Friday, September 9, 2011

Streaming Screams

Most people love to watch pool on streams.  And when it's free, it's even better!

But do you know what goes on in the background of the decision making?  And do you know of the myriad of complaints?

Being a former Tournament Director (TD) and a pool player with friends, I hear things.  Yep, I do.  lol.

First, who decides what match will be featured?  Who gets to decide which players get to play on the stream table?  Usually, it's the TDs.  They look at the names, and admittedly, they pick the match-ups of the players that are most well-known.  Usually, these are the top-ranked players of the tour at hand.  If it's not a tour, then it's still the top players in that tournament.

The key is, what about the "little people"?  What about the players who see they get over looked every round?  What about those players?  Yes, they feel like crap.  They feel slighted and get upset, "Why didn't they pick my match?  Do they not think I'm good enough to be on the stream?"


Then let's say for some reason the not-so-top players happen to get to play their match on a stream table.  Three things happen:  the inexperienced players get super nervous and their game doesn't show up on the stream, or they don't want to play on the stream because it's too much pressure. Or what's even worse, the crowd in the chat room starts to complain about the players who miss badly or can't play.  "Why are they on the stream?  Get such and such instead.  I wanna see some good pool."

While the newbies will get amazing experience handling pressure on a stream table, it still doesn't help the crowd who are sitting in front of their computers.  They want to see big names; people they know.

So the TD's go back to putting the top-ranked players on the stream.  And then toward the end of the tourney, you see the same faces through the final day.  Some times, you could see the same player in several stream matches if they are on the one-loss side for a long time.

Granted, most of us wouldn't care if it was Jeanette Lee or Raj Hundal, but other times it will be with players we don't care to see 5 times in a row.

Everyone thinks streaming is awesome... and easy.  It's not.  It creates a lot of complaints and concerns and bitching and moaning.

People should appreciate free streams, instead, the audience gets upset about who is on the table and why they are on the table, and the players get upset if they aren't on the table, or if they are on the table.

Where are the happy people?  lol.

Seriously,I'm just trying to point out a few of the "kink"s that can associate streaming matches.  This isn't anything new.  Even TV has to decide which tennis matches of Wimbledon they will show.  We aren't alone.  This isn't anything new.

It's all politics and ratings.

Wear something sexy or shoot well.  That will help!  lmao!

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