Mike_Mason said:I don't remember where I heard it...or read it...and it was some time ago...but the thought made an impression on me...that if you can run 16 balls then you can run 100...or 527 maybe...
The reasoning is that in order to run 16 balls in straight pool then you have to run a full rack...set up a break shot...and make that break shot...now all you have to do is do it again...[...]
Here's some data I posted in RSB five years ago. My high run was 50 at the time. It illustrates that for me the statistical chance that I'd run 100 given that I spent an hour a day doing nothing but busting up a rack and trying to get a high run was pretty small--It'd likely take me over 150 years of trying!
That assumes I nether improved nor died during that time.
************
Here's some data for me that illustrate the break ball
bottleneck. Over the past four months, I've played 1460 innings of equal
offense (Open break and try to run 20 14.1 style). Here are the possible
results (0 - 20) and the number of times I've achieved each.
0 26
1 32
2 57
3 64
4 50
5 68
6 62
7 69
8 78
9 83
10 61
11 79
12 76
13 91
14 155
15 139
16 41
17 26
18 25
19 21
20 157
So 26 times I missed with bih in the kitchen [:-(] and 157 times I ran all 20.
91 times I missed while shooting at the key ball. 155 times I missed the
break shot. And 139 times I either failed to open up the pack, got stuck
in the pack or got so excited about the great break shot that I missed the
next ball.
My percentage of running 14 balls starting from bih with all balls on the
table is about 39%. But my percentage running 14 balls that includes
opening up a new rack is much lower. My percentage getting to 20 given
that I got to 6 is 14.3%, or about 1 in 7 tries. This is my true
percantage for running a rack.
So if I start with 9 balls spread out on the table, here are the number of
attempts I would probably need to achieve the following runs once.
run
___
14 -- 7 attempts (once in 0.5 hours of playing)
28 -- 49 attempts (once in 3 hours of playing)
42 -- 342 attempts (once in 23 hours of playing)
56 -- 2,389 attempts (Once in 160 hours of playing)
70 -- 16,700 attempts (Once in 1100 hours of playing)
84 -- 117,000 attempts (once in 7800 hours of playing)
98 -- 816,000 attempts (once in 54400 hours of playing)
112 -- 5,700,000 attempts ( once in 380,000 hours of playing)
My high run of 50 makes sense in light of this. If I tried for an hour a
day, I should run 56 about once every 5 months. But notice that I would
run 98 only about once every 150 years!!! So the saying that if you can
run 50, you can run 100 -- it just ain't true.
--
mike page
fargo