Steve Davis retires

Certainly a great player but a great pity that what comes from his mouth is pure rubbish.

Snooker could certainly do with a rest from him and his dependable fellow nonsense talker his trusty parrot.

was Davis that made Hearn what he is now....
Hearn had 5k on Davis at 100/1 when Davis won his first World title.

Hardly true is it app

Presumably so he can concentrate on his DJ career? A slot at The End alongside Sven Vath maybe

Apr 17, 2016 -- 4:09PM, appformat wrote:

was Davis that made Hearn what he is now....Hearn had 5k on Davis at 100/1 when Davis won his first World title.

fecking hell, that bookie must have topped himself

don't believe that..post that bet
as everyone knows ur lucky to get a lady godiva on at 100/1..let alone a 1000 times that amount
and back then 5k was prob equivalent to at least 20 today
more unsubstantiated hyperbolic apocryphal fantasy

ill just get my oxford dictionary out

Hearn might have got a 100 on but the rest is just pure hearn and Davis tripe.

Acutally it is true, and one of Davis' nicknames is 5K for that very reason.

Just because you can't find anything on Google doesn't mean something isn't true.

His (Steve Davis) nickname could be £5k because that is how much he charges as an after dinner speaker.

Off the table, Steve has carved out a successful media career, owing in no small part to his ‘interesting’ persona. Steve has used his reputation to become a multi-talented sports pundit, radio presenter, commercials star, quiz show guest and published author. After dinner, Steve uses his bone dry sense of humour to relive the highs and lows of a varied career.


Moondan would love this

Zen,
     His long time partner and fellow eastender Barry Hearn has promoted him.
His chat shows on sky never attracted an audience of more than a few hundred.

My problem with Davis is he has shown no regard for players of his own generation who would have loved to have played on these conditions and one of his ridiculous claims was made on television ----"when I was playing I did not worry when I broke down on a break because I knew they would break down on 18 or 19"-
When Hendry arrived and completely out classed him it hurt him to the core and it still shows today.

Snooker players of old deserve more respect than he has given them and not one of them does not know that.
A better class presenter would never ridicule snookers history as he has done on many occasions and if anyone thinks that has endeared himself to many players then you could not be more wrong.

Snooker is stuck with him because of his partner and not because he is any good at his job. And that is a tragedy.

Moondan

You can interpret those statements however you like to fit your own belief.

Steve Davis held a huge a psychological  edge over his rivals for 7 years. He was starting tournaments at around 6/4, often even lower. Those players crumbled against him, this is what he is alluding to.
Yes, then the King Hendry came along and Davis was no longer the unbeatable machine, the spell was broken.
You carp on about conditions but that whole concept is relative, why was Davis so competent on the slower cloths and heavier balls yet the others not up his standard?
Take todays tables and balls back to 1980 and what do you expect to see?

I think everybody that has watched and played snooker from the early seventies would expect to see bigger breaks and they would not be wrong.

I am watching Ronnie taking the piss out of these pockets with the most ridiculous plants I have ever seen attempted.

I have no problem admitting that in his era he was head and shoulders above anyone else but he was lucky in one respect that the really great players, Such as Cliff wilson and Ray Reardon were a very long way past their best and their were plenty others.

The better conditions have changed the game and the way it is played, comparing unlikes is the passtime of idiots and in that respect Davis lets snooker down and mostly himself.

There would be pro's and cons Moondan.

You allude to these easier conditions but the balls are more reactive in todays game, that can mean a positive reaction or negative reaction.
Over do left hand side by a minute degree and your cue ball is off line, or your positional play is slightly to high or two low.

When there are new conditions you need to master those conditions with everyone else.
Heavier balls and slower cloths kept break building in a simpler format.
You get a more ferrari action these days that needs controlling.

I would love to see a tournament or two using the classic 1970 conditions.
Old men were making century breaks on those tables, yet you think todays youngsters would struggle.

Zen,
     In no other sport do you get idiots like Davis being disrespectful to the forerunners of their sport. A footballer of the 50s or 60s is not belittled because of the different balls,boots, and pitches.
Racing drivers of the 50s are not compared to the drivers of the modern racing car or its performance and much can be said of all sport and not least golf.
You only get that from Davis and his yes man Parrot.
Science has laid it hand on everything and it shows.

Moondan

You are getting carried away with emotion here.

What has Steve Davis said to upset you so much. Can you factually quote him or is it misinterpretation via your emotion?

Appformat Impossible for Davis to have been 100/1 for the 1981 world Championships, he was the current Uk champion having demolished Higgins in the final, 100/1 is pure fantasy.

Could well have struck the bet before the season started I suppose. Am inclined to believe it, dont see why they'd feel the need to invent it.

Still impossible, he made the quarters the previous year having ko'd the Griffiths the reigning champion, not a chance he started even a double figure price even a year in advance, and who on earth is going to lay you half a million to 5k, and all this 35 years ago! Catch a grip of yourself!

Yes agree cooper man, it must be absolute bollux and i'm sup prised gentleman john has fallen for it.

Davis already beating the established players years before even his debut at the Crucible. It was well known he was a champion waiting to happen.

And would you nickname someone 5k when they just won you 500k?

It is ironic that the top fee for his after dinner speaks is 5K as well.

Ok maybe its all bullcrap, but hardly an outlandish proposition that at some point after they met hearn approached a bookie and got 100/1 about him winning a world title before such and such a date or along those lines. Bets like that get struck all the time and at even bigger prices than that, good PR for betting firms if nothing else. The 5k part doesnt seem likely, and never heard that nickname before anyway...hearn called him the nugget for precisely that reason, he was a goldmine when it came to betting.

Hearn wouldn't have been getting much more than even money for those matches though John, for a few hundred quid i would imagine.

Would any bookie take 5K @ 100/1 for Davis to win the World Championship without investigating the player?

Perhaps in 1975 he was 100/1 but for 5K...no chance

Yeah you're right zen...theres no chance, if it was true I can't imagine we'd only be finding out about it now anyway. Hearn would have told the story half a million times already. He might have had some sort of juicy bet alright, but not 5k. But these bets are very normal, I think Rory McIlroy's dad had backed him to win a major when he was 13 or 14 or something like that and collected a few 100k, so that part of it i can readily digest.

Rory's dad and his pal collected 50K each, £200 @ 500/1 placed in 2004

Rory was 15 at the time and had 10 years to win the Open.

It wouldn't supprise me if Hearn won 50K back in 1981

Just goes to show prices you can get, Rory was already fairly well known on the amateur circuit by 15, that 500/1 was generous. I actually followed him in first round in 2007 in Carnoustie when he was 17, wasn't a case of if he'd ever win the Open at that point, but when.

Bookies are not stupid and when you think  how small the snooker world was in the early seventies with just a handfull of players dragged out of retirement to hurriedly get a group together to take advantage of tv interest.

I think Davis joined Hearn in about 74 and 5 grand would have been the average wage per annum in London for those with a decent job and Hearn being an accountant would not have been on much more so its not credible.

Hearn was a finance director, promoter, snooker hall owner and much more by the time he met Davis.
Far from being just an accountant Moondan.

Davis joined Hearn in 1976.

S.Davis started the 1981 World championship as 5/1 favourite. If the bet was struck in 1976 then that was pre-Crucible, and nobody knew how snooker was about to take off then.

Gobelins, Just out of interest how did you find what price Davis started for the 1981 w/c?

The bet is a figment of a fertile imagination.

Steve Davis was 5/2 favourite for the 1981 World Championship.
Sports betting was in its infancy then any exotic bet like the one mentioned would be publicised by the bookie.
The odds of 100/1 are ridiculous as is the size of the bet.

Funnily enough we can compare players of different eras when you have a guideline.
Fred Davis is such a guideline,he couldn't hold a candle to his brother Joe when he was in his prime but over 40 years later was reaching Quarter finals of World Championships.

Joe Davis played with ivory balls into sheer pockets and made centuries for fun,balls had to be dropped into middle pockets.

cooperman12 - Koral were the on-site bookies at the Crucible in 1981, and they took out a full page advert in the April copy of Snooker Scene. At that time there were only 3 bookies of note, but it's convceivable that you may possibly have got 11/2 elsewhere. Their prices were:

5/1 Steve Davis, 6/1 Higgins 6/1 Reardon, 7/1 Griffiths, 8/1 Thorburn, 16/1 Spencer, 16/1 Stevens, 20/1 Charlton, 20/1 Mountjoy, 20/1 Den.Taylor, 20/1 Virgo, 25/1 Meo, 33/1 White, 40/1 Werbenuick, 50/1 Thorne, 66/1 Fred Davis, 66/1 Mans, 66/1 Miles, 66/1 David Taylor. Others on request.

Davis beat White, Higgins, Griffiths, Thorburn and Mountjoy. So, it was an incredibly difficult draw.

Some juicy prices there. I'd have 2 bob on Mans and Taylor at 66s and a few shillings each way on Mountjoy who'd won a ranking tournament earlier that season.

That betting doesn't ring true,the margins are way too small.

Betting margins in those days were much bigger,bigger in horse racing but much bigger on sports betting.
The ad in Snooker Scene may have been promotional but the general price of Steve Davis was 5/2.
The London mafia that backed Davis in his money games deemed him a certainty and backed him at 5/2 the minute the price was chalked up.

His game against White was a qualifier.

gentlemanjohn - I'd have backed Reardon and Spencer, as no doubt I'd have been saying the standard was so much better in the 70s, and these up-and-coming 50 break merchants who then leave you tight on the baulk cushion could never have done that playing in a workingman's club with the tighter pockets and beer stained cloths.

wildmanfromborneo - Davis beat white in R1 at The Crucible 10-8. The top 8 seeds came in at R2, and there were 8 1st round matches with the 8 winners meeting the top 8 in R2. Davis was seeded 13, and White had to pre-qualify.

wildmanfromborneo
     19 Apr 16 22:22   









The bet is a figment of a fertile imagination.

Steve Davis was 5/2 favourite for the 1981 World Championship.
Sports betting was in its infancy then any exotic bet like the one mentioned would be publicised by the bookie.
The odds of 100/1 are ridiculous as is the size of the bet.

Funnily enough we can compare players of different eras when you have a guideline.
Fred Davis is such a guideline,he couldn't hold a candle to his brother Joe when he was in his prime but over 40 years later was reaching Quarter finals of World Championships.

Joe Davis played with ivory balls into sheer pockets and made centuries for fun,balls had to be dropped into middle pockets


Players would've adjusted although a lot harder,when I was practising 6/8 hours aday I would have free reogn on an old billiard table pockets like moses ears and would use the ivory balls deliberately,it was impossible to screw back more then 4/5 foot so you just practised to get better position and I made tons on a table that had been there 50 years with filth old ivory balls.

thegiggilo

A similar situation to myself. I also played with the ivory balls on a match billiard table. You could still play all your positional shots, obviously a more heavier and slower feel but century breaks were still there to be made.

Everyone thinks it's easy on these speedier more reactive conditions, but every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
A trace of side on the cue ball today and you are off your line by a wider margin than back in the day.

Those old players used side and touch rather than screw,if a ball touched the gunk that was it,it stayed there.
The smashing into the balls is a relatively new phenomenon,you wouldn't send those ivory balls all over the place.

Thegiggilo you obviously played to a high standard.
I had a break of 68 ( my highest ever ) and it was talk of the town for a while.



Gobelins.
Round I still constitutes a qualifier as the top seeds weren't playing in it.
Don't want to make this confrontational but have you still a copy of that Snooker Scene magazine with the Corals Ad.

I used to practise at a bowling club with two very old billiard tables and at the local liberal club which had a very old table pockets were tiny,you couldn't hit anything hard along bottom or top cush simply wouldn't go in.I also had two cues an old walter lindrum cue I took out of the rack must've been 15mm you couldn't use a 10mm using such heavy balls you just destroy your tip and ferrule using ivory balls..

Just asked an old old practice partner and he informs me we were actually playing with artificial ivory balls.
My conscience is clear now. Beautiful animals.

wildmanfromborneo - yes, I've got it. I'm assuming those prices would have been 3-4 weeks before the action started, as the magazine probably came out at the start of the month, as it does now, and had been printed a week or so beforehand. There are a few players with asterics next to their names as they were playing the qualifiers (including White). That year the tournament consisted of 24 players, not 32 - this changed the following year, and the point I was making about the Davis v White match - was that it was part of the tournament proper at the Crucible and not a qualifying match.

Zen,
     Sorry not to get back to you yesterday but my recordings are running about 4 hours late and hate missing anything.

You can add to Hearns list of iffy achievements "Jack the lad" "Barrow boy" and Master of Smoke and Mirrors and the 3 card trick . and he is very proud of not trusting himself

Davis sounds happier now he's retired.