Shane Repeats Masters win...

[Keith Jawahir]

That part isn't so much directed at you.

Jaden

no worries.

 

[Keith Jawahir]

What do you mean "like everyone else?" I guess you're implying that pool needs to change to suit modern tastes?

Yeah, it's been tried, many, many times. Sudden death 7 ball, shot clocks, speed pool, trick shot competitions, and it all failed miserably. All it did was alienate the hardcore fan and brought no new fans into the game.

So instead of trying to go after the "casual fan," professional pool should look to cater to its hardcore base and give us great pool that is worth watching rather than silly gimmick shit and exhibitions. I never watched that Sudden Death 7 ball garbage nor speed pool and couldn't care less about the Mosconi Cup.

I'm also for exploiting pool's cool factor, which, like it or not, is the gambling/hustling/challenge match aspect of the game. That is what will appeal to the 18-35, not putting these guys in cumberbunds, vests, and bowties, and trying to make the game "classy." Two of the biggest resurgences we saw happen with the game was following the films the Hustler and the Color of Money, and those films were centered on characters that were, for lack of a better word, cool.

This mentality is alien to you, of course, since you're used to snooker's stuffiness and "professionalism," but pool's identity, its soul, has always been two guys testing each other in a smoky back room for big money. Look at all the books published about road gambling, hustling, matching up, traveling the backroads of America looking for a score. I can't think of one book published about the trials and tribulations of a player on the tournament circuit.

They've tried to "legitimize" the game, but it always fails, because it goes against the spirit of what pool is.

Unfortunately, the part of pool that currently enjoys the greatest amount of commercial success is the APA. Jeanette Lee is the Edward Bernays of pool.

 

[midnightpulp]

Unfortunately, the part of pool that currently enjoys the greatest amount of commercial success is the APA. Jeanette Lee is the Edward Bernays of pool.

Yeah. The ironic thing about pool is that everyone likes playing it. Go to any bar, and there's 10 quarters lined up on the rail. Show a kid a pool table and he'll put down his gadget and play.

No one, at least in the US, likes watching it, unless you're a serious player looking to learn something.

So since casuals love drama, that is what needs to be exploited. It's been said many times on here that pro pool would do better if were structured like prize fighting rather than like golf or tennis or even its cousin snooker. This would keep the "gambling challenge" aspect alive while also legitimizing it as a sport (and no, players wouldn't put up their own money, they get paid, win or lose, just like boxing. The challenge is for the proverbial "belt."). You can use social media (which pool players do already to some extent) to hype up these individual match ups, with players barking at each other and the like.

Short race tournaments has brought no new fans and money into the game, and some of the best players in the world still make less than an average 9 to 5er. Time for a change.

 

[Keith Jawahir]

Yeah. The ironic thing about pool is that everyone likes playing it. Go to any bar, and there's 10 quarters lined up on the rail. Show a kid a pool table and he'll put down his gadget and play.

No one, at least in the US, likes watching it, unless you're a serious player looking to learn something.

So since casuals love drama, that is what needs to be exploited. It's been said many times on here that pro pool would do better if were structured like prize fighting rather than like golf or tennis or even its cousin snooker. This would keep the "gambling challenge" aspect alive while also legitimizing it as a sport (and no, players wouldn't put up their own money, they get paid, win or lose, just like boxing. The challenge is for the proverbial "belt."). You can use social media (which pool players do already to some extent) to hype up these individual match ups, with players barking at each other and the like.

Short race tournaments has brought no new fans and money into the game, and some of the best players in the world still make less than an average 9 to 5er. Time for a change.

The game is stuck in the 50's in several ways. More and more people are moving away from their TV's and toward internet-based entertainment.

 

[Keith Jawahir]

I have an off-topic question. Why doesn't the APA play with the larger pool world?

 

[midnightpulp]

The game is stuck in the 50's in several ways. More and more people are moving away from their TV's and toward internet-based entertainment.

Hell, pro pool was in its doldrums even in the 50's. Irving Crane had to work as a car salesman. Snooker across the pond was even worse.

The outlaw aspect will always be the element that draws interest. Fats is still the biggest pool celebrity ever and he embodies that image. Ratings for the challenge matches between him and Mosconi drew big numbers for the day. And Alex Higgins, an "outlaw" himself was responsible for saving snooker.

The characters are what appeal to the casual fan in cue sports, it seems.

 

[Ron Swanson]

What do you mean "like everyone else?" I guess you're implying that pool needs to change to suit modern tastes?

Yeah, it's been tried, many, many times. Sudden death 7 ball, shot clocks, speed pool, trick shot competitions, and it all failed miserably. All it did was alienate the hardcore fan and brought no new fans into the game.

So instead of trying to go after the "casual fan," professional pool should look to cater to its hardcore base and give us great pool that is worth watching rather than silly gimmick shit and exhibitions. I never watched that Sudden Death 7 ball garbage nor speed pool and couldn't care less about the Mosconi Cup.

I'm also for exploiting pool's cool factor, which, like it or not, is the gambling/hustling/challenge match aspect of the game. That is what will appeal to the 18-35, not putting these guys in cumberbunds, vests, and bowties, and trying to make the game "classy." Two of the biggest resurgences we saw happen with the game was following the films the Hustler and the Color of Money, and those films were centered on characters that were, for lack of a better word, cool.

This mentality is alien to you, of course, since you're used to snooker's stuffiness and "professionalism," but pool's identity, its soul, has always been two guys testing each other in a smoky back room for big money. Look at all the books published about road gambling, hustling, matching up, traveling the backroads of America looking for a score. I can't think of one book published about the trials and tribulations of a player on the tournament circuit.

They've tried to "legitimize" the game, but it always fails, because it goes against the spirit of what pool is.

Snooker is popular because it's a good game. People like good games.

Make pool interesting and exciting, and you'll get an audience. Even pool players don't watch pool. What does that tell you?

 

[jasonlaus]

Snooker is popular because it's a good game. People like good games.

Make pool interesting and exciting, and you'll get an audience. Even pool players don't watch pool. What does that tell you?

It's hard to argue with that
Jason

 

[midnightpulp]

Snooker is popular because it's a good game. People like good games.

Make pool interesting and exciting, and you'll get an audience. Even pool players don't watch pool. What does that tell you?

Snooker popular? Only on your tiny island, where they also watch tripe like darts.

Your country is obsessed with pub games, I get that, since every time you put an Englishman on a track, field, out there in the blazing sun, the results are fairly mediocre, so naturally you watch what you can actually play

Pool is a better game than snooker. Phelan reinventing the pocket facings was brilliant, and literally created an infinite number more possible shots, which also forced players to use a greater portion of the cueball outside of the vertical axis and also made defense more sophisticated and challenging (you're never safe in a game of pool, while you can just continuously use distance in snooker and always have 3 balls in baulk to try and hide behind).

Snooker's whole novelty is the size of the table and pockets. It's a fine game and sometimes imaginative (some of the kicks they do to get out of snookers, still nothing compared to what Efren Reyes has come up with, though), but pool is more evolved, and the imagination required to play it is unrivaled in pocket billiards. That's why snooker is a "young man's" game, since accuracy and technique reign supreme, while 14.1 and one pocket are "old man" games, where knowledge, experience, and imagination are more important. The rotation games are somewhere in the middle.

You'll hem and haw, but there's a reason that pool is the dominant cue sport the world over.

 

[poolhallbanger]

Ronnie O'Sullivan, Alex Pagulayan & Darren Appleton?

Ok here we go. Allison Fisher, Karen Corr & Darren Appleton all from the United Kingdom and all skilled cueists. All came to the states and adapted American pool
and excelled to World Champion status. Ronnie O'Sullivan made a fortune playing
snooker and dabbled a bit in the IPT fiasco a few years back for fun. So far what am
I getting at is that pool is easier than snooker to rise to the level of World Champion.
I say this because it doesn't hold true in reverse. Just ask King James Rempe or more
recently Alex Pagulayan who has repeatedly failed to make the cut for inclusion to the
professional snooker tour. Whether you like the game or not to become a World Champion at snooker is infinitely more difficult than becoming a World Champion at
pool. If it was I am sure Efren Reyes, Francisco Bustamante and a large contingent
of Pinoys would be competing in professional snooker which has much better organization, sponsors and ultimately much much larger prize funds than pool. Darren
Appleton, who never played a 14.1 game in his life prior to coming to the states. became
a straight pool 14.1 champion a couple years ago by besting a contingent of the best 14.1
players in the world and finished it off by winning the final match with a run of 200 and out something that had never been done before. :thumbup:

 

[pocket]

Snooker isn't popular in the US because we grew up with pocket billiards. Soccer gets no audience here, doesn't mean it's not interesting to watch. We grew up watching football.

 

[mjantti]

Snooker is interesting to watch because it is difficult, even for the top players. I rather watch a high level snooker match instead of a high level 9-ball match. With difficulty comes also more drama. And that's what viewers want. If the viewers watch shot after shot thinking "I can do that", the interest level drops instantly.

 

[midnightpulp]

Ok here we go. Allison Fisher, Karen Corr & Darren Appleton all from the United Kingdom and all skilled cueists. All came to the states and adapted American pool

Appleton didn't play much snooker, and grew up on English 8 ball. You might say, "Well, that really proves those smaller pockets better prepare a player for American Pool and American pool players can't adapt in kind." Wrong. Concerning Jim Rempe, he went across the pond in the mid-80's and won the English 8 ball World Championship in dominant fashion, beating their legendary champ Joe Barbara. And it was on an 8 x 4 size table, much larger than the usual 6 x 3.

As far as Allison and Karen are concerned, I admit the transition at an older age (older than 30) is easier for a snooker player to make to rotation pool than vice versa, but that has nothing to do with snooker players being naturally better cueists and/or snooker being an inherently harder game and everything to do with how hand eye coordination starts to wane after that age, which is more important in snooker than all cue sports given the distance and sizes of the pocket.

Here's some further thoughts on the "transition argument" I had in an earlier post, and why it's flawed:

The reason the transition is easier is because snooker players don't have to "unlearn" any bad habits during the transition. They can easily add the use of English to their already solid game built around using the center axis of the cue ball, while unlearning English after a lifetime of using it on virtually every shot is a mammoth task for a pool player to do coming over to snooker. The implications go further than just cueing and affect how one normally plays position, as well. Snooker players use natural angles. Pool players are required to create angles a great deal of the time. Then they go try to create angles in snooker, and get humbled.

Someone will definitely say, "Well, doesn't that mean snooker players are better cueists then?"

No.

If the challenge were now changed to transition to 3 cushion (I'd wager that if we polled the site, the majority of posters would vote that 3 cushion has the highest learning curve of ALL the cue sports), then the pool player would make a much easier transition. Now he can use English, stroke the cue ball like he's used to, and create angles and spin the cue ball around multiple rails. Take Earl, take Ronnie, give them a year at 3 cushion, and I'd bet my house that Earl would average at least 50% more points per inning than Ronnie. Same thing if you took Shane and Judd Trump. Selby and Ko, etc, etc.

And that is why the transition argument of, "Well, what proves that pool is an easier game than snooker is that snooker players seem to make the transition easier." is flawed. It's totally arbitrary depending on which and what games you're transitioning to and from, and doesn't prove anything about game difficulty or cueing ability.

Ronnie O'Sullivan made a fortune playing
snooker and dabbled a bit in the IPT fiasco a few years back for fun.

Why do people always assume Ronnie just "dabbled" and did it for "fun?" I've addressed that idea earlier, and reading interviews from the time suggested Ronnie was quite enamored with pool ("I get a bigger buzz from pool than snooker at the moment.") and practiced quite a bit. Then he got rolled by Archer and Quinten Hann and quickly went back to snooker. Whether this was because the folding of the IPT, I don't know, but he wasn't exactly impressive. Jimmy White even fared worse.

So far what am I getting at is that pool is easier than snooker to rise to the level of World Champion.
I say this because it doesn't hold true in reverse. Just ask King James Rempe or more
recently Alex Pagulayan who has repeatedly failed to make the cut for inclusion to the
professional snooker tour.

Rempe was like 40 when he tried, and Alex came to the game late, too. Alex's offensive game is also at the level of mid-ranking snooker pros, so "potting balls on that giant table with those tiny pockets" isn't a problem for him. He just lacks the knowledge and experience on the tactical side, I'm sure, which can only be gained by moving to the UK full time.

And re: Easier to win a world championship in 9 ball than snooker. Because snooker tournaments are much better structured than 9 ball tournaments. The early rounds of the World 9 ball championship used to have races to 5. A joke.

And more on the relative difficulty of the games, our own Poolmanis here has run centuries before 100 in straight pool.

If it was I am sure Efren Reyes, Francisco Bustamante and a large contingent
of Pinoys would be competing in professional snooker which has much better organization, sponsors and ultimately much much larger prize funds than pool.

Another myth. If you're not in the top 20ish, you make no good money in snooker. And it would be pretty foolish for Efren, Busta, Alex, etc to give up more money in pool just to be a middling pro in snooker (like Chris Melling or someone, who's best year was 15K US). On the flip side, no snooker convert has really killed it at the bank in American pool either.

Darren
Appleton, who never played a 14.1 game in his life prior to coming to the states. became
a straight pool 14.1 champion a couple years ago by besting a contingent of the best 14.1
players in the world and finished it off by winning the final match with a run of 200 and out something that had never been done before. :thumbup:

Again, Darren was never a snooker player (although I'm sure he played it, just like a lot of pool players played 3 cushion as their 2nd game back in the day).

I don't dislike snooker, just the arrogance displayed from their fans and its players, which flood every youtube pool video with their bullshit. If we really want to be elitist about it, 3 cushion is the hardest major cue sport on Earth, and like I said, every American pool player would convert over to that game much quicker than a snooker player.

So who are the better cueists?

 

[Ak147]

Another myth. If you're not in the top 20ish, you make no good money in snooker.

Here are the top 64 snooker pro earning after 2015 The Kaspersky Lab Riga Open in POUNDS (GBP). Appleton is the top earner in pool (as per AZB moneyladder) made 80K GBP(125K USD) which is equivalent to 40th ranked player in snooker. Not sure if you call that good money.

:1 :Mark Selby :749,782
:2 :Stuart Bingham :596,178
:3 ing Junhui :584,600
:4 :Neil Robertson :493,943
:5 :Ronnie O'Sullivan :460,866
:6 :Shaun Murphy :451,057
:7 :Judd Trump :402,474
:8 :Barry Hawkins :382,433
:9 :Joe Perry :336,290
:10 :Ricky Walden :319,727
:11 :Mark Allen :313,225
:12 :Marco Fu :265,116
:13 :John Higgins MBE :265,067
:14 :Mark Williams MBE :236,625
:15 :Stephen Maguire :211,866
:16 :Michael White :178,974
:17 :Graeme Dott :175,816
:18 :Mark Davis :160,693
:19 :Robert Milkins :160,060
:20 :Ryan Day :156,699
:21 :Liang Wenbo :142,201
:22 :Xiao Guodong :136,911
:23 :Anthony McGill :135,626
:24 :Michael Holt :135,448
:25 :Martin Gould :131,684
:26 :Alan McManus :130,159
:27 :Matthew Selt :119,574
:28 :Fergal O'Brien :115,791
:29 :Allister Carter :112,950
:30 eter Ebdon :106,317
:31 :Ben Woollaston :102,915
:32 :Jamie Jones :101,908
:33 :Gary Wilson :99,006
:34 :Matthew Stevens :96,234
:35 :Mark King :95,151
:36 :Rod Lawler :94,240
:37 :Kurt Maflin :92,900
:38 ominic Dale :92,791
:39 avid Brown Gilbert :92,741
:40 :Gerard Greene :84,682
:41 :Mark Joyce :81,831
:42 :Jamie Burnett :78,350
:43 :Luca Brecel :77,331
:44 :Jimmy Robertson :76,530
:45 :Mike Dunn :75,354
:46 :Ken Doherty :71,875
:47 :Thepchaiya Un-Nooh :71,698
:48 :Andrew Higginson :70,624
:49 :Robbie Williams :69,606
:50 :Aditya Mehta :68,597
:51 echawat Poomjaeng :67,873
:52 :Jack Lisowski :65,857
:53 :Yu Delu :64,850
:54 :Kyren Wilson :62,724
:55 avid Morris :60,041
:56 :Tom Ford :58,949
:57 :Li Hang :58,900
:58 :Robin Hull :56,166
:59 :Joe Swail :55,488
:60 eter Lines :54,349
:61 :Stuart Carrington :53,722
:62 :Rory McLeod :48,924
:63 :Anthony Hamilton :48,482
:64 :Cao Yupeng :46,400

 

[Ron Swanson]

Snooker popular? Only on your tiny island, where they also watch tripe like darts.

Your country is obsessed with pub games, I get that, since every time you put an Englishman on a track, field, out there in the blazing sun, the results are fairly mediocre, so naturally you watch what you can actually play

Pool is a better game than snooker. Phelan reinventing the pocket facings was brilliant, and literally created an infinite number more possible shots, which also forced players to use a greater portion of the cueball outside of the vertical axis and also made defense more sophisticated and challenging (you're never safe in a game of pool, while you can just continuously use distance in snooker and always have 3 balls in baulk to try and hide behind).

Snooker's whole novelty is the size of the table and pockets. It's a fine game and sometimes imaginative (some of the kicks they do to get out of snookers, still nothing compared to what Efren Reyes has come up with, though), but pool is more evolved, and the imagination required to play it is unrivaled in pocket billiards. That's why snooker is a "young man's" game, since accuracy and technique reign supreme, while 14.1 and one pocket are "old man" games, where knowledge, experience, and imagination are more important. The rotation games are somewhere in the middle.

You'll hem and haw, but there's a reason that pool is the dominant cue sport the world over.

Lol. What??

 

[Ron Swanson]

Ok here we go. Allison Fisher, Karen Corr & Darren Appleton all from the United Kingdom and all skilled cueists. All came to the states and adapted American pool
and excelled to World Champion status. Ronnie O'Sullivan made a fortune playing
snooker and dabbled a bit in the IPT fiasco a few years back for fun. So far what am
I getting at is that pool is easier than snooker to rise to the level of World Champion.
I say this because it doesn't hold true in reverse. Just ask King James Rempe or more
recently Alex Pagulayan who has repeatedly failed to make the cut for inclusion to the
professional snooker tour. Whether you like the game or not to become a World Champion at snooker is infinitely more difficult than becoming a World Champion at
pool. If it was I am sure Efren Reyes, Francisco Bustamante and a large contingent
of Pinoys would be competing in professional snooker which has much better organization, sponsors and ultimately much much larger prize funds than pool. Darren
Appleton, who never played a 14.1 game in his life prior to coming to the states. became
a straight pool 14.1 champion a couple years ago by besting a contingent of the best 14.1
players in the world and finished it off by winning the final match with a run of 200 and out something that had never been done before. :thumbup:

Mystery explained.
http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=396932

 

[midnightpulp]

Here are the top 64 snooker pro earning after 2015 The Kaspersky Lab Riga Open in POUNDS (GBP). Appleton is the top earner in pool (as per AZB moneyladder) made 80K GBP(125K USD) which is equivalent to 40th ranked player in snooker. Not sure if you call that good money.

:1 :Mark Selby :749,782
:2 :Stuart Bingham :596,178
:3 ing Junhui :584,600
:4 :Neil Robertson :493,943
:5 :Ronnie O'Sullivan :460,866
:6 :Shaun Murphy :451,057
:7 :Judd Trump :402,474
:8 :Barry Hawkins :382,433
:9 :Joe Perry :336,290
:10 :Ricky Walden :319,727
:11 :Mark Allen :313,225
:12 :Marco Fu :265,116
:13 :John Higgins MBE :265,067
:14 :Mark Williams MBE :236,625
:15 :Stephen Maguire :211,866
:16 :Michael White :178,974
:17 :Graeme Dott :175,816
:18 :Mark Davis :160,693
:19 :Robert Milkins :160,060
:20 :Ryan Day :156,699
:21 :Liang Wenbo :142,201
:22 :Xiao Guodong :136,911
:23 :Anthony McGill :135,626
:24 :Michael Holt :135,448
:25 :Martin Gould :131,684
:26 :Alan McManus :130,159
:27 :Matthew Selt :119,574
:28 :Fergal O'Brien :115,791
:29 :Allister Carter :112,950
:30 eter Ebdon :106,317
:31 :Ben Woollaston :102,915
:32 :Jamie Jones :101,908
:33 :Gary Wilson :99,006
:34 :Matthew Stevens :96,234
:35 :Mark King :95,151
:36 :Rod Lawler :94,240
:37 :Kurt Maflin :92,900
:38 ominic Dale :92,791
:39 avid Brown Gilbert :92,741
:40 :Gerard Greene :84,682
:41 :Mark Joyce :81,831
:42 :Jamie Burnett :78,350
:43 :Luca Brecel :77,331
:44 :Jimmy Robertson :76,530
:45 :Mike Dunn :75,354
:46 :Ken Doherty :71,875
:47 :Thepchaiya Un-Nooh :71,698
:48 :Andrew Higginson :70,624
:49 :Robbie Williams :69,606
:50 :Aditya Mehta :68,597
:51 echawat Poomjaeng :67,873
:52 :Jack Lisowski :65,857
:53 :Yu Delu :64,850
:54 :Kyren Wilson :62,724
:55 avid Morris :60,041
:56 :Tom Ford :58,949
:57 :Li Hang :58,900
:58 :Robin Hull :56,166
:59 :Joe Swail :55,488
:60 eter Lines :54,349
:61 :Stuart Carrington :53,722
:62 :Rory McLeod :48,924
:63 :Anthony Hamilton :48,482
:64 :Cao Yupeng :46,400

After taxes, traveling expenses, the higher cost of living in many Euro countries, the top 30 and below are basically living a upper/middle class life. Not bad, but not "big money" like snooker fans say. The big money is only for the top 10-12 guys.

So why would Alex or Efren (in his prime) forsake the 6 or 7 figures (in the case of Efren, who probably cleared a million a couple of times combined with tournaments, gambling, and endorsements) forsake that to chase 20 or 30K in snooker? At this late in their careers, it's unlikely they would crack the top 128. I think Alex has the skills, but not the seasoning, and for that, he'd have to move to the UK full time for a few years.

 

[Maxx]

There is just one viewer in the AZ snooker subforum.

If you snooker fanboys moved this over there they would appreciate the company.

 

[Keith Jawahir]

Everyone keeps forgetting that Jayson Shaw is also an English 8-ball world champion. I think John Schmidt said it best. The reason snooker is so popular is because you automatically know what's going on once you take the 30 seconds to learn the game. Red, color. red, color. Little old ladies watch Ronnie run a 147 and they understand what they just watched. Pool Players:

what game are they playing?
what's the race to?
what rules are they using? (magic rack/triangle/blahblahblah, break box, call shot)
for how much?

I'm sure there are more questions that get asked, but you get my point.

 

[poolhallbanger]

is the fat lady singing here?

I am not trying to win an argument here I am merely stating factual evidence to support my theory that professional snooker in the UK is a much more refined and skilled game than American professional pool played in the U.S. Another major factor distinguishing snooker from American pool is of course the luck factor. So I ask you mathematicians out there to ponder how often in mathematical terms is it that a far lesser player will win a professional pool tournament, or a match against a much better player, in American pool -VS- the same scenario in professional snooker. I am convinced that the luck factor here in American pool is off the charts in comparison to professional snooker. This argument hold s true when we consider the character of each game as well. Professional snooker rules have evolved very very little over the years especially when you compare it to the American rotation games. Why is this? Well its the luck factor primarily that the professional players themselves want to limit. Pro's simply don't want someone to get lucky and beat them. So they are continually adapting rules and equipment designed to minimize the luck factor. This goes against public taste for drama in competitive sport which is why you don't see much televised pool anymore. Consider the failure of Bonus Ball which had many favorable ingredients for televised viewing but failed because it was just too difficult for the average poolplayer to comprehend. So there you go do your homework and lets see
what you come up with?