Talk:Cue sports

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[edit] Game complexity

Unresolved. Source and add game complexity info to article (this one or a more specific one).

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 trivia sections have been deprecated since I wrote that. 05:15, 2 August 2007 (UTC) — 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

Unresolved. Article intro not yet significantly improved.

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

Unresolved. Split list out, keep it here, or just scrap it as unencyclopedic trivia?

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] Dispute: Cloth colour

Someone wrote that the predominant use of green cloth on tables was a happy coincidence resulting in reduced eye strain, as the human eye is least sensitive to green light, which is incorrect. What is more, the reference that this person used to justify their claim (A Strategy for the Use of Light Emitting Diodes by Autonomous Underwater Vehicles) directly contradicts the assertion that the human eye is least sensitive to green light. Hence, I've removed it. --Nezuji 04:30, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Reverted removal (for now). The original text said the opposite, that the human eye is least sensitive to green. Someone objected to this, saying, in a kind of creepy mirror-image of what you are saying, that the sources already quoted said that the human eye is most sensitive to green (which from my anthropology backgound, actually makes some sense), and citing the additional reference that you just deleted as further sourcing for this fact. You now appear to say that the source says just the opposite. I've reverted you not because I solidly disagree, but because the extant text was there there for a long time, unchallenged, and it is now time for source analysis and quotes from source to determine whether the sources say what it is claimed that they say. PS: It may turn out that what is really needed is re-wording, and that the sensitivity claims are both wrong; e.g. it may be that the combination of various bright colors on a green field is very distinguishable to the human eye, thus the prevalence of the color; or the exact opposite, thus (in part, aside from simple fashion/décor trends) the decline in the prevalance of green cloth. I would very, very much like to see this turn into a discussion instead of a revert war. You've been reverted because the edit you deleted provided a[n alleged] source and yours nothing but an assertion about that source, so let's get into the details and get it right for our readers. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:53, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm fairly confused by your comment above, but I'll try to clarify my position. I am asserting that the human eye is more sensitive to green light than almost all others. I apologise for not citing sources, however the Cone cell article states this explicitly in the last line under the "Types" heading, and I can easily supply several external corroborating sources (if necessary). The text that I removed stated that the human eye was less sensitive to green light than other colours. The source cited by the removed text does indeed state that the human eye is most sensitive to green light (or at the very least, more sensitive to green light than red light), which is why I commented on it; the source given contradicts the assertion it was intended to support. Here is the contradictory quote from the cited document (found on page 40):
"Indicator LEDs were typically red, as the chemistry of the semiconductor material dictated. The Japanese company Nichia first pioneered blue-green LEDs. Other companies have followed suit. By taking advantage of the human eye's higher response to green light, these LEDs made possible..." -Nezuji 05:45, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm reluctant to be the one to remove the comment again, but if there's no further discussion, I consider that I've stated my case clearly and with sufficient sources, so if no-one else removes the comment I'll probably remove it again in a week or two. -Nezuji 03:29, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Done. The Shamos source just seems to be wrong; he's generally spot-on when it comes to billiards stuff, but he wandered into biology, and I think I trust MIT types in a peer-reviewed journal more than him on this one. >;-)
Seeing as how most scholars feel that the green color is associated with the lawn games origin of billiards, this factoid or lack thereof seems possibly misplaced. I would prefer not to have the article mudied up by this sort of aside.
MichaelJHuman 15:02, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
It's interesting, though, and may well actually have a great deal to do with why green was pretty much the only color available for centuries. Most people including most players and even some real players >;-) have no idea that billiards, golf, croquet, etc. all used to be pretty much the same game and that green was initially chosen to represent the grass (the earliest tables known, in the court of the french king, were literally raised, large boxes of ripped up lawn!) If the average joe had no idea, why did green stick around so long? Not much else stayed the same. ALL of the materials have change, size (even shape - many early ones were squarish) of the table, pockets or no pockets, the golfclub-like mace became a cue, eventually leather tipped much later, it became a foul to shoot with the butt (once a very common practice for some reason), all the rules changed, the croquet hoops were dropped, the holes changed from being hazards to things to shoot for, etc., etc. Compared to other activities of the same antiquity, it's changed perhaps more than it would be expected to (e.g. the old stick and ball game with guys standing in a field to catch the ball after a thrower lobbs it at a hitter diverged into cricket and baseball, but they remain a lot more similar to each other and, more to the point, to far more ancient variants, than modern cue sports do to old King Louis' game. Blah, blah, sorry I'm rambling. I get a little loopy when I'm tired. The point being: It sounds like a good factoid to keep to me - sourced, and while we can't conclude (WP:NOR) for our readers that the scientific facts have something to do with green cloth's long popularity, the possibility is tantalizing... — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Both citations were mine and I cocked it up. First, I cited to Shamos, who does indeed say "lower": "it happens that the human eye has lower sensitivity to green light, and this color allows us to play for longer periods of time without visual fatigue" (page 53). Then I wanted a second source but failed to note that the one word contradiction in the latter and cited it for the same proposition (good catch). I just googled "highest sensitivity to green" and "lowest sensitivity to green" and found four citations for the former and none for the latter, so it seems Shamos is wrong in his statement but I'm not sure he's wrong overall. Here's the part I'm not clear on: what does it mean to have a higher "sensitivity"? Could this mean that because the eye easily sees green, the eye has to strain less? I'm going to do a bit of research and if I crap out, I'm going to see if there is a majority contributor to the eye strain article. Maybe he/she can shed some light (pun intended).--Fuhghettaboutit 22:22, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, so far I've found these not entirely illuminating tidbits (and not great sources either) "A good all-purpose lens color, green provides a fair amount of contrast in low-light conditions and reduces eye strain in bright conditions." [1] (to same effect, [2]); "Even today the color green is known to relieve stress and eye strain." [3]; "Green is a color that helps eyes recover quickly from strain." [4].--Fuhghettaboutit 22:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I originally came to this page looking for "official" racking layouts, to confirm or refute a friend's contention, and the article was so interesting that I ended up just reading the whole thing, which is when I noticed this comment in the cloth colour section. I'm not from a biology or psychology background, so I can't really comment further with any sort of authority, but I studied colour reproduction as part of a Comp Sci course, where I was taught that the human eye is most sensitive to "green" light, slightly-less-but-still-quite sensitive to "red" light, and then signifigantly less sensitive to "blue" light. That's supposed to be "senstitive" in the sense that we are able to see "green" or "red" light when it is shining at a much lower objective brightness than we would need to see "blue" light, as well as being able to distinguish finer shades of those colours. As for felt colour remaining consistent; well, please excuse the suggestion of an entirely amateur player, but I have seen tables with both blue and red felt -- among others -- and I was under the impression that blue was not all that unusual a colour choice these days. -- Nezuji 01:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Oh, sure, you can get it in just about any color these days, and even with logos printed on it. I meant historically consistent. Green is still the most popular color by orders of magnitude and has been "the" billiard cloth color for centuries. My idea was that, yes, the was initially in mimicry of grass, but that it could have stayed that way because it just "works" better. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 16:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
I think this sentence needs to be taken out: "However, the color also serves a useful function, as non-color-blind human eyes have a higher sensitivity to green than to any other color.[7]" This is speculation, but it is written as if it is fact. The issue of how we perceive different colors seems controversial in itself, nevermind its possible relationship with pool tables. Wikipedia should be fact-based, and as far as I can tell no one has mustered any strong evidence of a link between eye strain/sensitivity to various colors and the relationship to pool cloth. Seems much more likely to me that the green comes from the grass it used to be played on. And if I remember correctly from this past year's 9-ball world championships, they played on blue cloth. If green is really better, why would they use blue in an international tournament, where the risks of eye strain would be most severe? Mschlauch (talk) 04:56, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
At a guess, because the balls show up better on that color on television. At any rate, a source is cited; I have not deeply investigated it, myself, but still - if you want to challenge that the source says what the article says it does, or challenge that it is a reliable source, I think the onus is on you to demonstrate the fault. PS: There is no conflict between green's history as the color chosen because it represented grass, and green remaining favored because of its (alleged) ease on the eyes. I can partially (and of course anecdotally) attest to this effect, having played extensively and with considerable eyestrain on a grey-clothed table many years ago. Whether it really is better than, say, red, I can't say. I have played on red tables and never noticed any eyestrain effect or difficulty focusing on the balls (other than the 3, which like the 6 on green cloth, tends to blend in. I think some people favor grey cloth because no balls do this, but at least to me, it was hard to shoot on after an hour.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:56, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
You make a good point about blue perhaps being better for televised games. Nevertheless, I do challenge that the source says what the article says it does, since the source only talks about the way the eye responds to the color green, and does not mention any relationship between this visual phenomenon and pool table cloth. On a further tangent, if I were a betting man, I would probably wager that the way in which green is "easy on the eyes" has played a part in its becoming a color of choice for pool table cloth. But, again, I see no hard evidence of that in the source, and until I do, I think we should refrain from including "tantalizing possibilities" as Wikipedia content. I actually do hope that someone can muster a source which does give some indication of what the author was implying. It is an interesting idea, and appealing enough that you could probably pass it off as good trivia while you are shooting some racks with your friends... Mschlauch (talk) 07:13, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm going to remain neutral on this. It is not original research to make very basic logical deductions from known facts, but the wording as it stands may go beyond that. Perhaps it can simply be reworded. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:50, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Poker pool

Unresolved. Needed article, Poker pocket billiards, not created yet.

I also saw some Poker pool balls using Google Image Search. Honestly! There were blue balls marked J (for Jack), red balls marked Q (for Queen), purple balls marked K (for King), and yellow balls marked A (for Ace).--Mathexpressions 04:44, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I will be working on an article about that at some point. The idea is hardly new, and dates back to at least the time of ivory billiard balls, though the exact rulesets are unlikely to have been consistent over time. I know the Aramith ball set you mean. There is another more recent set that are very colorful, almost ridiculous looking, with actual kings and queens and stuff (faces, I mean) on them. I have also seen a clay ball set from ca. 1920 that was somewhat similar to the set you are talking about, but I believe with more balls. And there is a card game that combines poker and pool, using normal pool balls. If you are interested in unusual games like this, see also Baseball pocket billiards. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:13, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
PS: Mathexpressions, the game you are specifically writing about is covered in the BCA rule book, so a well-sourced article will be easy to create. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:05, 25 January 2008 (UTC)