I’m 100% with you on this. The brilliance of this strategy is that it neuters many of the advantages that a pro has over the amateur. They can’t “play the player” because you don’t even know what your own cards are, and are limiting yourself to exactly one betting choice. They are limited in their choices because they must make their own choice based only on their two down cards. It’s such a good strategy, that it would work for a 6 year old who doesn’t even know the rules of poker.
Re: Bowling, I played in a league, and my best ever game likely just sniffed the type of game professionals routinely throw. Pros have gotten so good that they had to change the lanes and pins to make it more challenging, on a normal lane like we use, they’d be in the high 200’s every game. No average person with a week’s worth of training throws like that.
However, in comparison to other sports… I’m an average guy, and I once bowled over 250, which is nothing to sneeze at, even at a local lane. It’s possible, though unlikely, that my score could have beaten a top pro who was up against me that day. More than I can say for any time I’ve played tennis, darts, basketball, soccer, golf, pool, or any other sport I’ve had an interest in.
I’ve watched it and played it on and off for 40 years. I’ve never thought of “luck” as playing more than a neglibible part in success.
Pocketing, position and ball control are the key factors at play. Both are pretty much entirely controlled by the skill of the player and luck plays pretty much zero part in that.
I’m with you. I’ve played snooker a few times. There is no possible way I would win one out of a thousand snooker games against someone like O’Sullivan or Higgins, much less one in a hundred. I don’t even think I’d be able to beat a good pub player with anything less than a year or so of practice.
I have a friend who’s a very good amateur pool player (he used to play team tournaments and such), and he’s tremendously proud that he once played a snooker break over 50. Now a 50 break alone won’t win you the frame, and I’m sure he’d break into hysterical laughter if you asked him if he could win a frame against Ronnie O’Sullivan.
In the case of bowling, I found this site that claims that 67 million people bowled in the previous year in the US. I think it’s safe to say that the average person has bowled a few games in their life.
Wouldn’t the amateur be even more exhausted? I’m sure there’s a sport where they wouldn’t, but I also can’t think of an example.
John Higgins? no. Alex Higgins? I think if you wait for the booze and coke to kick in you might have a chance.
Though actually, a friend I trust tells tales of going to see Alex back in the day when he was playing an exhibition. The way he tells it he was still knocking in centuries whilst completely off his face.
Coming from an eight-ball barroom background, the snooker table is so impossibly large and the pockets so impossibly unforgiving, that I just cannot comprehend how people like O’Sullivan, Hendry, either Higgins (I was thinking John), etc., are so damned precise. I seem to recall the first time I played snooker with another American barroom player that it took us well over an hour (maybe an hour and a half) to finish a single frame. A week of practice isn’t going to help me, and I’d bet even the most shit-faced of champions would spank me.
Thanks. I’ll check it out. I only know of contemporary-ish snooker players, as I really discovered the game in the mid-90s when I was living in the UK for half a year. I was just mesmerized by the game and the players – I knew it and the rules from playing some Accolade billiards game (ETA: Rack 'Em) on the Commodore 64, but watching the best play it and then playing it in person imbued me with a profound respect for the game and its players.
See my marathon example: Whiff the first match, unbenownst to the pro, so you’ve got all your energy saved for the second.
Of course, if cheating doesn’t disqualify you from future matches, there are even dumber ways to win, e.g., beating the snot out of the chess grandmaster with your fists in the first game so that you forfeit and then winning the games they have to play with a concussion.
But that obviously breaks the spirit of the question.
I actually would think the marathoner could very well win still. A top-tier marathon runner is doing something like 4 1/2 minute miles for 26 miles. A schlub with a week of training is lucky if they can finish the 26. I would guess an overall pace of no faster than 12 min/mi, probably more like 15 min/mile. I suspect a spent championship marathoner could find enough gas in them to average faster than that, even if they are doing a combination of walking/running. It’s a bit tough to tell at that distance, though, as the marathoner’s body may be close to a wall/breaking point.
Which reminds me. What about e-sports? I don’t play video games much nowadays, how much of a random factor is there? (as I recall, if you spawn in front of the sniper’s hideout in an FPS, it doesn’t matter if you are n00b or a e-sports pro, you are getting fragged.)
Yeah–I really don’t know. In my scenario, I’d have to do my first 26 miles faster than they’d do the second half of 52 miles, and they might collapse at a certain point, depending on how hard they’d pushed themselves for the first 26. (Of course, if they notice I wasn’t behind them, they might have slowed to a relaxed walking pace–too many variables to know how this would play out).
I used to do rated PvP in World of Warcraft. I was probably better than average but still strictly casual in the sense that I did it for fun.
Early on in each PvP season, the ranking system hasn’t settled yet and you stand a good chance getting matched against top-ranked players. Not once have I ever come close to winning any of these matches.
The 100 games, matches, or whatever would be conducted in the format, mechanics, and rules of the governing body of the sport. That is why the amateur gets the 1 week of training. No cheating! I am not sure how each sports/game runs their tournaments and how many games they play per day.
Wow, you guys are picking some of the hardest versions of games as the ones where an amateur can beat a pro.
Heads-up no limit poker probably has the biggest advantage for a pro. The ‘play the stack every hand’ gambit allows the pro to sit back and let you take antes until he has a hand that will beat you, then call.
The game for an amateur would be a full 10-person ring game of limit poker. In those games, absolute boneheaded olayers can crush the pros on any given night, as the luck of the cards in the short term is a huge factor. When 10 players are in the game, the cards matter far more than they do in heads-up, which is almost purely psychological. And in limit poker, a pro can’t take you for your whole stack when you make an obvious error.
The best game for an amateur would probably be draw poker, as it is harder for a pro to read your hand and more money has to be wagered with less information. For games commonly played in casinos, Texas Hold-em or Omaha Hi limit would be the choice.
Snooker is one of the most skilled, low luck games in pool. I would expect someone with a week’s training to win a game of that against a pro approximately never. For luck, 8-ball and 9-ball are the games of choice.
In 8 ball you are hoping to win a game on the break. A pro is unlikely to accidentally sink the 8 ball any other time.
In 9-ball you have several ways to win. You could make the nine on the break. The pro could break and leave you with an easy combo on the nine. Or the pro could run out to the 8 or 9 and miss, giving you an easy shot or two for the win. I used to play with a pro 9-ball player, and those were typically the only kinds of situations that would cause me to win, other than the rare break and run when the table opened up really nicely.
What about golf? The major tournaments always have someone that doesn’t make the cut with a score of something like +20. Any given amateur is likely to just as poorly, but with 100 of them, one or two are bound to do better than that.
I think this requires the pro to be an unwitting participant in the scheme. If the pro takes an optimal strategy to beat an average, it would not involve running full out.
Any sports where this would work if the pro doesn’t attempt to put in a professional performance, but just to beat the amateur?