, ensuring that event producers that attain WPA sanctioning will not be vulnerable to others who might consider having an event during those same dates.
Yes, I'm one of the last real proponents of WPA, but I'm not delusional, and recognize that they seem to add less value than at some other moments in our sport's history.
I'm not super-knowledgeable on this matter, but I think it's primarily a grass-roots level reinvestment to support pool's global infrastructure.
I'm sure Bob Jewett would know, if you care to PM him.
Exactly
I doubt it. He's a guaranteed hall of famer. He's won it just about all. He's a millionaire from making intelligent moves with his winnings. He's going to just sit back and fish when he can. With his skills will still probably make 100K a year in tournament money without much effort. I think he's done it...and doesn't have that drive anymore. Let him enjoy the spoils of his success.