Cloud Strife wrote:SnookerFan wrote:Dan-cat wrote:For example, what’s the difference between slowing play down in snooker and dummying a punch in boxing?
Explain what you mean by dummying a punch?
I would like to know this as well. As a boxing fan, I’ve not heard that before.
Ha. I may have made that term up. I was thinking of the expression 'dummies and feints'* which after a google I find out comes from football 'a dummy or feint is a player deceiving the opposition into believing he is going to pass, shoot, move in a certain direction, or receive the ball and instead doing something entirely different, thus gaining an advantage.'
So by dummy punch I meant pretending to punch one way then changing it and catching the opponent out. Perhaps boxing wasn't a great example. In Formula 1 you get drivers blocking other drivers so they can't over take them to help their team mate who is out of front. In football / cricket you get sledging. You are just trying to psyche the opponent(s) out, seize a tiny advantage, If you can get in someone's head, they are bucked. As soon as the anger / chimp chatter starts you lose focus and your standard drops.
Iranu, if someone is obviously slowing down their play in order to attempt to break their opponent's rhythm (and also playing on for snookers when it's pointless is another example of this) then yes it's going to get in your head and affect your play. The chimp chatter would be off the scale. Look what happened to Ronnie during that Ebdon debacle. Sure, he's better at dealing with this now, but Carter was doing it to him at this year's Worlds and he lost.
It's not just slowing down play. Remember when Ronnie beat Judd in the 2013 World's in the semis. He went two frames ahead towards the end and he was in the ascendancy. As they resumed to play the final couple of frames Ronnie re-entered the arena and looked directly at Judd as if to say 'Got you now. And you know it' - pure gamesmanship.
Hey, I have other examples that don't involve Ronnie hehe
My point was you can't remove gamesmanship from sports. It's part of it. Arguably, sports are more interesting because of it.
*We use this expression in DJing too. I love it. I sometimes pretend there's something wrong with the sound system or mixer. For example on Saturday I played on this huge stage at Boomtown festival near Winchester. About 4 tunes into my set, I had the crowd locked in and I slowly faded down the song playing until about halfway, and then even further. People in the crowd started to signal me, pointing upwards as if to say 'turn it up' I turned it down further, leaned over the booth and shouted 'what's up?' and cupped my ears as if I was straining to hear them. I kept this up for about 30 seconds and the crowd started to look restless. And then... slam! Ramped it back up to full blast, full bass and a huge cheer. Ahhh ... cheap tricks