But the average player ability has increased.

Due to balls being easy to pocket from any position on the table, ie as long as you can see it, then 1 foot or 10 feet distance is irrelevant, it was always about position.

Now most players no the slightest bit about position, ie they no how to pot red green red green red green and occasiocally a blue if they dare, then its much more often that an average player will clear up.

I'm 15 and yeah the age of good players has definately gone up

As has unemployment, funny that

they've let all you hooligans come on so it's obviously dropped gotta get us a better doorman like back in the day! used to be a red velvet rope at the entrance. now it's more like a piece of loosely tied floss

or a spiders web across a gate post on a windy day :L

They've gone lower, now, we got girls who are 30 odd pretending to be 14 odd years younger! Ahahaa.

On a serious note, no they haven't got lower...

I think they have got lower.. take arcade out and they have got lower.. not as many top players around now, still got the odd players like brent, Seb, pretty much the orig players are the real good players

players like destiny, ste are no longer about as much playing, and they are the players that you could probably say were the real good arcade players, but arcade i remember i was 905 and was about 13th in the rankings.. now you dont even have to be 880 to be in the top 10 LOL

Standards have got lower in my opinion. As my learned colleague mr cue-power pointed out at the top of this page, many players now consider breaks where all the colours are blues and baulks to be good breaks. Those of you who have seen Damee, Arpeggi, Chase475 play original will know the difference between these guys and everyone else. They can work out angles to go off cushions and to clear the black/pink, and move reds off cushions from anywhere. Some guys now are maybe better potters, Seb and Brent are 2 of the best potters I have ever seen, but the knowledge of angles that the 3 i mentioned above have is, in my opinion, better than any current player I have played.

Head to head, some of the current top players would beat the 3 i mentioned above in terms of frames, but in terms of pure skill there is still a gap that no new player has managed to cross from what I have seen.

I'm not talking about arcade here as it isnt a proper game, nor carom as everyone knows standards are the same as ever there. A few players who are really good, a few decent players and the rest get by with knowing a few shots and hitting and hoping the rest .

I think there is always gonna be the best players, destiny, damee, ste_efc, sean_paul etc.
Then you get players that are near there standard but maybe not quite whocares8x8, cue_power, brentologist and adam_147 etc.
Then you get some decent players that give the reg table and orig table a chance but mostly it's full of average arcade players potting red then potting a baulk colour every shot to take minimal risk of running out of position and then you get smackers.

P.S Bring rocket balls back

pfff just typed a load then lost it all.
i think it's obvious that standards have gotten better. funky's been around longer, more people play so more good players play now than before. etc etc. its just like on telly the competition is tougher than ever.

ps. am always moving reds around/ disturbing reds off cushions and colours etc. its what i do best probly :)

people will always have different opinions because we all play eachother at different times and we're all not in top form every frame. so there'll always be different overrated and underrated players. at one point i was turning down a 147 because i didnt like the uglyness of potting a disgusting black off its spot from the side cushion by the blue and wanted my breaks to look as beautiful as possible lmao. gotta love being inch perfect. like the other day me and seb had a great few games in a tourney, we were both getting inch perfect a lot of the time. it was a pleasant few frames, whilst ignoring eachother lol. shame our tapping session ended with me not seeing a pottable red and leaving it on for seb. and he clears up.

Edited at 02:29 Sun 09/10/11 (BST)

and people saying it was more difficult back then, who's to say new school players can't handle that. also some people think its gotten more difficult to play, eg. ste_efc

if you been away for a long time, naturally its harder as your not used to it.

i still think playing standards got higher and forum a bit lower but hopefully will get back to banter soon (e.g. football threads).

and i do think it was more difficult back then unless people still use the old cursor then its bound to be easier now than back then as old cursor doesn't have 100% accuracy where default does, never tried ghost on orig (bit like old cursor imo)

Ste is finding arc more difficult to play because the pockets are tighter now!

I'm only going to talk about Arcade here because that's all I used to play apart from Carom.

I found it much easier back in the day to hit a 107, and even just a half cent. These day's, for whatever reason, I just can't aim properly. (I'm guessing the angles might have changed slightly, and I've just not adapted to them yet).

I stopped playing Arcade as soon as Nick added the animation for the ball dropping into the pocket. I was ranked 922 at the time, and I was averaging at around 1 half cent every 2 games, but I dislike all the changes so I don't play it any more.

So as far as game play goes, in my opinion, it's gotten worse, (probably more realistic, but I play this for the "funky" factor, not the realism).

i didnt even know they made arcade harder

its still too easy!!!

however there are loads of better players these days!!!

There are more good players, less great players in my opinion.

yep peg and dest amongst those, hopefully they will be back in near future.

be thankful there are any women on the site... all we used to have was men dressing up as women and wearing heels about the membars bar...*shudders* the good ol' days