I don’t care if he is the next coming of SVB, he was out line with his post slamming Stu!
Please never leave Efren out of the equation here. The man was (and is) so smooth he often gets overlooked as the all time great he truly is. Just go back and watch some of his matches on YouTube. No one today or yesterday played pool like Efren. The man was smooth as silk the way he caressed the balls into the hole and guided the cue ball to its intended destination! I loved the way his cue ball always seemed to slowly creep into perfect position.
Seems DCC wants the prestige of a professional event and at the same time culture and funding of a high participation amateur event.
Gotcha. Thanks, Jay.
Chinese 8 ball might be a better game for you if you think 4.5” pockets are too big.
Sometimes I think me and my buddies invented Chinese 8 ball in the 70s. Pool balls on 5x10 snooker tables. Anyway snooker pockets tend to eliminate rail shots so I lost interest in 'em. Great practice though.
Interesting idea. One downside would be it would slow things down just a bit as you wouldn't have as many short matches due to extreme mismatches. I kind of like the idea of having a chance to play a few rounds before running into a killer, but pros playing 15 rounds with several early warm-ups may actually be appealing to some of them.
With a slightly different buy-back format you could have 1024 total entries+buy-backs and the winner might play only 10 rounds.
This is a good suggestion. As I have said in my previous posts, the players should never be required to play 27 hours straight. The tournament cannot allow this to happen again. It must be managed better. As a player and a fan, I love having to opportunity to play a big dog in the tournament, win or lose. I'm dead money but that's why I want to play. If the field is packed, then beating a few other dead money-ers to get the chance to play a pro makes it that much sweeter. I think your suggestion is a very reasonable option that most could agree with.
What benchmark you choose is an individual choice. Everyone has their own opinion. In other sports, the number of rings seams to be a huge benchmark. MJ has six and is considered by most to be the best ever. Bill Russel has 11. Larry Bird has 3 yet MJ never beat Larry despite being in his prime and scoring 50+ points. There is no question MJ and Lebron are better athletes than Larry, but are they better basketball players? Depends on who you ask and how you measure. Let's not forget Fedor is only 22! Refer to Stu's post on the majors and covid. He took the words out of my mouth.Gorst was #2 Fargo for some time even before DCC.
The benchmark for "best player" in other sports (like tennis, golf, snooker) is performance in majors. NOT rankings not ratings, not prizemoney won, not money game races to 100000 won
And Gorst performance in majors has been lacklustre. He has not won a major since his 2019 World 9 Ball win and his best performance was just semifinal finish in International Open last year. Sure he has not played the majors in Europe but he has played a lot of majors total 6 majors past 2 years (International Open x2, US Openx2, World 8 ballx1, World 9 ballx1).
He is 22 now . At same age, Filler won 3 majors already.
Gorst is arguably the best all round player now but in the pool universe, the majors are in 8B/9B/10B which have the strongest monster fields 128 of best players in world, at least 20 Fargorate 800+ players. It follows that the best player is the best performer in majors. Last year that was FSR. People always forget the other guy Albin who was the best player of past 2 years.
This year my guess is Albin or Filler cos they are big match players with extreme self belief/self confidence and are better closers than Gorst.
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I 100% agree Jay. We appreciate all of your knowledge and stories as well. If anyone bashed you, I would do the same for you. I don't know where this internet troll is coming from, but he's just that a troll. He's not the first and won't be the last.
And compare the length of their respective careers. Dennis was already giving spots to top players 12-15 years ago. He beat Darren Appleton, giving up the eight and nine in Ten Ball several times. His standard game with just about anybody this side of Shane was the eight ball (nine ball to the champions) in Ten Ball, and they couldn’t get there.
Yes, but I didn't leave him off the list of all-time greats. I left him of my short list of all-time great pattern players. I'd actually rate Pagulayan above him as a pattern player.
Fair enough. In recent times, I think Souquet was best in this regard, with Appleton and Pagulayan not far behind. Even pattern beauty is in the eye of the beholder, LOL.
I remember pages of comments on this site that Jayson Shaw was playing incorrect patterns and will never do well in straight pool
Efren played sophisticated patterns which no one thought about that turned out easier than the regular thinking... I remember some knowledgable commentators making comments to this effect, it not my own thinking.