Thanks Nick, this really resonated with me.
The big thing about John Schmidt's record of 626 was that it took 70 years for someone to get motivated to put in the time and effort to beat Mosconi's 526.
Schmidt's 626 raised the profile of the game again, and now other people are chasing that record because there's some money in it. Is it really likely to raise the profile of the game much? Or will most people just go "That's amazing!" and then go back to watching TV, as they did with Willie's 526 for 70 years.
SVB made 84 attempts at a high run, and during those runs we saw:
running the 1st rack = 91% success
running 3 racks = 57%
running 5 racks = 39%
running 10 racks = 14%
running 15 racks = 4.8%
running 20 racks = 2.4%
running 22 racks = 1.2%
Using some of the questionable numbers bandied about with regards to John Schmidt,
running 25 racks = 0.82%
running 30 racks = 0.18%
running 44 racks = 0.09%
These are top professionals, and it's probably safe to say that anybody who can run out a rack of 14.1 more than 90% of the time is well on their way to increase that rate even more and beat any record if they put in enough time..
But down at the pool hall, even that local expert, Xavier "Radar" Xcrement, isn't going to be trying to chase any record when his success rate at running 5 racks is 1%.
These high runs are interesting but not really compelling for more than a few minutes at a time, and the number of viewers on the live stream show that. Compare the live stream viewers for 9-ball.
It needs to be fun or lucrative for people to do this stuff. This month it's lucrative for a few top professionals who haven't annoyed the organizer, but it's only fun for a very small number of people, and usually those who are already pretty good at it.
For comparison,
MOST Basketball FREE THROWS IN 1 HOUR
-The number of balls and helpers is not limited.
Scored Name
1,206 Ed Palubinskas (USA) 2004
1,415 Jeff Liles (USA) VIDEO 2007
1,663 Fred L. Newman (USA) 2008
1,926 Perry Dissmore (USA) 2009
1,968 Perry Dissmore (USA) 2010
2,371 Bob J. Fisher (USA) 2011
2,395 Perry Dissmore (USA) 2018
I imagine Mrs Dissmore and all the little Dissmore's just roll their eyes when Perry starts talking about chasing a new record.
Some groups are good at making pool lucrative enough to attract top talent. Some halls and leagues seem to be good at helping people have fun playing pool. It's only the people who have fun that are going to learn to play better.