Is pool a sport?

[Apocalypso]

It is a game of skill. Not all games are sports, even “pro” ones.
runner pat, can you please tell us how driving a car is physically demanding? I can buy that the excitement can raise your heart rate, but so can video games, and no one is nominating me for Athlete of the Year.

[running_coach]

@Apocalypso

It is a game of skill. Not all games are sports, even “pro” ones.
runner pat, can you please tell us how driving a car is physically demanding? I can buy that the excitement can raise your heart rate, but so can video games, and no one is nominating me for Athlete of the Year.

Here’s a decent article on the demands of Formula One racing.

As the technology of racing cars has changed, so have the physical demands on a driver’s body. In the past, a driver had mostly to be strong in the shoulders and forearms in order to handle the steering and change gears. Now there is power steering, but advances in aerodynamic grip have created considerable G-forces during a car’s high-speed cornering, as have the braking with the carbon brakes. That makes demands most of all on a driver’s neck, as his head will be up to five times heavier than its usual weight and the driver has to keep it upright. His legs are solicited with heavy pounding on the brakes, which demand a sudden force of more than 100 kilograms, or 220 pounds.

Racing motorcycles have a high demand as you don’t have such things as power steering and you have to muscle the bike around.

[running_coach]

Motocross racing.
Road racing(motorcycle).

[Freddy_the_Pig]

@Astral_Rejection

My general rule-of-thumb for “is it a sport or a game?” discussions is to find out it improved physical conditioning improves your performance.

I’m not sure that works any more. (If it ever worked.) The benefits of physical fitness in staving off physical and mental fatigue are so widely recognized that one hears even chess players speaking of their fitness regimen.

[Mauvaise]

Not according to George Carlin.*

*Link to Youtube video with NSFW language. FF to 3:06 for explanations of why certain things aren’t sports. In the world according to Carlin. FF to 5:45 for Billiards/Pool.

[Cheesesteak]

@x-ray_vision

In poker, real life play differs from online greatly in that there are many ways to bluff, read faces, intimidate, etc. that could not be done over a computer. Would you consider real life poker a sport?

You can play real life, in person, poker with computer simulations of the cards. The physical form of the cards and chips is completely irrelevant.

[x-ray_vision]

@Cheesesteak

You can play real life, in person, poker with computer simulations of the cards. The physical form of the cards and chips is completely irrelevant.

I know that. However, I mentioned things that are very important to poker play IRL can’t be simulated on a computer. I would consider those things “preexisting systems.”

[aceplace57]

Pool becomes a sport when Minnesota Fats cons you into playing for 25 hours.

The Hustler

Eddie gets ahead $11,000 and Charlie tries to convince him to quit, but Eddie insists the game will end only when Fats says it is over. Fats agrees to continue after Bert labels Eddie a “loser.” After 25 hours and an entire bottle of bourbon, Eddie is ahead over $18,000, but loses it all along with all but $200 of his original stake.

[aceplace57]

Minnesota Fats did have an interesting point. Beating him once meant nothing. What mattered in his view was who had the most money after playing all night.

But, playing for 25 hours is just dumb.

[Molesworth_2]

Pool is a sport.

It’s a fairly piss-poor relative of snooker, but it’s a sport.

You’ll never see anything in pool that compares to this moment in snooker:

Ronnie O'Sullivan fastest 147 break (5:20)

[Sam_Stone]

Pool falls into a class of activities which requires physical accuracy more than endurance. Such as:

Shooting
Archery
Curling
Darts
Pool
Billiards
Bowling

Another common aspect of some of these activities is that they require a lot of strategy as well. Pool and Billiards are certainly heavy on strategy. Curling to a lesser extent. Shooting and Archery, not so much.

Are they sports? That’s impossible to say, since a ‘sport’ is an ill-defined concept in the first place. If inclusion in the Olympics defines something as a sport, then I’d say that since shooting, archery and curling are Olympic sports, that makes billiards and pool a sport as well, even if they’re not in the Olympics.

[Darth_Sensitive]

To me it doesn’t meet the test of requiring enough physical activity, but it does pass the defense test (which is far more important), so I could possibly be swayed.

[Sam_Stone]

Pool requires every bit as much physical activity as shooting, and there are several shooting sports in the Olympics. I guess you could argue that Archery has more of a physical requirement, but it still shares a key requirement - the ability to make your body do something incredibly precise.

Or look at it this way: To play pool or billiards at a high level, you have to have absolute mastery over your reflexes, your nerves, your stance, your swing… You need very good eyesight and a high degree of awareness of what your body is doing. A pool player making a shot is doing something very similar to what a shooter does when making a shot. Both require about the same level of physical intensity, which is not insubstantial. Actually, I’d consider pool to be more physically intense, because you have to control your body while going through substantial motion. Shooting sports mainly require the ability to focus and remain still. Pool requires control of your body through the motion of the cue.
What it doesn’t require is endurance, which is why you can find world-class shooters and pool players who don’t look ‘athletic’. But I guarantee you they are still engaged in an athletic activity - just one that requires a different set of physical abilities.

[Namkcalb]

Pool/Snooker are as much sports as golf is.

Golf is basically just snooker with a different shaped ‘cue’ and a bigger ‘table’