Back from Vegas - part 1
by Sickpotter » 08 Jun 2010 Read
I mentioned earlier I was involved in a 8-ball league and my team won a trip to the international championships in Vegas. Got home two days ago and I'm still not right 
Vegas is nothing but a tribute to excess, plain and simple. Temptation everywhere, action 'til you can't stand it, the list goes on. I'd like to post pictures and all that jazz but the best I'll manage in a day or two is a shot or two of my team and a few fuzzy venue shots....youtube hurts way too many people these days
Being a snooker player/lover/fan I'm not a huge fan of trying to rundown play by play of 8-ball matches, at least not in tournament perspective/situations anyway. Suffice it to say my team performed far beyond my expectations and we managed a respectable 33-40 finish. Normally that kind of result would've just made me
but the a little perspective filtered it's way through my vegas stupor and I'm happy with what we achieved.
The field was something like 440 teams from all over the world. Everyone gathered to play a game that quite frankly (and I'm sorry if this offends anyone, this is personal choice\viewpoint
) that's for lack of a better description, simple among the available cue sports. Honestly I'm not suggesting you don't play the game but really at a certain point ability tops out and it's REALLY HARD to draw the line on greats.
20,000 players there, all capable of running out. Sure you can lop off half as "almost" good enough. Give them 10 breaks and they might run out 2-3 times.
Next you've got about 1/2 the remaining players who might get in the 50% range. I consider this group the great "unknown" in this event, you never know who might show up on a given game. Depending on my desire to play, and usually I'm pretty indifferent to the game, I tend to fall in this category. Tell me I've got one match for 10k and I'm far more likely to play lights out than I am if I've got 10 before I get at the cash
. For any wondering, that's not tournament winning mentality 
Our last 25% is a closely knit mish-mash of players who can ALL just break and run table after table on a given day and this is where I have my issue with the game.
You can reasonably predict matches in snooker, if 50th in the world plays #1 he's better than 80% to lose (stat pulled out of nowhere, do not quote me on that) and the skill level defining 1st from 50th is very obvious. This is not the case with 8-ball.
Snooker is a game that many play but few master, probably in the one percentile or less range. Bar box 8-ball is simple enough that you could find 5% or more of the playing population falls into that elite category (again, stat pulled from my nether regions....hey, this is an opinion piece ).
Final point to my rambling....I find the skill level too low for it to be simple to determine the best. On any given day I think the world #1 bar box 8 ball player could lose a match to any player in the top 500. One might say that could happen in snooker but I have no doubt the frequency is drastically different.
I'll be back in a day or two with some pics and descriptions of things. Pics will be respectable only, The names used in descriptions of events from here on have been changed to protect the innocent,
Wendy will be player X, Tommy player Y, I'll be player A,
Vegas is nothing but a tribute to excess, plain and simple. Temptation everywhere, action 'til you can't stand it, the list goes on. I'd like to post pictures and all that jazz but the best I'll manage in a day or two is a shot or two of my team and a few fuzzy venue shots....youtube hurts way too many people these days
Being a snooker player/lover/fan I'm not a huge fan of trying to rundown play by play of 8-ball matches, at least not in tournament perspective/situations anyway. Suffice it to say my team performed far beyond my expectations and we managed a respectable 33-40 finish. Normally that kind of result would've just made me
but the a little perspective filtered it's way through my vegas stupor and I'm happy with what we achieved.The field was something like 440 teams from all over the world. Everyone gathered to play a game that quite frankly (and I'm sorry if this offends anyone, this is personal choice\viewpoint
) that's for lack of a better description, simple among the available cue sports. Honestly I'm not suggesting you don't play the game but really at a certain point ability tops out and it's REALLY HARD to draw the line on greats. 20,000 players there, all capable of running out. Sure you can lop off half as "almost" good enough. Give them 10 breaks and they might run out 2-3 times.
Next you've got about 1/2 the remaining players who might get in the 50% range. I consider this group the great "unknown" in this event, you never know who might show up on a given game. Depending on my desire to play, and usually I'm pretty indifferent to the game, I tend to fall in this category. Tell me I've got one match for 10k and I'm far more likely to play lights out than I am if I've got 10 before I get at the cash
. For any wondering, that's not tournament winning mentality Our last 25% is a closely knit mish-mash of players who can ALL just break and run table after table on a given day and this is where I have my issue with the game.
You can reasonably predict matches in snooker, if 50th in the world plays #1 he's better than 80% to lose (stat pulled out of nowhere, do not quote me on that) and the skill level defining 1st from 50th is very obvious. This is not the case with 8-ball.
Snooker is a game that many play but few master, probably in the one percentile or less range. Bar box 8-ball is simple enough that you could find 5% or more of the playing population falls into that elite category (again, stat pulled from my nether regions....hey, this is an opinion piece
). Final point to my rambling....I find the skill level too low for it to be simple to determine the best. On any given day I think the world #1 bar box 8 ball player could lose a match to any player in the top 500. One might say that could happen in snooker but I have no doubt the frequency is drastically different.
I'll be back in a day or two with some pics and descriptions of things. Pics will be respectable only, The names used in descriptions of events from here on have been changed to protect the innocent,
Wendy will be player X, Tommy player Y, I'll be player A,
Last edited by Sickpotter on 09 Jun 2010, edited 1 time in total.
- Sickpotter
- Posts: 1528
- Joined: 05 October 2009
- Location: Toronto
- Snooker Idol: White-Hendry-ROS
- Highest Break: 147
