Jimmy M. said:
Of course there is luck in pool - both bad and good. The idea that "there's no such thing as bad luck" is just something that people tell themselves in order to mentally deal with bad rolls. Rather than face the reality that they just encountered some bad luck (and may consequently blow up, mentally, because of it), they just deny that there was any bad luck to begin with. That's their way of dealing with the mental grind that competitive pool presents. I don't like dealing with it that way because that idea is based on something that isn't true, and therefore has less chance of standing up to a lot of pressure (it's hard to bullshit your mind into believing there is no such thing as luck when your opponent is getting every roll in the book and beating you because of it). The way I like to deal with the reality of bad luck is to just know that, more often than not, rolls equal out. Of course, there are those matches where nothing goes your way and the luck never equals out, but on the other side of that, there are matches where EVERYTHING goes your way and the luck never equals out for your opponent. If you look back over the day, or the course of a tournament, if you take all of your matches into consideration, more often than not, you'll see that the luck did, indeed, equal out.
)