Maybe I'm being selfish, but I feel like the whole pool community is wasting the biggest opportunity to raise the game's popularity we've had in years, if we don't pit Siming vs all the men players.
We need her in all the men's tournaments. In Pat's make it happen series. In Darrens WPS. At the US Open. At Pat's international Open. And to advertise all of these events with modern social media. Fargorate can be part of the social media blitz.
Siming IS THE DRAW to make pool more popular. She might be the new Efren, in fan appeal. If she is as good as Fargo says she is, every banger male pool player will line up for miles to watch her attempt to beat the male pro's. We have a great opportunity here!
Completely disagree. The premise that pool can be made more popular if it's a battle of the sexes presupposes that non-pool players care about high -evel pool in the first place. The fact is that most people don't even know that pool is played professionally.
So Siming's matches wouldn't increase the amount of pool played. Male players might be interested in watching the matches so there might be decent numbers for streamers but I doubt it will be much more than any other high level matches.
The overriding theme though is that it would be setting her up to fail. Take any male pro and pit them against other male pros at the same skill level and they will NOT dominate those other players. They will win some and lose some. Pit a 790 against an 820 and the 820 WILL win the majority of the matches but not all of them. Put a 790 against a 760 and the 790 will win the majority but not all of the matches.
So making it a battle of the sexes basically is pinning all the hopes for the female gender on one good player. The whole point of Fargo Ratings is to determine skill level regardless of gender. So there is virtually no chance that a male 790 and a female 790 are going to play dramatically differently just because it's a male vs. female match-up if both play to their rating.
Unless the male has ego problems and way underperforms because he is facing a strong woman. This is a real issue because the male is expected to carry the torch for the male and may face or think he will face ridicule for losing to a woman. This is the social pressure aspect which is intangible and hard to predict the effect of on performance.
But if the male is able to focus just on playing and is not bothered by the social expectations/stigmas and the same for the woman then all that's left is performance and two players of equal rating will most likely be extremely close.
So, yeah it would be cool to Siming play but there is no chance that any series of such matches would have much impact on pool's popularity. We have had high profile men/women matches in the past and they have all not resulted in any measurable influence on pool's popularity.
At the end of the day, in my opinion, the ONLY people who like to claim online that women are inferior to men in pool JUST BECAUSE they are women are people who won't get up and play a woman who is rated higher than them and bet their own playing even. They won't EVER put their money where their mouthes are and challenge higher rated women players to play for anything significant, if at all.
Real male players, the ones who TRULY know how to play, know full well that gender is meaningless and the only result that matters is what happens on the table. They know that every PERSON has a skill level and that how well a person does in any match is directly a result of their skill. So male players who understand this match-up accordingly. They ask for weight from women players when they know they need it. They offer weight when they know they have to.
This is why you DON'T see a bunch of 700 speed men out there barking at the 750+ women trying to match up even. They see very clearly what skills are displayed and know very clearly that they face tough competitiors if they were to try to match up even.