Rare to disagree with you, but it's fun to talk about ^
What do marathons have to do with anything? I love TAR matches and buy them often but they are a novelty. You can play poorly for long stretches in a TAR match and still win, but winning the toughest tournaments is about sustained excellence in performance.
How do you define sustained?
Shane's US Open wins: Shane wins 88 games, against players of varying quality, with a break every 11 wins.
Shane's Races to 100: Shane wins 100 games, shorter time frame, fewer breaks, playing ONLY world-class players.
I'd say the TAR match is clearly about sustained excellence.
You say a player can play poorly for a stretch in TAR and still win...
That seems highly theoretical, not a reflection of what actually happens.
From what I've seen it's very rare for players to fall more than 10 racks behind in a tar match and go on to win,
or drop 10 in a row unanswered but win anyway.
Just because the long race affords you the "time" to dig yourself out of a hole,
doesn't mean you have the will or skill to do it.
In a short race, every error is magnified and late match pressure is a near certainty. That's why we watch the Mosconi Cup. Any mistake may be the one that costs the match, so the pressure on the players is grueling. Only a few are able to cope with it and find their best games. A year ago, Johnny Archer certainly did. Maybe this year will be Shane's turn to be dominant. I'd love to see that.
Every roll is magnified too in a short race, which somewhat taints the results.
Seeing players rise or fold when faced with pressure makes for good viewing, but we also tune in because
it's great production value and a fun format. Short races, slop counts, enforced hard breaks, etc... all very fun to watch.
Race to 100 is less fun to watch but that's not related to whether it's a better test of skill.
Let's put it another way. You are staking a guy who you think is the best in a group of players.
You feel they're all about equal except your horse has a 5% edge over the rest.
You want to ensure the BEST player wins and you want to preserve your bankroll..
Do you prefer he plays each of them in a series of races to 11? Or he plays one of them to 100?
Unfortunately, winning tournaments is much harder than winning one long race. To knock off champion after champion is what it takes. Only a few have it, and Shane is one of them, but when it comes to knocking off champion after champion in events where all the giants of the sport are present, Shane has not performed at the level of Dennis or Darren.
No event has ALL of the giants present, and most tournaments are not round robin.
You're always facing only a limited subset of champions at the end of the bracket.
So in your opinion, how many champions does a player have to beat before
that particular tournament is, let's call it a top-tier or world-class victory?
Can you think of an example where, between Shane, Darren, Dennis, Busty and Alex...
one of those players had to beat the other 4? How about 3 of them?
Also, another comment regarding the popular "TAR players get paid so it's less pressure and not a real test of skill" theory.
Don't you get paid just to show up in the mosconi cup? Handsomely too, $7,500.
And yet they play their nuts off.
. It sounds to me like you might have lost a lot of money betting against him. I can't figure anything else out. That was his 3rd US Open win man, LOL
