The Final!

[Odrl]

With the greatest respect, if you don't play and haven't been on the receiving end of such tactics then you really don't know what's going on and what you believe you're seeing is huge granite like concentration and sheer will to win, but it's not really, it's all designed to destroy the other blokes concentration, which is the border between the subconscious flow state, where you don't think you simply 'see', and the conscious mind with all its meanderings and doubts. I don't think Selby plays flow state snooker, it's like watching a JCB play snooker, mechanical and measured, but it works and works well, and he knows who the flow state players are and plays them accordingly. You might say 'why not' the answer is we, the viewing public, are being denied something that could be great.

Barry Hearn must realise that snooker will not become mainstream in the US, despite the large online numbers he's seeing if this sort of game becomes the norm like it was a few years ago when Selby was no:1 and world champion.
He stated that gamesmanship was tantamount to cheating and it needed to be stamped out, but average shot times isn't the answer for Selby has seen a way around it, banning the roll up snooker, getting rid of the miss rule and a shot clock of 20 seconds would cure it overnight.

Okay, so there are two separate issues here. One is whether the kind of behaviour you describe is a problem that should be dealt with in snooker, and the other is whether Selby played in that manner at all in the Scottish Open final...

I know you have very specific and, for me, very narrow preferences about what kind of snooker you like to watch, and I'm sorry you feel like Sunday wasn't it. The thing is though, you don't represent the viewing public as a whole. If you did, we wouldn't be having this same conversation every six months or so. If you look at any thread about people's favourite matches, you will always find both extremes. Some want every match to be like the 2014 Champion of Champions final, where it's just break after break in no time at all, while others prefer something like the 2011 German Masters final, which was just a fascinating tactical battle throughout. I'm lucky enough to be able to enjoy both types, so the only thing I hope for is for the players to play to the best of their ability. Of course most finals will fall somewhere in between, and I think the Scottish Open final was actually pretty typical of what you are likely to get at this point in time. Snooker hasn't really had a major changing of the guard in the entire time since this forum has existed, and yet the game has got quicker and more attacking with every season, so much so that people now expect to see one-visit snooker in every ranking final, and a player like Selby stands out as supposedly slow and negative even though he is perfectly average. We've seen the likes of Trump, Robertson, O'Sullivan, Ding and Murphy share all the major finals between them this season, so this suggestion that snooker is somehow in trouble is really a bit much.

You are perfectly entitled to dismiss my opinion because I don't play the game, but I feel like your own experience makes you a little biased when it comes to this particular subject. You have come to value certain attributes in the game that are perfectly represented in players like Lisowski, perhaps they remind you of the way you play the game yourself or the way you think the game should ideally be played, so of course you want them to succeed. Selby, on other hand, has become the embodiment of everything you despise in snooker and you find his success difficult to accept, so you attribute it to some perceived unsportsmanlike conduct rather that admitting he was the better player on the day. The truth is, Lisowski didn't fail to produce some great level of snooker because Selby's average pace stopped his flow. He failed because he just doesn't reach that level very often, Selby or not. They could play another ten finals and Selby would win nine of them, or you could put Lisowski against a more fluid player of Selby's ability, like an O'Sullivan or a Trump, and the result would be the same. I was happy to see him raise his game over the course of last season, and his run last week has certainly confirmed that he belongs in the top16 and has the ability to win titles, but he is not going to be a serial winner until he takes another step in the right direction in the same way we've seen Trump do in recent times. It's not going to happen for him, like it's not going to happen for Un-Nooh, Brecel, Zhao Xintong, or any other player who plays in that inefficient manner.

I am not sure where you were going with that US remark, but I for one have no wish to see snooker dumbed down just to make it fit better in the American market. It would be a hopeless effort anyway. When it comes to sports, the US is pretty much removed from the rest of the world. Some of their most popular sports are played almost exclusively in the US, and they don't seem to have any particular wish for that to change. In any case, snooker has absolutely no future there, whether you stick a shot clock on it or not. I don't think people fully realise what a disaster introducing a shot clock would actually be. Snooker is a sport that thrives on tension, it thrives on those moments of anticipation before a big shot is taken, and rushing things with a shot clock is a sure way to suck all of that out of the game. The Premier League was a fine event in its time, but it failed to produce a single memorable match in its entire history after the shot clock was introduced, even though the best players in the world played in it. And that was 25 seconds. A 20-second shot clock would be completely ridiculous in the context of today's game. Of the 128 professionals, only 11 have an average shot time lower than that, and only O'Sullivan and Un-Nooh are under 18 seconds. Lisowski himself is barely under 20, which means a good percentage of his shots take longer than that. And of course there is a huge discrepancy from one shot to another in snooker, in terms of how long they take to play, so a shot clock just takes some of subtlety out of the game. Granted, this would give Lisowski a decent chance of doing as well or better than Selby, but at the price of killing snooker as we know it? No thank you. I don't care much for your other two rule changes either, but we've had those discussions a millions times before on TSF over the years...

And I've probably defended Selby a million times as well. Actually, in the past I used to more often defend his right to slow the game down and make it scrappy when it suited him. The latter cannot actually be sanctioned under any circumstances as far as I'm concerned, because it comes down to shot selection, which is completely up to each individual player. Either a shot is legal under the rules of snooker or it's not. You can't have a shot that is perfectly legal but somehow ungentlemanly at the same time. What kind of game would that be? As for playing at an unacceptably slow pace, of course there has to be a line somewhere, but it's nowhere near Selby and it never was. If Selby got told to speed up, so would half of the tour. How could someone like Anthony Hamilton, for example, even get through a single match? I'm more patient that most when it comes to this kind of thing, but even I have to admit that his play in the 2017 German Masters final was only just within the bounds of good taste. In fact, it was everything you usually accuse Selby of doing, but there was no outrage on this forum at the time. Nor did I expect any. I think it's just human nature to root for the underdog, and much easier to overlook stuff like that when it involves a player you like.

The days when Selby was an underdog are long gone. In fact, it was said a lot last week that Selby won more titles than anyone else this decade, and he also spent seven years as world number 1, so it's not surprising that there is a large group of people who dislike him. It's just something that happens in sports in general, it seems to bring great joy to a lot of people to have someone they can "hate". Unfortunately this has resulted in people not only criticising Selby when he does something objectionable, but also finding all kinds of controversy even where there is none. Was it last season when we discussed average shot times and you remained unconvinced about Selby's being average even in the face of empirical evidence? And now you say those times count for nothing because he has "seen a way around it". What does that even mean? We know his actual execution of the shot is not the fastest, so if he indeed walks around the table excessively to look at angles and stuff like that, how exactly does he cheat the system to appear faster than he is? I mean, there is footage of the Scottish Open final available online, so if anyone has actual examples of Selby doing something ungentlemanly that could possibly warrant Lisowski complaining to the referee, feel free to point them out. Joking after a fluke is not exactly a huge offence, is it?

I don't know, I don't really see what it is about Selby that brings out such strong emotions... This is a guy who studied the table for more than six minutes on a mildly tricky safety shot a few weeks ago against Higgins, but, other than slight amusement, there wasn't much reaction to that on here. Might be because there are so few of us left, but I suspect people also just don't care that much when he goes on to lose the match anyway. He once played on for something like 13 snookers in the final frame of the middle session at the Crucible for no apparent reason, and that was quickly forgotten too since he was beaten heavily. But when he wins, all kinds of stuff gets brought up. I remember when he came back from behind to beat Dott in the semi-finals of the Masters in 2013, one poster described him as a "cancer" that you can't fight forever, another one said that he only watched the match in the hope that an audience member would snap and beat Selby up, and I also seem to remember someone suggesting it would be great if Selby had a heart attack during a match. Just completely over the top reactions to a snooker match you are watching voluntarily. But then again, some people described that same match as one of the best of the season, which just goes back to my first point. Every person has their own preferences, so if you don't like a certain type of match or you don't want to see a particular player win, there is no need to get worked up about it. There is usually another event just around the corner anyway. :wink:

[the_unrepentant]

Selby can only win one way and that is to bog down his opponent. He doesn't play a nice game at all. Proper frame spoiler he is. Not nice to watch

Thats absolute nonsense. I enjoy watching Selby as much as Ronnie, Trump or whoever else I enjoy watching. In-fact, Selby can really intrigue me and he puts together many great breaks as long as having patience when a game goes scrappy. He has the all round game and if you play snooker to just pot balls off the lampshades, then you don't know snooker. I learn more for my own game watching Selby then O'Sullivan to be honest. I play the former women's world number 2 every week and she agree's with me too.

[balkend]

Whats the record for deliberating before taking your shot ? John Higgins was on the receiving end of a many minute wait recently but made excuses for the other player , Who was ? .. ahem .. er ..

[Odrl]

Whats the record for deliberating before taking your shot ? John Higgins was on the receiving end of a many minute wait recently but made excuses for the other player , Who was ? .. ahem .. er ..

Pretty sure there hasn't been a longer one than Selby's six minutes in a televised match since I've been following snooker. That said, Neil Robertson took around five minutes to decide what to do after a foul and miss against Dott in the 2010 World final, only to have the balls put back in the end. :smile:

[tomwalker147]

Pretty sure there hasn't been a longer one than Selby's six minutes in a televised match since I've been following snooker. That said, Neil Robertson took around five minutes to decide what to do after a foul and miss against Dott in the 2010 World final, only to have the balls put back in the end. :smile:

To be fair I played my dad last night, went to the toilet for approximately 3 minutes on my shot, then the Mrs rang me for 2 minutes then I went to the bar, i'm guessing 8 minutes but just like Selby i'm an interesting player to watch

[JimMalone]

Interesting question. The word "talent" is the same in the Slovenian language, or at least I think it's supposed to mean the exact same thing, but for some reason it's understood a little differently on this and other English-speaking forums I read. For instance, people will describe a 40-year-old sportsman as talented in the present tense, which would never happen in Slovenia and other countries of this region. The word is almost exclusively used to describe youngsters who still have plenty of room to improve. Once a player gets to his mid 20s or so (although that age tends to be higher in snooker these days), you would instead say that he was talented, in the past tense.

Also, in snooker people tend to equate talent almost exclusively with long-potting and pace of play, while completely ignoring other elements such as safety play and tactical awareness, and also positional play to a lesser extent. Not all players are equally talented when it comes to those things. For instance, John Higgins was pretty much considered to be a complete player from the moment he came onto the scene, but his name never gets a mention when the most talented players of all time are discussed. On the other hand, players like Tony Drago are mentioned frequently, which just makes no sense whatsoever to me.

As for Lisowski, sure, he pots a lot of great balls and has always done so, making him a very talented potter. He also has the kind of technique that allows him to play quickly, which I suppose could be considered as talent as well, although speed is not a relevant factor in snooker. As for everything else, he is below average. He struggles to control the cue ball and he clearly has a below-average understanding of the tactical side of the game. Put a 19-year-old Lisowski up against a 19-year-old John Higgins or Ding Junhui, and we all know who would win almost every time. And that's why I think Selby's opinion is way off. :wink:

Yes I agree that "talent" is too often linked with only potting. As I said having a cue ball control is definitely also a talent.
The problem is that we see most pro's only when they are almost the finished player after years of training - and I don't know how much they train, I can only guess, there are probably members on this board who can offer more of an insight (I can only offer it for tennis ). Of course most players still get much better between being 20 and 35 (let's say) years old, but when we see them play at 19 it's already hard to tell which is talent and which is work. Let's take Ding as an example, who left already school at 11 to dedicate himself full-time to Snooker, that already tells how much work he put into his game, before he came onto the tour.
I'm personally a believer anyways you need talent and hard work to get to the very top, but usually work beats talent. (And in the end in individual sports like Snooker it's mainly the head that makes the difference).
I can't really tell if Lisowski or Higgins or Ding is more talented, but I'd roughly put them around the same in this department - maybe with Ding ahead -, though I agree that if you put "knowledge" or "tactical awareness" among talents, which is fair, he'd probably trail those two others. Maybe it's because usually you develop this knowledge only through experience that it is often not included when talked about talent.

Despite me using the phrase "he is so talented" occasionally I actually have a hard time to tell. I can only say who I think is the better player.

[JimMalone]

Going back to Ding Junhui again, if you looked at Ding and Lisowski side by side as teenagers and tried to predict who would go on to become a better player, I am reasonably sure almost everyone would say Ding. And that's basically the definition of talent for me. :smile:

As 17-year olds I agree. As 13-year olds? I have no idea.

[JimMalone]

I am not sure where you were going with that US remark, but I for one have no wish to see snooker dumbed down just to make it fit better in the American market. It would be a hopeless effort anyway. When it comes to sports, the US is pretty much removed from the rest of the world. Some of their most popular sports are played almost exclusively in the US, and they don't seem to have any particular wish for that to change. In any case, snooker has absolutely no future there, whether you stick a shot clock on it or not. I don't think people fully realise what a disaster introducing a shot clock would actually be. Snooker is a sport that thrives on tension, it thrives on those moments of anticipation before a big shot is taken, and rushing things with a shot clock is a sure way to suck all of that out of the game. The Premier League was a fine event in its time, but it failed to produce a single memorable match in its entire history after the shot clock was introduced, even though the best players in the world played in it. And that was 25 seconds. A 20-second shot clock would be completely ridiculous in the context of today's game. Of the 128 professionals, only 11 have an average shot time lower than that, and only O'Sullivan and Un-Nooh are under 18 seconds. Lisowski himself is barely under 20, which means a good percentage of his shots take longer than that. And of course there is a huge discrepancy from one shot to another in snooker, in terms of how long they take to play, so a shot clock just takes some of subtlety out of the game. Granted, this would give Lisowski a decent chance of doing as well or better than Selby, but at the price of killing snooker as we know it? No thank you. I don't care much for your other two rule changes either, but we've had those discussions a millions times before on TSF over the years...

I agree with basically your whole post, but this is one of the best paragraphs I've read on here. The only remark I have is that I do not only even not care about the other two rule changes, but would decline them completely.

[Odrl]

though I agree that if you put "knowledge" or "tactical awareness" among talents, which is fair, he'd probably trail those two others. Maybe it's because usually you develop this knowledge only through experience that it is often not included when talked about talent.

Yes, I agree that experience affects the tactical part of the game more than it does potting or scoring, but I think some players definitely have more talent than others for that part of the game. By that I mean that they are better at it when they start as professionals, and also that they find it easier to improve. I would say that players like Mark Allen or Neil Robertson have had the "normal" progression from being fairly clueless tactically, to becoming very solid all-round players who have an edge against their younger opponents. Then you have someone like Stephen Hendry who, even in his late 30s, didn't have the reputation for being very good tactically, and the other extreme would be players like John Higgins and Mark Selby, who were both considered to be among the very best in the world tactically by their early 20s. :smile:

[JimMalone]

Yes, I agree that experience affects the tactical part of the game more than it does potting or scoring, but I think some players definitely have more talent than others for that part of the game. By that I mean that they are better at it when they start as professionals, and also that they find it easier to improve. I would say that players like Mark Allen or Neil Robertson have had the "normal" progression from being fairly clueless tactically, to becoming very solid all-round players who have an edge against their younger opponents. Then you have someone like Stephen Hendry who, even in his late 30s, didn't have the reputation for being very good tactically, and the other extreme would be players like John Higgins and Mark Selby, who were both considered to be among the very best in the world tactically by their early 20s. :smile:

Hendry was a special case. Cause he was so superior in break-building and potting to his peers that he thought he wouldn't need to develop a tactical game.

Selby was already great tactically in his mid 20s. But I reckon that the made a strong progress in this department between 2007 and 2009.

[vmax]

I do not have very narrow preferences for which kind if snooker I like to watch, I like a good tactical battle, I like fast flowing break building, what I don't like is the switching on and off of speed of play even when the shot on is obvious, I don't like taking numerous decisions on what extension/rest to use when you're aware of your own height/arm span and you naturally know if you can reach the shot or not, I don't like walking around the table numerous times to check the lie of the balls when the first time has told you exactly where they are, I don't like ignoring the full ball red in baulk after a dump shot and rolling into the pack, I don't like the roll up behind a baulk colour when a pot to the middle is on etc etc.

[Neil Taperell]

Very well summed up Vmax , pretty much what I like as well . It really does get on my nerves when they check the line of aim a few times ....no need to in my opinion .

[JimMalone]

[QUOTE=vmax;n994397 I don't like the roll up behind a baulk colour when a pot to the middle is on etc etc.[/QUOTE]

Sometimes this roll up makes much more sense if the next red after the pot in the middle, which isn't always an easy shot anyways, isn't given. You might get a much better chance if your opponent fails to get out of this snooker properly.

[tomwalker147]

Very well summed up Vmax , pretty much what I like as well . It really does get on my nerves when they check the line of aim a few times ....no need to in my opinion .

Neil I think you and Vmax are wrong on this, if they check the line a few times then it's because they are unsure they've got it right the last time they looked at it. Nothing wrong with being doubly sure on a shot when your livelihood depends on it surely? I'd liken it to checking a work email before hitting send. Why would a pro take chances when they can do more to ensure they're on the correct line?

[Neil Taperell]

I think that at times it is gamesmanship