Women’s pool championship

[jon-nyc]

Being played by a couple blokes.

[Mik]

FFS

[jodi]

Truly curious - Is pool something where having male hormones that would somehow give you an advantage? Or being taller than average? Thinking about the equestrian sports where men and women compete together. Where fitness is way more important than strength or size.

[jodi]

That was supposed to say finesse, not fitness.

[jodi]

But fitness matters, too, lol.

[Renauda]

@jodi

I wouldn’t think it matters. Like you say, it’s all about finesse.

I highly doubt it matters much in a game like curling either where the ability to read the ice and the acquired technique of launching a rock with a defined and controlled roll accounts for 99% of the sport. Even the sweeping is about technique rather than strength.

[Horace]

Even in chess, guys beat girls. Nobody really knows why.

As far as pool goes, physical strength does play a small role.

[Renauda]

Enough of a small role to create a physical advantage necessitating separate events for males and females billiards?

[Horace]

@Renauda said in Women’s pool championship:

Enough of a small role to create a physical advantage necessitating separate events for males and females billiards?

If it happens that women almost never beat men in the top leagues, then it plays enough of a role.

[Mik]

@Renauda said in Women’s pool championship:

Enough of a small role to create a physical advantage necessitating separate events for males and females billiards?

Since it’s a women’s event, I suppose so. But then I grew up in a pool hall that did not allow women in, so I never got to see.

[Doctor Phibes]

I would have thought the main reason men do a lot better is that there are a lot more men playing than women.

I suspect that's also true in chess. When I used to play at the local club and in the little tournaments it was almost exclusively men playing. There'd be less than 5 females for 200 men. As you can imagine, it got pretty smelly.

[Horace]

World's highest rated female chess player wouldn't crack the top 100 male players (though it's close). That seems unlikely if it's just due to more guys than girls playing.

Still way more equal than physical sports, where the world's best female at tennis, wouldn't beat a good male high school player.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/fide-ratings-january-2025#:~:text=1%2F2%2F2025 – Just in time for the start,(2803)%2C Hikaru Nakamura (2802) and Arjun Erigaisi (2801).

[Doctor Phibes]

@Horace said in Women’s pool championship:

World's highest rated female chess player wouldn't crack the top 100 male players (though it's close). That seems unlikely if it's just due to more guys than girls playing.

I wasn't exaggerating with the numbers, so if there's only between 2-5 women playing for about 200 men, it would explain it. If you compare female professionals, there are 2.3 female grandmasters for every 100 male.

There could well be something else at play here, but it is possible for women to play at the top level. Judit Polgar was ranked 7th in the world, and became the youngest ever grandmaster, beating Bobby Fischer's record at the time. Admittedly, she's an outlier, but it shows that it is possible whereas that isn't the case in physical sports.

[LuFins Dad]

Wow, first time the women’s billiards championship had 19 balls on the table!

[Mik]

Snort

[Klaus]

It might very well be that men are, on average, a little better at pool because it involves skills that men are, on average, a little better at, such as geometrical/spatial thinking and computations. And then at the top end these differences become large.

But even without any physical/mental advantage I'm fine with having separate events for women. It can be considered an invitation for women to participate in a male-dominated sport.

The trans thing is silly of course.

[LuFins Dad]

@Klaus said in Women’s pool championship:

It might very well be that men are, on average, a little better at pool because it involves skills that men are, on average, a little better at, such as geometrical/spatial thinking and computations. And then at the top end these differences become large.

I’d suggest the fact that two guys pretending to be women are at the top of the sport serves as fairly strong observational evidence of that.

[jon-nyc]

Yes what’s often called ‘visual/spatial intelligence is, on average, higher in men than women.