Why is that guy better than me???

Bigtruck said:
What makes one person play pool better than another?

Lets say both players practice about the same, read about the same, discuss pool about the same, go on the road together.........

But one guy plays 2 balls above the other consistently!!

Is it genetic? Is a propensity towards math and geometry?

Is it a carefree style vs a rigid discipline?

What is it?????


Help!!!!!

Ray
(anybody wanna buy a pool stick & case) :shocked:
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i think it has a little more to do with eye hand coordination and a better understanding of how the balls move.

when i had been playing for 3 years i ran into a guy that had been playing for 8 months and we played even. he said he needed the 8 but he came out way ahead when i tried that. i think it was a lack of confidence because he ran out as well as i did if not better. i'd really like to see him again because i bet he plays real well these days
 
MilwShooter said:
I'd have to say it may go back to previous sports and games that were played growing up. I'd love to say that the hours of PONG helped me with angles, but I think my abilities come from when I was with the NPPA (National Paintball Players Association). I learned a lot about angles and how to maintain my own mental fortitude when faced with a stressful decision. Before that, I was a goalie in Hockey. This is another sport and position that deals a lot with different angles of play. My daughter plays soccer and I helped coach her team a few times...another "angles" game...See where I'm going with this? I think once you find ways to associate pool with other sports you are familiar with, the better you play.
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Cool, so there are some other paintball people around here. :thumbup:

Sports like that definitely teach you how to focus under stress. However, I'm not entirely sure that a good all-around sports player could always beat someone who was raised on pool.
 
Most people think that talent is the determining factor above all that separates one player from another. Talent is a major attribute, but there is one that trumps them all. Some people call is heart, stones, balls, or whatever else you wish to call it. But it's tenacity that overcomes talent. The desire to win and an absolute refuse to lose attitude that makes a winner. Talent will make up for a lot of shortcomings, but it's the mental power that takes you over the top. Ever see a guy lose his first match in a big tournament only to come all the way from the one-loss side to double-dip the winner of the hot seat? The loss of his first match was the slap in the face that woke him up. From then one mental focus took him the rest of the way. We have all seen it, but have you ever done it? How about being down in a set 8-0 in a race to 9 for $200? I have come back from that before and it was totally demoralizing to my opponent. That feeling for me was euphoric and all natural. ;)
 
Why is that guy better than me?

Put simply the better player makes better decisions at the table. This person knows when to shoot and when to play safe. This person also plays better angles than the lesser player.

I know alot of players that pocket balls better than me, they can draw, follow and english as good as me but their decisions at the table are not very good.
 
Jaden said:
one person probably has one or more of the following.

1)better eyesight
2)better hand eye coordination
3)better visual spatial acuity
4)better focus
5)better grasp of the concepts (you can read all day long and even have people who know show you and you just aren't capable of grasping the concepts)

It basically comes to down to several factors, most of which are going to be genetic.

If you learn from the same sources it could just be that you don't learn in the same way.

There are multiple types of Intelligences and modern IQ tests are segregated because of this.

Your potential in billiards basically comes down to

1)ability to learn and grasp concepts
2)hand eye coordination
3)visual spatial acuity (the ability to recognise objects positions in three d space)
4) and last but not least, in fact when it comes to consistency probably THE most important, FOCUS!!!!!!

Jaden
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i reckon you nailed it here

another thing i have noticed is alot of pool players are intelliegent or above average, a hell of a lot of pro snooker players are thick a couple have no brains at all. (across the board) pool players are smarter than snooker players.
 
Big C...I've done it too, and against superior players! While I don't think they were "demoralized", I certainly earned their respect.

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com

Big C said:
We have all seen it, but have you ever done it? How about being down in a set 8-0 in a race to 9 for $200? I have come back from that before and it was totally demoralizing to my opponent. That feeling for me was euphoric and all natural. ;)
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Solidz, and 1on1: Well, it might sound like a copout, but here goes =)
I feel there's more than 1 kind of intelligence... I just blathered on about this very subject in another topic. Sorry to go on about it, it's something I find interesting.

You know how you'll hear some people say "I may not be book-smart but I'm street-smart!" or whatever? Doesn't that just make you want to roll your eyes? But in some cases it can be true. There are smarts you don't learn in school or on the job, and they aren't always obvious at first glance. There are guys who fail calculus or physics but they can figure out the drop of a bullet and estimate range and wind to make incredible shots with a sniper rifle. There are others who chose to drop out and work in a garage, and they have put more time and have more facts memorized about cars than you or I have put into, say, major authors or american history or whatever. Ask those guys about the civil war and they might sound like morons. Ask them about torque or ballistics and they sound like geniuses.

Maybe I'm being too liberal in my interpretation of the word "intelligence" but I believe that spatial reasoning, visual memory and being able to innately understand the physics of the colliding balls are all a form of intelligence, and if the guys with an enthusiasm for pool had dedicated their brainpower to some other subject that uses those things (architecture, engineering, whatever), they'd do just as well because they're smart that way. That intelligence just happened to be directed towards one thing instead of another. These are the guys who shoot pretty sporty in front of 1on1pooltournys and seem uneducated. And they are uneducated in the strict sense of the word but they're not unintelligent. See Jaden's post for the shorter version of all this :B

Whether all of their intelligence is learned or they're at least partially born with it is a muddy area, and at the end of the day if I say "some guys are just born with a certain kind of intelligence that's really good for pool" ... I may just be saying "talent/genetics" all over again and contradicting myself >_<

But I truly believe different flavors of intelligence exist, and the ability to be intelligent is in some way learned, you just need to be brought up in an environment where being analytical and logical is encouraged (at least on the pool table). The guys you're thinking of, solidz, who are pretty smart but struggle on the pool table... maybe they're smart in a different way or maybe they are educated and have a great deal of memorized facts at their disposal but lack common sense in certain ways. Not in ways like "if I write a bad check it will screw me" but on a more basic level like "if I hit something hard it can pass through a solid object like it wasn't there".

Something I notice in players who are NOT improving and are always behind other players: They fail simple common sense tests like "this didn't work for me last time. Will it work this time?" "That ball looks like it doesn't go, should I shoot it anyway?" "I know I jump up and twist my wrist on every shot and try to spin in balls that don't need it. Should I break that habit, starting right now on this very next shot?". "I know if I make that ball I won't have any hope of sinking the next one. Should I just go ahead and make it anyway and hope for the best?"

These guys make the wrong decision over and over (hi, Twoforpool) and I can't help feeling there's something fundamentally UNintelligent about this, even if they're seemingly bright people off the table.

Maybe a better way of phrasing what I'm trying to say is... the people who are behind the curve all seem to unintelligent in some way. But I hate saying it that way because it sounds like I'm ragging on the original poster when I'm not. Whether or not he has a 'brain for pool' is just one theory out of many. The answer to his question could just be as simple as "the other guy really is getting in more practice behind the scenes".
 
Original Post

I started this thread like I was the guy that was 2 balls under my friend. The fact is I am a B+ player. I have people that are balls better than me and I have people that I am balls better than.

I presented it the way I did to provoke thought. We ALL have players that can spot us and we all have players that we can spot. We all know guys that have played for 20 years and never got any better. Then you have guys that have only been playing a few years that are winning everything in sight!

We've had several child prodigies from here in Waco that were beating everyone, including pros and road players since they were 14 or 15. One of those guys is Doug Young. Doug seems like he's been around forever, but he's only 25!

I keep thinking that there is something that ALL of us pool junkies have in common. Maybe there isn't.

I think it would be interesting to do a study on top players. Like a personality test, IQ test, reasoning etc...

Ray
 
the very best at any given thing all share a common trait

DEDICATION

In Pool and In anything else in life .. you will go as far as your drive and dedication take you and no further.

If a guy is a little better than you he wanted it a little more than you..

If a guy is a lot better than you then he wanted it a lot more than you..

JMO
 
Sometimes people just see things differently and react accordingly.

I still know people who cant see anything on those 3D pics except for a bunch of dots. I mean everyone can see that there art dots there, just some people have the ability to look past them and get the real picture.
In pool some people just see a table with balls, and some can actually see the shots and how they will hit them before they even step up.
 
The many D's...

Dedication
Dreams
Desire
Discipline
Devotion
Drive
and the most important one of all....

DETERMINATION....to make the ball, to get the safe, to play perfect pool...to win win win....

Mr. J.
 
Smarts Part 2

Okay, I borrowed this from an article that I saved a while ago that I think that I got from the Ozone Billiards website....these 4 points will help to explain in more detail about the type of strategy that better players employ
-------------------------------------------------------------
#1 Be able to identify and visualize the triangle shaped position zone your cue ball must enter for the next shot.

#2 Attempt to enter that position zone as effectively as often as possible.

#3 Use the rails to control your cue ball speed and direction.

#4 Realize that the difference of playing 90% cue ball paths rather than 95% can easily be the difference between an “A” player and a Pro player and winning or losing a match. Most of our serious amateur players are going the wrong way at least once or twice per rack, sometimes more. WE can change that, you can raise your rating and win more matches by going the correct way, it isn’t that hard once you start to see your zones and then have the courage to go for it!
 
there's also some mystery ability among the best players that enables them to quickly adapt to differing table conditions.. I know that for myself I play quite well on the regular tables I play on but can go down the road to another hall, and look like a beginner almost.. it takes me hours to adapt to them.
 
My Two Cents

Ray, want to really throw your mind in a twist.

Next time we are around some Diamond BB's play me the same sets you played Doc. I play Doc completely even. We've played twice and both were hill-hill with each of us winning one. Now if you beat me and I play him even.....there goes any rational theory out the window.

After sitting right next to quite a few Master/Grand Master matches at the TX State Championships I did notice something.

1. They don't play carelessly. Where we see a cluster or a perceived problem area that demands to be broken apart, they see a opportunity. They pick out a ball that can be made and get the angle they want, e.g, picking apart the rack.

2. They are deadly accurate. When there is a shot to be made, 9.9 times out of 10 they make it.

I didn't see very many if any jump shots, or 3-5 rail kicks or banks. THEY DON'T HAVE TO. In fact one person was heard to say "All they do is run racks...this is boring"
 
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I’m a firm believer that some people are born to do certain things, while others are either just average or are lazy underachievers who will never make anything out of themselves.

I’ve known many people in all walks of life who seem to come into this world with certain abilities that others of us seem to work at for years and are never able to achieve. It makes you wonder if these talents were developed in a previous life or if god just reaches down and points a finger and “BANG!”, there’s your next Einstein’ Bethoven or maybe even Tiger Woods.

However it happens, it does happen. You hear stories about people like this blind, retarded guy who can’t walk, talk or even communicate. His adoptive mother plays music in the house every day of his life, and when she later buys an old piano, she is awakened in the middle of the night thinking that she has left the radio on playing her favorite classical music.

This kid, who had to drag himself across the floor and pull himself up to the keyboard, was able to play classical music on the piano immediately despite his mental and physical handicaps, not to mention that he had no training whatsoever and had never even seen a piano.

This is a true story and is only one of many. How was this kid able to do this? Where does this come from? Why him, when there are so many thousands of others who can’t do anything extraordinary?

I make this comparison because of the similarities between this story and the subject that we will be talking about. After all, this is about pool players and what better subject to discuss when you are talking about people with an abstract gift or ability.

Pool players are an unusual group in that the ability to play the game and to play it well depends on a variety of different abilities. First of all, you have to have great hand-eye coordination. After all, this is a very precise game. There is very little if any margin for error, especially at the higher levels of the game.

Second, you have to have nerves of steel and an extremely high concentration level. This game requires these traits because of the high level of competition. In order to win, you have to beat other great players and believe me, they are out there. There is no room for mediocrity. You have to be better than everyone else.

Third, you have to be in good physical condition. You may laugh at this and say, “Yea, I see all of these great athletes hanging out in the pool halls all night!” Well, you are right. The “average” pool player is usually a fat slob or maybe he drinks too much, but we aren’t talking about “average” here, are we? In order to compete at the top levels of this game, you have to be able to outlast the other guy and this may require you to stay up for hours. After all, a great pool player may not be that far separated from another great pool player in ability. Sometimes you have to trade off with him until you wear him down physically or mentally.

Fourth, you have to be mentally sharp. I would venture to say that this game is probably about 20 percent physical and 80 percent psychological. I’ve seen really good players lose to players with far lesser skills simply because they were “Psyched Out”.
 
It must Hurt to Miss

It has to matter. It has to matter when you miss to the point that after the match you re-position the balls of the missed key shots and shoot that shot one hundred times. You'll never be at 100%; however, this will give you the repetitive feel, muscle memory and vizualization of a successful shot. I loved the game as a young man but realized that I was behind the curve to make it my vocation. I have in the last four years been able to commit some time to the game and have gotten more proficent every day. when I made the mental switch from playing to relax or recreation and focused on being a better player, I started becoming better and it is more relaxing and gratafying because of the improvement. Whether it is for the cheese or just practice, it must hurt to miss.:cool:
 
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