English Blackball Pool Federation

Does anyone happen to have the email address to request a link for remote access? TIA.

Yes - "Who are the Beatles?" is the famous one!

I knew about Agreed Facts and General Knowledge - although I didn't know the legal terms for them - but what I am saying is that it's infuriating and odd that in this particular area of law, people are allowed to dispute CGK so often and to such an extent. The fact is that you can "make a case" for absolutely anything - this is what people do in debating societies. For fun, or as an exercise. But if this sort of latitude was allowed in other areas, cases would go on for ever and we would get even more bizarre results more frequently than we do.

When it comes down to it, we are litigating fact on one side and fantasy on the other and that should be recognised. What we need/needed is for someone to say at an early stage, "ffs don't be so bloody stupid."

Maybe the respondents' expert will produce those data. In adversarial proceedings there are Agreed Facts (ie agreed between the parties) and Common General Knowledge (though parties can dispute whether something is CGK). Everything else has to be proved using fact witnesses and expert witnesses.

This is why you get silly headlines about out of touch judges who don't know about popular culture or everyday life. They do know: they're just formally establishing that whatever is being referred to is either an Agreed Fact or CGK, so nobody has to prove it.

What I have never understood is why it isn't enough in these cases to just produce the decades and decades worth of results in men's and women's competitions. In many traditional sports and indeed pastimes we have 100 years' worth of data. If sports and pastimes were not gender-affected, the men's and women's results would be the same, more or less.

I suppose there's a legal reason, but I don't really understand the rationale. It's like the law is existing in a different plane to reality. Like we would have to prove that living creatures need oxygen, or that being stabbed is painful and not just the same as having acupuncture, or something. My thoughts are a bit muddled but I hope you see what I am getting at.

PF is of course correct in saying that the women's top 100 ratings being lower than the men's top 100 ratings is to be expected with there being far more men playing. (For an extreme case imagine there were just 100 women and 600 men - the women's top 100 would be all players, the men's all within the top 20%).

I agree with this. "If as many women as men played the game...". That's the thing about pool; at the non-elite level, women can be pretty much as good as men, there are a lot of very talented female players out there. Hence genderists seeing it as a 'wedge' issue. But at the elite level, of course the male advantage will show through. Plus,of course,why the hell shouldn't women have their own comps, in any sport, without having to demonstrate any disadvantage? They always did, in all sports, up until a few years back. Is it ground that's lost, that that seems to be a hill no-one's prepared to die on now?

PS it took me a 30 second google to find a chart of the approx distribution of men's and women's Fargo ratings. Which are clearly different. So not sure why anyone's trying to deduce anything from top 100s.

Also lol about RMW asking why they didn't ask a TW along to their discussion about what was fair for the women's league so that they could tell everyone how sad they'd be if they were excluded. Perhaps they should have asked a drugs cheat along to the discussion about athletics anti-doping policy too so they could lament how their lives would be ruined if they were banned?

I feel that RMW's personal situation is not helping RMW's clarity in arguing this case.

They badly need evidence from an expert pool player about what actually matters. Or even the basic rules of the game.

This expert PF's simulation data is quite limited. What he's looking at is the physics of balls ricocheting around a table.

He's saying if the cue ball goes off faster at the start there's more chaos on the table - the balls get spread around more (good), there's more chance of potting a ball (necessary in the UK game, not necessary in the US game), there's more chance of accidentally potting the white (bad). He wasn't told the rules of the UK game (!!) so didn't include the odds of potting a non-white ball in his report but I think he's saying he does have data and it does increase with speed.

What he hasn't looked at at all is the control/speed aspect of male and female players. Which is kind of critical. Someone operating comfortably within their limits has more control over both speed and direction.

They were discussing a paper by a different expert talking about women having less speed. I'm not entirely clear where the different expert comes in and if they're going to appear, or if it's just a paper the first expert used for reference.

Also some discussion at the end about the rating system. Where again nobody in the discussion actually seems to know how it works, so evidential value dubious. PF is of course correct in saying that the women's top 100 ratings being lower than the men's top 100 ratings is to be expected with there being far more men playing. (For an extreme case imagine there were just 100 women and 600 men - the women's top 100 would be all players, the men's all within the top 20%). But without knowing anything about the overall distribution of ratings we don't know if the values seen are evidence of something or not.

not only did women have no disadvantage compared to males, but males could be actually disadvantaged (and certainly had no advantages) because of their physiology

WON’T SOMEONE THINK ABOUT THE MENZ

WhyOhWhyOhWhyOhWhy then do we need men's and women's leagues, if men had no advantage? And why wasn't HH happy playing in the existing open league?
It's a mystery.

Taking huge logic leap, it's a bit rape apology isn't it. Power but no control over it, not my fault, your honour.

Which is why men typically lose at pool? I guess that's what he's saying. Poor men, must be awful.

Was my thought too!

I was going to say that Sheldon was right....

To be fair, Sheldon Cooper was always dismissive of MIT, if I recall correctly. Not a patch on Caltech.

Did you ever in your life think you would type out this sentence 😂?

MIT must have really gone downhill.

Thank goodness for that. PF’s data were from a lot of things cobbled together. Bits of other people’s work which may have issues too. I also think his bamboozling language might have been a bit obfuscating. Consider, because it was plain to see, that he could be picked up on the fact he didn’t even know the rules. With the ‘Science’ it may not have been as easy to pick up on other flaws.

PF lost me when he was mooting that not only did women have no disadvantage compared to males, but males could be actually disadvantaged (and certainly had no advantages) because of their physiology. But he is not an expert on physiology. And what he was saying did not seem to be the case to me. I’ve played badly once or twice, and my OH could easily arrange themselves to cover anywhere on the table, whereas I couldn’t. Even from my limited experience of playing, I thought it was a bit of a worry on how he easily construed something which did not seem true to me. What about if he was stretching stuff in very technical language as it is not as evident to the ordinary person.

I suppose it is easy to sound plausible when using scientific language with authority. I think he strayed from his area of authority. It is more difficult to pick up on if and where the science was junk or not.

The points will not be in bamboozling language with EH.

I noticed at one point he was talking about how in England pool is separated so people of different 'genders' play in different tournaments so it was harder to compare. At that point I expected the judge to say 'That's what we are here to discuss, you numpty' and give up!

Emma is giving evidence, according to Sex Matter’s blog on Monday.

Id be happy with them both! I think they have collaborated on papers 🤔

So, he was not concerned about fewer examples before because he could just scale it up. Whereas comparing the top 100 men with the top 100 women was a concern because of the fact that 6 times more men than women play.

Will anyone ask him if there is any concern if men claiming to be women distort the integrity of the women’s examples?