Talk:Cue sport

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Image:Chalk stub.png This article is part of WikiProject Cue sports, a project to improve Wikipedia's coverage of pool, carom billiards and other cue sports. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this talk page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Other languages WikiProject Echo has identified Cue sport as a foreign language featured article. You may be able to improve this article with information from the French language Wikipedia.

Contents


To-do list: edit  · history  · watch  · refresh
Top priorities — Fix Trick shot (major cue sport!) Fix stubs in SD/AfD danger.
Here are some tasks you can do:
Note: To Watch this to-do list, click on "watch" at top right of this table. Watching the page it is transcluded on won't watch the to-do list.
Priority 1 (top)

[edit] Game complexity

Still unresolved: Source and add game complexity info to article (this one or a more specific one). 01:43, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Anything on Billiards' game complexity? Is it infinite since there are infinite many positions and thus possibilities? 70.111.251.203 14:38, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Interesting question. A game-theoretic treatment of any billiards-type game would necessarily have to abstract away from exact positions, since they "only" affect the difficulty of the various shots, which is in any event subjective to a degree. Obviously you can't ignore it completely, otherwise it's simply "win for first player", so you'd need to model the players, as well as the physical game state. Alai 21:10, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Sadly I can't remember where, but someone actually did the math, and it's not infinite, but a very huge number. Because the balls, pockets, etc. have some "give" not every possible position of everything is significant (i.e. a difference of one micron in the position of one ball from one gendankenexperiment table to another doesn't make it different enough that the outcome of any conceivable shot would change.) Under that sort of definition, someone figured out how many possible pool layouts there were (I'd guess in an eight-ball game, though I don't recall for sure), and it was in the quadrillions (by way of comparison, there have been fewer that one quadrillion seconds since the estimated time of the Big Bang!). If I ever find it again, I'll add it (sourced) to a "Trivia" section. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 12:37, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I think Einstein has a quote about it. --68.239.240.144 04:08, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction

Still unresolved: Improve article intro. 01:43, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know that the comment on whether billiards (or cue sports if you insist,) makes sense in the introduction. The introduction should mention common games such as 8-ball, 9-ball, snooker, and three cushion billards (and other widespread variations. It should probably attempt to clarify the usage of the term billiards which is confusing to most people. It should differentiate carom and pocket billiard games as they are important broad categories. It should mention the popularity of league play, with mention of some important sanctioning bodies WPA, BCA etc.

In the past, I did a lot of work on this article and would like to see it improved

166.34.148.192 22:30, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notable Billiard enthusiasts

Still unresolved: Split list out, keep it here, or just scrap it as unencyclopedic trivia? 01:43, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone agree the list is misplaced, not to mention uncredited? More important, to me at least, would be a list of famous players hopefully not just in the US. Can we agree to remove or move that section? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 166.34.148.192 (talk) 22:32, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

Yes. To the extent that it remains unsourced, it is actually endangering the main article, as AfDable "original research". I honestly don't know what to call the article. "Notable billiards players"? I don't think we should over-use the term "cue sports", only use it were necessary. Without sourcing I don't see that the list has an encyclopedic value, and even with sourcing I wouldn't want it to be confused or conflated with a (needed) list of top pro players today nor one of world champions. The list seems to be "Notable people who happen by random conincidence to like pool or billiards". This strikes me as WP:OCAT. The games have been so prevalent for so long, it's a lot like having a list of "notable fans of football" or "famous people who drive cars". I think it would be of much more use to simply mention the salient fact about whoever, in the article on that person, or as Fuhghettaboutit recently did in the Bottle pool article, mention the famous player in the specific game's article. My feeling is that the list should probably simply be removed. If someone wants to dedicate some time to building the list up from sources, they can always just grab a copy out of the history. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 06:33, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[Salient comment refactored in from another thread:]

The section on billiard enthusiasts seems awkward, and maybe needs to be an article of its own
User talk:MichaelJHuman 05:13, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Additional general comments

Hey, Michael here

I added the first attempt at an actual article, and then did some follow up work. A lot has been added since then. But I see a few issues:

  • The references seem to have issues. I need to double check the text against the references for one thing. I used a few classic works, such as Pool, by Mike Shamos (arguably one of the most famous US pool/billiard historians, and the Billiard Encylopedia, a massive work with a very carefully researched introduction to the history of the game.
  • The section on billiard enthusiasts seems awkward, and maybe needs to be an article of its own
  • I moved the lengthy section on shooting techniques, but its probably hard to find now
  • Intro needs work as I mentioned above (but forgot to sign it.)

I am willing to help, if I can. I am not a great writer or organizer, so I will defer to others

MichaelJHuman 05:13, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] English billiards

In the section providing summaries of, and {{Main}} links to the main articles of, various games, I believe that English billiards, as Carlos Reyna suggested, needs to have a section in there. Anyone feel like taking that on? It could even be a single paragraph, describing the nature of the game, and a bit about international competition, but waning popularity with the rise of snooker. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SMcCandlish (talk • contribs) 21:44, 5 April 2007 (UTC).

Done. A little rough but should be enough to work with.--Fuhghettaboutit 00:04, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../c/u/e/Talk%7ECue_sport_1383.html"