The new snooker season has started. Since I need new hobbies, I'll try to get a new blog going, offering regular reports and a fantasy league. Just for fun. My super duper Blog can be found here:
Also, another season of the Snooker Fantasy League starts today! Yey! It really is fun, you guys should totally try it out, as Chapa said:
Gecko's Snooker Fantasy League is more fun than slapping Salle with a rotten fish! I recommend using Gecko's Snooker Fantasy League for each and anyone! My life is so much brighter now!
is it true that the reason Snooker players decline as they age is that their depth perception declines? i heard that even like a 1% decline in depth perception and they're basically fucked?
€: no i never heard of it. and i never heard of losing anything due to ageing. Most players above 45 retire, due to the stress from travelling from destination to destination on weekly basis. However, players like bingham, higgins and mark j williams just showed, that they can win anything still. even steve davis was part of the top16 until 50, so...
Only a matter of concentration and mental power I think. Also players change playing style as they age due to improved overall field. Say Mark Williams simply tries to win frame with a decent 50-60 break these days
On May 16 2016 01:47 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i heard Cliff Thorburn's career ended due to bad eye sight... but it was only slightly worse than normal.
I only REALLY started to watch pro-snooker after Selby's streak and loss to Higgins in Sheffield 2007. Before that I rarely watched, mostly selected players (Hunter, Hendry, Maguire and Davis) or selected venues - in other words mostly semi finals and onwards. Only two years ago I started re-watching and catching up on history, mostly only on Higgins (Alex), White (Jimmy) and other selected players like Terry Griffith and Dennis Taylor. Therefore no idea about Thorburn and his retirement reasons.
I can attest that "bad eyesight" is not a huge problem in the way. Depending on your technique you can compensate for a lot. Just look at Gould or Fu, both need glasses, both are top tier players worthy enough to challenge the best. However, I distinctly remember switching from glasses to contact lenses for the first time and running into doors (literally) in the first days following. However, you adjust to that quickly. Personally, I didn't really feel a huge difference when playing pool in this time. Then again, I'm neither pro, nor is pool (distance wise) comparable to snooker.
My teams may have some weird choices. Since I entered at the last minute, I was able to look at the first entries. When designing my teams, I was having teams too similar to foo-rear or Gecko's team (I have to admit they look very good), so I tried to change it up. Will make it more fun even if I probably won't win.
Selby seemed like a no-brainer. Then I picked Wilson and Day who I thought would have a good value for their initial cost. Then I was going to pick Maguire and a 4-point player, but at this point it was pretty much foo-rear's team, so I decided to go with something else: Zhou at 0 point, and MJW at 7 points.
As for the anti-team, I was initially thinking of picking Murphy (9 points), but then if I wanted to pick a terrible player at 0 points, Carter was the only player at 6 points, and I like this player too much to put him in my anti-team. I could have picked Walden, even if it made a total of 16 points, but it seemed like a waste. Mark Allen at 10 points looked good, but then I would have pretty much ended with Gecko's anti-team. So I picked Robertson (8 points), which may go terribly very quickly, but it's kind of a vengeance for last year's disappointing performance. Then, I picked a terrible player, so Gareth Allen. Walden looked like a good player to make the 15 total points.