Out of the three in the title which one do you think separates the best from the rest?

The more people with tournament wins?

The people with high win percentage?

The people with high ranking points?

tourneys

Tournament wins stat is the only one you have no control over - other than to decide if you enter a tournament in the first place!

Some are fortunate to live in time zones where the number of entrants in tournaments are less than others which clearly increases your odds on winning.

All in all probably a combination of all three for what it matters

No question that the better players have high quality stats on all three. But which one tells the true story, in your opinion? which one shows you're better than the other player???

Has to be tourneys , rank can be gained by playing low ranked players, win percentage can also be high by playing no so good players but tourneys you have to beat the best to win but as arcade_fire said the time zones can make it easy for other members to win tourneys as not many people enter at 4am.

tournament wins - if you want just the one

Not sure to be honest, but over on snooker i would say none, and go for breaks

on snooker breaks comes before everything. Some people fail to grasp that concept though.

Here i would sa tournies.

but even then tourny win stats don't always show the full picture

Sort of true , just shows there the best player that entered the tourney. But out of the three tourneys would be the choice.

Most of my wins i would argue i havent been the best player there - so definitely not always true

what about the 9 ball wins? you have to be the best player in them as to some people 9 ball aint lucky.

But the reasons above show what i think.

enough by me on this matter , ill let someone else have a say

Edited at 13:54 Wed 25/06/08 (BST)

lol 9 ball neednt be any luckier than any other game type - in fact it should require more skill if played properly - which is what i said before!!

but in any sport/game the best player/team doesnt always win for many different reasons!!

apologies to sporting for this going off thread

All of them. You can't evaluate a player based on any single one of them, but added up they tend to give a pretty good picture.

Since a lot of players play only rank, and a lot of players play only tournies, you can't really determine who is better without actually playing them and see for yourself.

For tourny players who don't play rank, wins and win rate are your only inputs. They are both weak and say little or nothing about the players skill level - although they do say a whole lot about the amount played.

For rank players, rank says a good deal, win rate less so. The rank ladder will never match the true order of player skill tho (not because it can be manipulated, but because players come and go, some are on the way up, some have 1 month holiday and suffer from daily reductoons etc etc), but in average it gives a good picture.

The problem with tourny wins is that you don't see how many tournies the player has entered to get to that number. Also what you pointed out: Torunies in weird time zones are a lot easier to win than during primetime.

If you have 200 wins in 20000 tries and I have 50 in 200, I am most likely still the better player (just a wild example to illustrate the point)

What you would REALLY want to look at for tourny players (which sadly isn't available) is tourny win RATE.

Edited at 15:44 Wed 25/06/08 (BST)

^^^^^^^^ true with the win percentage per tournies entered

Between decent or good players, this is already the case imo. Luck doesn't allow a "quite" good player to beat a very good player any often at all, and certainly no more so than for the other game types.

What stands out a bit in 9 ball tho, is when you have a very bad player vs. a very good one, the luck factor enables that bad player to achieve a better win rate than would be the case in the other two games.

In short - the chance of fluking a victory is greater. That doesn't good players any, but it does help bad ones to achieve a slightly less bad result than they should.

(and yeah, this belongs in a different thread, sorry)

No need to apologize, I'm intrigued

My take on the 'luck' side of 9ball is summed up in two words - 'Sour Grapes'

People always have a chance in 9ball and what you make of that chance is all your own doing. If you your opponent decides to smash every ball onto the 9 and hope for the best I see it as tactics. Everyone has the opportunity to do that but some decide against it. Usually the ones that decide against it are the more established players, making the less established player using good tactics to give him a chance


And potting the 8 balls then missing the 9 is not luck, it's your fault for missing that 9, not your opponents fault for jumping on an opportunity available.

Just a little rant because I don't like bad losers

lol well seeing as these havent been moved yet - my original point from several days ago still stands - i still believe it takes more skill to play 9 ball properly in terms of pure all around ability and skill in all areas of gameplay than the other two

there will be the same number of fluked shots in all the game types - they just stand out more in 9 ball

Tournaments require more skill because you need to come out tops out of say 60 people using skill.

Golden Breaks - any skill level can get a golden break frequently if the know how.

8ball runouts - needs quite alot of skll but the luck factor still stands and if you have a decent break off you are much more likely to get one than a potting genious with no idea of a good break.

Percentages - This can be obviously distorted by playing low ranks but does look classy backed up with other stats ie runouts, tournies