Siming Chen
- Thread starter Rhea
- Start date
A statement with not a singe crumb of supporting data or reasoning behind it. NEXT!! Anyone have something worthwhile to say?
Last edited:
You get more draw with a softer tip.
There is no difference between male/females in ability to play cue sports nor does any geographic origin of birth produce genetically advanced abilities to play pool than others. It’s all a bunch of variables. Done. Next subject?
Vive la difference!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let us talk about what we wanna talk about... Quit smothering us!!!!
Well, I think I’m not really going off topic...
...chess rankings for women reflect the same situation as pool rankings....
....some women are very good and legit grandmasters...
...but none are in the topmost rankings...
...so eliminating the physical, it’s probably how the sexes perceive...
....which is fine with me...that’s why I say “Vive la difference”
...I’m glad my mother didn’t think like Willie Mosconi.
You are correct...:boring2: :embarrassed2:
I’ve always wondered if that could happen in a real game..
...I would love to see the annotation.
‘Course, some people think a smothered mate is when your old lady strangles you.
It totally can. It can happen a number of ways against a castled King, but in that particular graphic, looks like the f pawn was traded off, White controls the f file with a Rook, and Queen just sacrificed herself on g8 while Knight was protecting her from h6. This forced the Rook to capture the Q, entombing the K, leaving Knight to checkmate as shown.
It's actually a common pattern where the Knight pinwheels g5-f7-h6, either giving checks or revealing them from a Queen/Bishop on the a2-g8 diagonal.
If Black hasn't castled and his rook is still at h8, this whole pattern can also be moved over one square.
This is why chess masters are kind born, not made, because pattern recognition is by far the most critical skill to have as a chess player. Some people (like me) can't imprint the pattern as easily/strongly as someone who has the correct neural makeup/capabilities.
I study the patterns for hours, but the patterns just never get to the point where they "pop" off the board at me. Probably is associated with my poor muscle memory, that I mentioned in another thread. I have to practice for a LOT of hours to keep my game at a high level. There is a chess master who wrote a book on the brain mechanisms responsible for each of the critical skills associated with becoming a master player. If your brain lacks any of the critical components, it's pretty much impossible to ever become a master.
Short Bus Russ
Last edited:
If you told 10 different people that there are
274 chess grandmasters in Russia
96 chess grandmasters in United States
0 chess grandmasters in Japan
0 chess grandmasters in Taiwan
and invited them to speculate why, they probably wouldn't speculate that Russians are genetically more competitive than Taiwanese or that Russians are genetically smarter than Japanese.
Chances are they would shrug and say, "I don't know I guess maybe chess is more popular in Russia."
Try asking why the worlds top scientists have come far more from Europe than Africa over the last few centuries. People might not want to come out and say it, but I think you'd find a lot more people thinking that perhaps Europeans are a little more genetically predisposed for intellectual pursuits. The problem is this is no more valid than in the chess case. People would be taking a conclusion they already have--for whatever reason--and retrofitting it to the situation.
Why are there more top male pool players than top women pool players? Duh! It's the Russia vs Taiwan chess thing.
It's lazy thinking to note the data falls in line with your preconceived notions about biological differences. Are their biological differences between men and women? Of course there are. Are some of those differences related to traits that might differentially impact pool? Yes. But that stuff and its potential role is TINY compared to the elephant in the room: pool is more popular amongst men.
Let's talk about biological differences with direct impact on pool ability. What if one group of players for some reason could get a far more encompassing overhead view of every shot and table layout. What if they could reach shots far more easily? What if for some people the bed of the table was conveniently at height where their hips bend, and for others it was far from it. If it was men and women that had these differences, we'l be pointing them out as a big deal and explaining all sorts of things.
But if it's a coupla male road partners? ....shrug, comes out in the wash...
We're not even talking about it.
Attachments
Last edited:
Patterns....I was a country kid...us'ns didn't know all that much...but I played chess
since I was a kid....but I learned the game playing with crossed kings and queens.
...started to play again in the big city...I could beat a few players...street chess for $.
Had a friend who was a problem solver...worked on contracts for big companies...
...he was too good for me....so one night at a party, we played by a yard light at a
swimming pool...wine drinking was involved...so I went into my game-making trash-
talking mode and set up the board with crossed kings and queens...I won...
...patterns..
Quit chess years ago to play backgammon....more action..satisfies the same urges.
Except, it's not. One is a debate of whether women have a genetic predisposition to avoid competition, and the other is an observation of a cultural preference. Cuz I would assume that chess is equally popular amongst women AND men in Russia, which is comparing apples to apples. But the women still aren't as good.
I personally submit that women as a collective group have less desire to compete, and THAT is the reason they do not do so in as many numbers as men, not because of any societal norm that discourages them from doing so.
I would go so far as to say that a lot of Russian girls might get pushed towards focusing on chess against their wishes. Granted, I might have no proof whatsoever of this claim, but it is a plausible explanation why, even with much higher participation rates in Russia, women still do not reach the same heights. Women may be genetically disposed to have other interests (family rearing?, participating in social gatherings? supporting ill or depressed friends/family? Simply...dating?)
Again, let's look at what the role of females versus males in the animal kingdom, specifically mammals. A female's role from a biological perspective is to survive long enough to reach breeding age, to pick the strongest genetic material available from all present males, submit to that male to mate, and then to protect and nurture the offspring until they reach reproductive age. That's it.
From the male perspective, their role is to also survive long enough to reach breeding age, but also to practice the skills needed when competing for mates. This is why male mammals tend to be much more rambunctious and playful with each other, roughousing as a means to practice the fighting skills needed later.
After they reach breeding age, a male's job is to compete very aggressively and violently to defeat all challenging males, in order to secure breeding rights. It literally is a matter of life or death. If the male is not successful in breeding, his DNA is not passed on, and the traits that kept him from being successful are not passed on. After successful breeding, the male's job then is to continue to be very aggressive in defending the feeding territory for his offspring, to insure they make it to breeding age. If the area doesn't have enough food, he kicks the adolescent out and makes him go find his own territory.
So, in essence, male DNA through natural selection, is selected if it results in more successful competition and aggressiveness, and a female's is if she successfully selects and submits to the strongest male.
I dunno. Looking at both the animal kingdom, and observing human behavior, all this seems pretty self-apparent.
Women always ask, "Why do I always fall for assholes?" The answer: "Because you are genetically programmed to find and submit to alpha males, and alpha males tend to not be very nice. This isn't rocket science.."
And this is where the animal kingdom really gives us clues to what's really going on. Humanity likes to think it is ruled by logic. But it is not logical to want someone who does not treat you well upon the very first meeting. BUT... It happens. And many women jump right in the sack with that dude, because "Oh, he's a bad boy..."
I submit that people are walking around in a daze of instinctual behavior that has nothing whatsoever to do with logic, and they don't even know it.
Okay, now you're the one being intellectual lazy. You are comparing height as a relevant biological difference in pool, and comparing to my argument that perhaps women as a group don't have as large a need to "win at all costs". Men will die to compete for territory and resources, because those are what is needed to provide for a family to successfully reach breeding age, and for their offspring's offspring to reach breeding age.
Women, as a general rule, fight to protect themselves and their offspring. They don't fight for resources.
Oh, and I assume you were being somewhat humorous in your reference to height as a major factor that we should be talking about. Well, I'd be REAL interested if the conversation were revolving around snooker,which is tiny pockets on a 12 foot table, versus pool, with larger pockets, on a 9 foot table..
Ahhhhh...... Now we got summin' to talk about. The shortest top-ranked pro on the snooker tour is around 5'8". And I would guess that dude has a few inches on Pagulayan, yes?
The four tallest top snooker pros (minimum height, 72 inches), Steve Davis, Mark Selby, Stephen Hendry, and John Higgins have 20 World Snooker Championships betwixt them. Honorable mention for Ronnie O' Sullivan, who comes in at two inches shorter. The dropoff in World title holders after that is... Significant.
So... Nah yeh nah.... If we were talking about a kiddie table of 3 feet by 2 feet, I agree that it would be ridiculous to debate height as a potential factor. In fact, Bernie The Next Door Midget MIGHT finally get himself a world championship.
Barring that, I will continue to claim that genetics plays a very big part in sports performance, and that women and men are genetically different.. At least as evidenced by the pen0r and vajayjay as external indicators...
(Forgive me.. I can only be semi-intellectual for a limited time.. My crude side has to sabotage the effort at some point...)
Last edited:
....is a magic dude up in the sky looking out for their best interests at all times... You'd get a fist bump from half or more of them.
Yeah... Let's leave the great unwashed masses out of this intellectual debate, shall we?
LOL.. :grin-square::thumbup::grin-square:
These guys drove 30 hours straight to make the event in Cali true Road Warriors lol
Attachments
Last edited:
That's because a porous softer tip holds more chalk.
Here we go again with the "less women participate in X which explains why they are never as good" excuse that we always get from those that ignore the absolutely overwhelming evidence because they are blinded by the bias caused by their desperate desire for women and men to be equal in ability. I don't prefer inequalities either but never the less I choose to accept and deal with the reality even when I happen to hate the reality.
There is no doubt that less participation in pool by women is a factor in their under performance when compared to men but the totality of the evidence points to it being a minor factor among many factors rather than the main or compelling factor, or even more absurdly, the only factor.
One thing the "less women participate in pool" argument people always conveniently overlook is that it doesn't explain why women are not the best in the world at least part of the time. If women and men were truly equal in ability, and if say only 25% of pool players were women, then what you would expect to see is that the very best pool player in the world would be a woman roughly 25% of the time. If only 10% of pool players were women you would expect to see the best player in the world be a woman roughly 10% of the time. The fact is that we don't see that. In fact we have never seen a woman be the best pool player in the world, ever, even for one single minute. In fact we have never seen a woman be even remotely close to being the best in the world at any point in time in the hundreds of years that various pool games have been played. Given the sample size and length of time we are working with these results can really only be explained by an inequality in ability. The same applies to chess.
I would take a whole book to cover all the reasons women are not as good at pool as men but Russ hit on a few of the many. Here is some more food for thought for those that can’t accept how women and men could have different aptitudes for pool. Think of all the things that can be done by humans, anything you can possibly think of. There are literally billions of things that could be named, everything from very complicated things, or mostly mental things, such as theoretical physics, to the most simple and mundane things, or mostly physical things, such as how fast you can twiddle your thumbs. Now out of all those billions of things that can be done by humans, try to count up how many you can think of that women either tend to be the best in the world at, OR (I'm making it even easier for you) that they tend to be the better at on average--either one. Now out of all these billions of things you can think up, there are going to be a sizeable portion where women participate just as much as men, and even a sizeable portion that are dominated by women and men have a very low participation rate. Even so there is a good chance that you are going to be hard pressed to need more than one hand to count up the ones that women are the best in the world at or better on average at either one, even though there are literally billions of activities or skills that can be chosen from.
It's all about our biology and how we evolved, both mentally and physically. Out of all the hundreds or maybe thousands of skills that humans possess, women specifically evolved to excel at emotion (particularly sympathy), communication, and cooperation. The reason is that those are the main skills really needed to be able successfully raise children. Sympathy is by far the most important in ensuring the survival of babies/children. It ensures that when they are hungry they get fed, that when they are hurt they get tended to, that they will be protected diligently from potential dangers, etc. The ability to communicate and cooperate with the other women at camp/at the cave is also paramount to all the layers involved in a successful community and the successful rearing of children.
Men evolved to excel at reasoning, competitiveness, aggressiveness, logic, critical thinking, physical strength, level headedness, spacial abilities and all the rest of the hundreds or thousands of other skills and attributes that humans can possess because all those other skills are the ones most needed to compete for resources, compete for mates, for the engineering and building shelters and village infrastructure, locating and outsmarting and killing game, growing crops, warfare, protecting against animal or human attacks and for doing all of the billions of other things outside of child rearing.
The truth of the matter is that there are very few things unrelated to rearing children where the premium on sympathy, communication or cooperation is so high that women will be able to out perform men on net. To be clear this is not to say that men can't excel at rearing children, or that women can’t excel at most other things. They can. It's just that because of our relative strengths, the best, as well as best on average, at rearing children will almost always be women, and the best, as well as best on average, at most other things will almost always be men.
Women’s strengths are best suited for a very narrow yet vital and time consuming set of endeavors (child rearing and maintaining a household), and men’s strengths are best suited to an equally time consuming but exceptionally broad spectrum of endeavors (everything else that has to be done outside of child rearing and maintaining a household). The enormous disparity in both the quantity and types of things each sex most excels in can't and shouldn't be ignored, but we must also remember that the contributions and specific strengths from both sexes are needed, and indeed vital. Women and men are perhaps equal in their necessity and importance, but they are not equal in their abilities. And for good reason as we were given the skills best suited for the differing roles we were intended to play.
Wow... Just Wow...
the pruff is in the puddin
If women were gooder than men at any sport it wood be that silly ass game
that im sure they invented. You no the one where they slide that skillet along
that slick surface ( mabe it's lilnolium) and then get after it with a broom.
Hell they even made up a dum name for it, so if we called home they say
were curling, so we would think that they are getting all gussied up for us
when we get home frum a hard day of fishin and drinking beer. But I turn
on tv and men or playing and they is better. They been wasting time for
nothin when they should have been tendin the childrun and cooking.
billy bob
If women were gooder than men at any sport it wood be that silly ass game
that im sure they invented. You no the one where they slide that skillet along
that slick surface ( mabe it's lilnolium) and then get after it with a broom.
Hell they even made up a dum name for it, so if we called home they say
were curling, so we would think that they are getting all gussied up for us
when we get home frum a hard day of fishin and drinking beer. But I turn
on tv and men or playing and they is better. They been wasting time for
nothin when they should have been tendin the childrun and cooking.
billy bob
Thanks for picking out that one line so we don’t have to read that whole thing.
We go from
1. men are better at pool to
2. men are innately better at pool because caveman smash to
3. men are innately better at absolutely everything because caveman smash.