World Snooker Championships Discussion

[cueman]

Judd needs to lay off the partying and concentrate 100% on his snooker or he'll end up the forgotten man, I'm not just talking about his performance now but of the last two years in most tournaments! Overrated to say the least and over hyped, Shaun looks like he wants revenge from their last meeting and looks hungrier(lay off the pies Murphy ) for victory...

I don't think he's partying during the event, no chance of him doing that. However I do think he maybe over doing it in the gym as he likes to work out a lot and maybe he is using up too much energy which is affecting his timing of the ball as he did today. Maybe because of the days inbetween matches he is going to the gym instead of conserving his energy for matches. I know he's been going to the gym because he has tweeted a few times about gyms up in sheffield. That is my thought as I just don't see why his game can go so flat and bad after his awesome 2nd and 3rd sessions against Fu where he was hitting the ball as good as ever.

[carlosportsman]

Yes you're right. Looks to me as if it all happened when he came back after the third frame. Started out really good and aggressive and then unfortunately knocked in a red when going into the pack off the blue. Seemed to knock him quite a lot.

Thats a pretty sound assesment, Trump will get chances against Murphy, he just has to stick in there and take his chances when they come up. To be honest, I would be happy with either of Trump, Murphy, Ronnie or Bingham (the other player I backed for the tournament) in the final from top half

[vmax4steve]

Indeed. Luck evens out, what goes around comes around, players make their own luck. Luck only enters into a game when players are making mistakes, if they're playing well they're in control and luck plays only a very small part. If they're playing badly then a bit of luck can help, or hinder. It's unlikely for any one player to only have good luck, or only have bad luck.

You hear people say quite often that when you are playing well you get a good run of the balls. I would say that you can play well but not get a good run of the balls and struggle as a result and end up losing as proved in the Maguire v Poomjaeng match.
Carter got bad running last night despite playing well and lost, Ronnie got good running and won. It's the way it is, nothing at all to do with making your own luck.
You don't make your own good luck, you take advantage of it, and your bad luck, when playing against somenone, is that particular someones good luck
Luck does not even out, not even over a single lifetime let alone in a certain timescale of a certain career or certain tournament. It has been said that a million chimpanzees given a million typewriters over the course of infinity would eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Would the same number of chimpanzees playing snooker over the same period be capable of making a 147 ?

Personally I would say bollocks to both scenarios but probability theory says otherwise.

IMO in order to play at your best and make lots of tons and 147's and win lots of tournaments you need the run of the balls in your favour most of the time, and that is not entirely in your hands no matter how good you are. There is always something that is out of your control, especially when you are up against someone else for whom the same applies, as then what goes for you goes against him and vice versa.

[armstm]

You hear people say quite often that when you are playing well you get a good run of the balls. I would say that you can play well but not get a good run of the balls and struggle as a result and end up losing as proved in the Maguire v Poomjaeng match.
Carter got bad running last night despite playing well and lost, Ronnie got good running and won. It's the way it is, nothing at all to do with making your own luck.
You don't make your own good luck, you take advantage of it, and your bad luck, when playing against somenone, is that particular someones good luck
Luck does not even out, not even over a single lifetime let alone in a certain timescale of a certain career or certain tournament. It has been said that a million chimpanzees given a million typewriters over the course of infinity would eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Would the same number of chimpanzees playing snooker over the same period be capable of making a 147 ?

Personally I would say bollocks to both scenarios but probability theory says otherwise.

IMO in order to play at your best and make lots of tons and 147's and win lots of tournaments you need the run of the balls in your favour most of the time, and that is not entirely in your hands no matter how good you are. There is always something that is out of your control, especially when you are up against someone else for whom the same applies, as then what goes for you goes against him and vice versa.

it is just luck ronnie has beaten carter 13 /13. good to see you stick to your bias in the face of evidence.

[cueman]

well said vmax4steve. I can tell you play the game and understand it whereas a lot of these people who say luck evens itself out are obviously quite lucky in life themselves that they tend not to notice their bad luck so much because they probably don't have much of it.

The point I've been making all morning regarding Murphy and Trump is that although both played pretty poor, it was Trump who wasn't getting away with his misses as much as Murphy was, and naturally that has a negative impact on your game and shot choice. As Murphy got away time and again with his misses it raised his confidence because he knew he was going to get another chance. Whereas the player who gets no run tends to come to the table all the time with a negative mindset. TBF to trump he never got too down about it, he kept going for his long pots to make something happen but nothing came out positively for him.
That is snooker in a nutshell at this level now, its why Selby won the UK and Masters titles and also why the likes of Trump might not win the titles he should because he's not this lucker that everyone lables him as.

Ronnie is an incredibly lucky player, as was Hendry because they seem to always get a better run of the ball against their opponents who's luck tends to run out against them. Be intresting this afternoon to see if the 'ballrun' himself can get his usual form of luck too or whether that runs out because its O'Sullivan he's playing against. I genuinely do believe that a lot of the most successful sports people and teams are luckier than their counterparts and this helps them maintain a more positive approach because they feel that luck will be on their side.

[daffie]

it is just luck ronnie has beaten carter 13 /13. good to see you stick to your bias in the face of evidence.

13-0 you mean of course...and yes purely down to luck for sure

[pottr]

Personally I would say bollocks to both scenarios but probability theory says otherwise.

As i'm sure you know my friend the scenario in that context is irrelevant. It's used to highlight the infinity alters the laws of probability.

I always preferred "there are as many even numbers as there are even and odd nummbers added together"

Back on topic, I don't think Judd is out of the match yet. But he will need to step it up this evening for sure as Murphy is a pretty solid front runner.

[pottr]

I genuinely do believe that a lot of the most successful sports people and teams are luckier than their counterparts and this helps them maintain a more positive approach because they feel that luck will be on their side.

What that man said.

[armstm]

or they are just better.

[nrage]

You hear people say quite often that when you are playing well you get a good run of the balls. I would say that you can play well but not get a good run of the balls and struggle as a result ..

Agreed. You can play well and have a bad run. But, whether you "struggle" or not is a question of character. Yes, a bad run means you have to play "better" to get the same result as you would have done without the bad run, but so long as a player keeps their head and keeps making good shot choices a bad run is not necessarily a death knell.

.. and end up losing as proved in the Maguire v Poomjaeng match.

"proved" is too strong an assertion, but it may well have been an example of a higher than statistically likely amount of bad luck.

Carter got bad running last night despite playing well and lost, Ronnie got good running and won. It's the way it is, nothing at all to do with making your own luck. You don't make your own good luck, you take advantage of it, and your bad luck, when playing against somenone, is that particular someones good luck

Players can take advantage of good luck, sure. But, players can also accept a piece of bad luck and in many cases play a good shot to recover, whether that be a good pot or safety. Yes, some pieces of bad luck, like a kick, are not recoverable, and in some matches one player might get more than another - but ignoring the effect of the player and the shot itself (striking down etc) statistically speaking it should be pretty even.

"making your own luck" shouldn't be taken literally, of course you cannot influence luck itself. What it implies instead is that luck is not the defining (most important, most significant) factor in a result, the player, their choices and how they play are.

Luck does not even out, not even over a single lifetime let alone in a certain timescale of a certain career or certain tournament. It has been said that a million chimpanzees given a million typewriters over the course of infinity would eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Would the same number of chimpanzees playing snooker over the same period be capable of making a 147 ?

Personally I would say bollocks to both scenarios but probability theory says otherwise.

Luck evens out over a frame all the time, one piece of bad luck for me, one for you and bam, all even. Of course, the effect of the luck may not be even, one may be the winning of a frame and the other not so much. If you take that into account as well, perhaps it requires 2 pieces of bad luck for me and 1 for you to even out - but that's not so unlikely as you make it sound. Even saying one piece of luck won a frame but another didn't is debatable, we assume a piece of good or bad luck near the end of a frame is more significant than one at the start, but that's just not the case - it's just more obvious/visible.

Over a match it's even more likely to even out and over a career it's just about a certainty IMO.

Compared to monkeys and typewriters, it's a whole order of magnitude different in probability. The chance of a monkey typing the first letter of Hamlet is 1 in 26 (minimum) and the chance they then go on to type the 2nd letter is 1 in 26 x 1 in 26 and so on, thousands of times. This is a vanishingly small probability, which requires infinite time to happen with any certainty.

IMO in order to play at your best and make lots of tons and 147's and win lots of tournaments you need the run of the balls in your favour most of the time, and that is not entirely in your hands no matter how good you are. There is always something that is out of your control, especially when you are up against someone else for whom the same applies, as then what goes for you goes against him and vice versa.

Sometimes things happen which are beyond your control, or reckoning, sure. And, it's possible you might get one of these and ruin a 147, or a ton, or a frame. But, when a player is in full control of the white the only time luck comes into it is the tiny chance of a kick on any given shot and the change of a bad split on the one or two shots which go into the pack - and that assumes there is no clever split targeting a specific cannon and landing on an already free red available.

Overall I think a player can overcome most of the bad luck that comes their way, there is only the rare piece of bad luck which is unrecoverable and this has to repeatedly happen at critical points in order to lose them a whole match.

[Masterdoctorgenius]

1-0 ronnie

flawless stuff

[pottr]

He looks in the mood today.

[Masterdoctorgenius]

ronnie again amongst the balls

[mythman69]

yep, two nice breaks . . .

[Masterdoctorgenius]

stuart cannot afford to miss

but ronnie misses now boah