Average Shot Time

[Odrl]

I say it is a sport, by any definition and other sports called a sport (archery already given ) what about bowls, etc.

And what about Snooker already having been in the Olympics back in 1960 (Rome), albeit the equivalent Paralympics as then

When this discussion comes up, I always wonder how driving a car can be a sport when snooker supposedly isn't.

[Vanwinkle]

VMAX said:
What it should be good for is to guage whether a player is playing deliberately slowly in order to drag his opponents concentration out of him (gamesmanship), but a statistic is the wrong way to go about that, it should be down to the referee to see that a player is giving more thinking time than is neccessary when there's an obvious shot on, Selby is guilty of that but nothing is ever done about it.

I agree with this 100%.

And, I agree that spectators, in general, would like to see "more action." But I think the snooker Powers That Be should deal with this issue in some manner other than "public shaming." (Monetary incentives? Monetary penalties? Ranking points penalties? Frame or point forfeitures? Something else?)

Or maybe a shot clock (generous), with a set number of possible extensions to be used for those situations requiring extra time. (I think this is similar to the "shootout" format, but these times would be longer.)

But I think that displaying the AST in order to "shame" slower players is, well, unprofessional. Maybe "childish" is a better word.

(Imagine, just to be silly for a moment...World TENNIS starts showing statistics for "how many times a player bounces the ball before serving." Hmmm, player A averages 2 bounces, player B is up at 4 bounces. Let's televise this useless statistic in order to SHAME player B.)

Cue Crafty said:
I think there is some benefit for the players themselves, Neil Robertson is definitely aware that he plays better when his AST is pacier, and seems to monitor it.

Again, I agree. Robertson may find the statistic useful for improving his game, but the information is available to him WITHOUT it being presented publicly (i.e. televised). He can "look it up himself" and decide if he wants to speed up his game.

(Living here in the US, I most often CANNOT watch snooker live. I can however, view the live scores on the WS website (updated every 30 seconds. Here I see the score of the match (frames won), and the count of the current break, and below this, the AST. Again, this is the part I just don't get. It is IRRELEVANT to the game.)

Formula 1 racing...average time for a pit stop...MEANINGFUL
Snooker...average time to shoot the ball...NOT MEANINGFUL

As far as I'm concerned, they might as well put on the screen the player's weight, or shoe size, etc. The point being, as I originally posted, this statistic has NOTHING to do with a player's skill, ability, chances to win, or anything else.

[End of rant ]

[vmax]

Cue sports aren't allowed into the olympics because there isn't a worldwide viable womens tour, they allow riding childrens bicycles and skateboards for that reason. I agree with Vanwinkle, we all know who the slow players are and the AST is irrelevant and although introduced to speed up play in actual fact it is used to defend the slower players, deliberately so in order to avoid controversy. Selby plays quickly enough when on form and in a break situation, but when his opponent starts to get on top then the faffing about starts and the average of that is only about four seconds difference, which world snooker see as nothing to be concerned about.

[Odrl]

You couldn't sanction the players based on those stats anyway, because they aren't collected in a reliable way. Outside of TV tables at venues, it's the referee who basically presses the button after every shot along with everything else he or she does, and there's bound to be discrepancies any time something unusual happens at the table that delays the player's shot.

And slow play isn't really a problem in snooker anyway. The current rules should be sufficient to deal with any violations, they should just be enforced more sensibly. When a player does take six minutes to play a shot and the referee fails to give a warning, it's a referee mistake rather than any general problem with the rules.

[DeanH]

You couldn't sanction the players based on those stats anyway, because they aren't collected in a reliable way. Outside of TV tables at venues, it's the referee who basically presses the button after every shot along with everything else he or she does, and there's bound to be discrepancies any time something unusual happens at the table that delays the player's shot.

And slow play isn't really a problem in snooker anyway. The current rules should be sufficient to deal with any violations, they should just be enforced more sensibly. When a player does take six minutes to play a shot and the referee fails to give a warning, it's a referee mistake rather than any general problem with the rules.

...and the Marker on the TV tables on their work desk; the click of the "blipper" to the score board defines the timing of events and the AST calculated by those events and we have seen many times (or at least I have at the venues myself) often the "blipper" stops working and the ref has to do several "events" in quick succession to bring the scoreboard up to date and so I have always said to not take the AST too literal.

I agree, referees should be more stringent on slow play as per the rules