Title Match

[Tin Man]

Long ago the world title for straight pool was decided by double round robin, or long games to thousands of points. Now it is single elimination. While I celebrate the excitement of a single elimination format and understand the eventual champion is clearly deserving, it isn't the same type of test as a longer match.

In chess they have a 'candidates tournament', a big event in which the winner gets to challenge the reigning champion. The champion automatically gets to defend his title. Then they play a long heads up match over a couple of weeks to see who gets the throne.

I enjoy this format. Imagine if the winner of a pool tournament got to challenge the champion, and the format was race to 21, whoever wins 5 sets first?

For one thing, the best player would win most often. If the chess world championship was decided by one game you'd see a lot of weird things happen. Well, one game of chess at that level takes longer than a race to 13 or 17 in pool.

As for viewer engagement, trust me, the chess championship brings in a ton of viewership. People hang on every game, watching every game live even when there are 20 minute waits between most moves. They hang on the analysis and the computer evaluation of the position.

So, what do you guys think? Would you be in favor of a similar format to decide the pool world championship? Do you think this would be a better test of who is best? Do you think it could hold viewer attention? Do you think it could ever happen?

 

[pt109]

I feel the chess situation caters to serious players...competitors and watchers.
...I would like to see pool emulate the snooker world....
...most of their fans can’t hit the end rail.

Long matches cater to mostly serious players only.
...I don’t mind a bunch of different winners every year, it’s good for the game.

 

[Tin Man]

bump

Well, there's a reason some of us celebrate money players. In all this talk of single elimination and double elimination, we are still talking about tournament matches. In the end we are crowing our world champion based on a high degree of luck. Look at yesterday's match. Whether or not a player gets a shot after the break a few times can make or break a player. Or look at the fram shot Filler played. One roll like this can sometimes be the difference. Oh, yes, we LOVE the drama. It's exciting. And we don't even stop to think that it is unusual anymore because it's been that way for years.

But wouldn't it be nice if our 'World Champion' was actually the best player in the world? As opposed to someone that just won a tough tournament? Darryl Peach won the WC, and Shane hasn't. Some people throw stones at SVB, but my opinion is that if SVB isn't a world champion then it isn't an issue with his play, but with the format we use.

In the end that is why so many of us celebrate money matches. Races to 100, the better player proves it. SVB has dominated in this format which is why so many feel he is truly the best player in the world. No one has called him out for a long time. Now, if you set up a trick shot and tell him he has one try to make it, and if he misses everyone else in the world is going to call someone else the champion? Well, he might dog it. But if someone who needs the 8 ball from SVB wins that way, they can call themselves world champ, but it's been reduced to a title, not a reality.

I get the flip side. World champion isn't meant to be the best player in the world, it's meant to be a title that can be won. It's about the best that day. It creates drama for the fans. It puts pressure on everyone. I get all of that. I guess there is a balance. I'm all for pressure and drama, but I would like to see just one title that actually goes to the best player. I'm not even saying SVB is that player, maybe Filler beats him, but I'd feel more satisfied if it was in a decisive format rather than a hyper turbo knockout event.

 

[HawaiianEye]

Well, there's a reason some of us celebrate money players. In all this talk of single elimination and double elimination, we are still talking about tournament matches. In the end we are crowing our world champion based on a high degree of luck. Look at yesterday's match. Whether or not a player gets a shot after the break a few times can make or break a player. Or look at the fram shot Filler played. One roll like this can sometimes be the difference. Oh, yes, we LOVE the drama. It's exciting. And we don't even stop to think that it is unusual anymore because it's been that way for years.

But wouldn't it be nice if our 'World Champion' was actually the best player in the world? As opposed to someone that just won a tough tournament? Darryl Peach won the WC, and Shane hasn't. Some people throw stones at SVB, but my opinion is that if SVB isn't a world champion then it isn't an issue with his play, but with the format we use.

In the end that is why so many of us celebrate money matches. Races to 100, the better player proves it. SVB has dominated in this format which is why so many feel he is truly the best player in the world. No one has called him out for a long time. Now, if you set up a trick shot and tell him he has one try to make it, and if he misses everyone else in the world is going to call someone else the champion? Well, he might dog it. But if someone who needs the 8 ball from SVB wins that way, they can call themselves world champ, but it's been reduced to a title, not a reality.

I get the flip side. World champion isn't meant to be the best player in the world, it's meant to be a title that can be won. It's about the best that day. It creates drama for the fans. It puts pressure on everyone. I get all of that. I guess there is a balance. I'm all for pressure and drama, but I would like to see just one title that actually goes to the best player. I'm not even saying SVB is that player, maybe Filler beats him, but I'd feel more satisfied if it was in a decisive format rather than a hyper turbo knockout event.

I’m with you.

The formats that they use today are crap shoots.

That is why I always liked gambling at pool and I liked playing long sessions. The guy walking away with all the other guy’s money was usually the better player.

 

[BeiberLvr]

But the best players do win in these "crapshoots"

Everyone forgets that the no one can play at their best 100% of the time. So the best player (the one who wins) will be the one that does happen to play their best at the time.

 

[HawaiianEye]

But the best players do win in these "crapshoots"

Everyone forgets that the no one can play at their best 100% of the time. So the best player (the one who wins) will be the one that does happen to play their best at the time.

So, if we flip coins one time and you win, you are the “better” coin flipper?

The Taiwanese guy beat both Wu and Filler and, yet, he was sent home packing because he lost once, to some Chinese guy, who didn’t beat either one of them?

 

[BeiberLvr]

So, if we flip coins one time and you win, you are the “better” coin flipper?

The Taiwanese guy beat both Wu and Filler and, yet, he was sent home packing because he lost once, to some Chinese guy, who didn’t beat either one of them?

Not even close to being the same thing.

 

[Black-Balled]

I'd like to see true double elimination until final 8, then a round robin.

Maybe first to win 3/5 races to 7...maybe 11...or anything between there.

 

[Black-Balled]

But the best players do win in these "crapshoots"

Everyone forgets that the no one can play at their best 100% of the time. So the best player (the one who wins) will be the one that does happen to play their best at the time.

But the winner has to be the best. That is the definition of the word.

And any one of the final 16 could been the best.

 

[Straightpool_99]

Oh, God, not this again! Look, if you're into long gambling matches, the internet is full of those. Nobody is going to host a tournament With matches to 21 or 1billion or whatever you think is enough. I sure hope this is not going to slide into the age-old "Shane beats everyone in a race to 500" bs. Please, please, not one more of those threads.

I don't know why pool is cursed With People going on about these race to one billion snoozefests, and I especially don't know why People insist this is the best way to measure skills. Day long sets test endurance and knowledge of which drugs to take (in some cases). One such test will not definitely and once and for all prove which player is better. It's going to prove which guy had the best week, best drugs, or whatever. Another week, the result could be the exact reverse. The true test will be performance over time (several events) and you don't need marathons for that.

Long races CAN be entertaining, to the diehard fans, but no one, especially not Matchroom, is going to put them on TV. Even streams of this kind of thing tend to only be popular With the diehard fans.

 

[iusedtoberich]

I don't like the idea of the long multi-day races...

But I do like your "king of the hill" idea, in which the winner of the last event defends his title by automatically being in the final for the current event. That would bring continuity from event to event. It would only work, imo, in a full calendar tour, maybe one event each month. I don't know if I'd prefer it to regular tournaments, but it is definitely interesting to me as a die-hard, and may generate more banger fan interest.

 

[vjmehra]

When it comes to formats, Matchroom seem to know what they're doing. There is plenty of debate on the same subject with regards to snooker, with most fans wishing the bigger tournaments had longer matches (the World Championships of course consist of long matches, which seems pretty popular, but its not right for every tournament).

In short, Matchroom (I think) try to guage what the casual viewer / part time fan is likely to watch.

Double Elimination is a really confusing concept outside the pool world and doesn't make any sense to the casual viewer. Also double elmination itself has variants, with the format chosen by Matchroom for this year's US Open the way I've seen it played in the UK (and I believe is what the GB9 Tour uses).

That said, I would make some small changes, I would have made the semi-final's a race to 13 and the final a race to 18.

Other than that, I thought it was a good effort and it will only grow stronger over time.

 

[Tin Man]

Well, what we lose is the ability to have a decisive 'best in the world'.

In Chess, Magnus Carlsen is the best in the world. Undisputed.

In the 40s and 50s, Mosconi was the best in the world. The format allowed his skill edge to become monumental over the competition and he dominated the world championships.

Since then it's gotten a bit murky. Who was the best, Hall or Sigel, Rempe or Varner? Earl or Johnny or Efren? It's an endless debate because they all won their share of titles. Is the player with the top gear the best? The player with the most titles? The player with the most longevity? There has been endless speculation and no consensus. This clarity is what is lost with the current format.

No skin off my back. I'm not making any claims about who I think would be number one. It would be speculation only because things don't work that way. I'm not expecting things to move this direction. I guess I was just curious if anyone else felt regret that we didn't have a test with a more decisive format. Looks like the majority aren't interested in seeing who would win in a long heads up battle. Certainly counting titles is a great score keeper so that's what we have to work with.

 

[Oze147]

It is the same situation in many sports.

Nearly all wintersports are influenced by weather, so it doesn`t mean that the best skier or snowboarder or ski jumper automatically will be World Champion.
The best driver doesn`t necessarily win every single car race.
Tiger Woods suddenly wins The Masters and O`Sullivan loses in the first round of the snooker WC.
Federer has never won a gold medal in the Olympics..the list goes on and on.

World Championships, Olympics or other tournaments are achievements and are not meant to be there to decide, who is the best player.

If you want to know who is the best player at the moment, for a season etc. you use ranking lists.
But since there is no such thing as a Main Tour in pool, you don`t have a world number one in pool, just endless arguments about the same old topic.

 

[BasementDweller]

I don't care about proving who the best player is. This US Open was close to perfect. They could possibly do sets to 7, two out of three, but that's not necessary either.

One thing I'm curious about is how they seeded the final 16. I'm wondering if keeping track of racks won and lost during the preliminary stages and seeding accordingly might be the best way to do it. Filler and Shaw playing first round was brutal for Shaw who played the best pool of the tourney up until that point.

 

[wrickyb]

I would have liked the single elimination rounds to all have been races to 13 or 14 and not 11 like the double elimination qualifier round.

 

[Island Drive]

Like Earl said, this game is waaaaaaaay harder than golf, he does know. He was the first to mention the Cyclops bar balls being used, when players were told Aramith and Measles.
For a day and a half the bar box Cyclops balls were in play. It definitely effected many players, especially Biado....who lives off his Great draw style shots.

This event grinded many a great player down Chang was about 3 or more matches from getting to the final 16....reason being, by the third round, and four sure the 4th, every match was like a final. Many wore down under the 9am to 10pm ish play format.

In Great character, Toasty and Souquet were class all the way.

 

[Swighey]

I'd like to see true double elimination until final 8, then a round robin.

Maybe first to win 3/5 races to 7...maybe 11...or anything between there.

How about a race to Shane? Win 100 racks against Shane and you are the champ. Next one wins 100 racks against the guy or gal who beat Shane and on and on. A bit like the boxing heavyweight championship except it’s for $200.

 

[Taxi]

The best "tester" of determining the "best" player would be be a round robin format, where everyone plays everyone, and the winner of the most matches is determined to be the champion, and in case of a tie, either the total games won or a playoff race to 21 would determine the winner.

That's the format that was used way back when the World Championship was straight pool, and there were 8 or 12 players participating by invitation only.

You maybe could do this with 16 players with races to 11, which would be 240 matches in all, or a bit less than half as many as there were at the U.S. Open, and it'd be a lot more "fair" than any single or double elimination tournament.

Only one problem: How do you determine which 16 players get to participate? I'd go with 8 invitees (Filler, Shane, Wu, and 5 others) and the other 8 determined by play-in events, but that's just one possible suggestion. One thing's for sure: You'd sure get a lot of controversy!

And of course you'd also have to find a streaming service that could stream all the matches simultaneously, while giving viewers the option of switching from table to table. But if you could pull it off, it'd be the greatest event in the history of pool.

 

[Island Drive]

The beauty of the Open, every players true character and conditioning gets tested, over and over again for THREE days straight. If your knocked in the losers bracket early on. You realize Quickly, 9 ball is a True Sport, yah gotta be in Mika Shape or Thorsten shape to grind it out, Shane too. These guys are buff and tough.