the_dunk_tank

Shitty practce is part of this scenario. Women get put in the women's league with other women. As a cohort they aren't paid as much, and the player pool is smaller, so the overall quality isn't as high. Then they play against each other, and there you have it, 10k hours playing against people who aren't posing the same challenges that a men's league would. The experience isn't even necessarily hours spent, it's getting into the sport and staying with the sport in the first place, then playing against players who know all the tricks, and then learning how to counter them or play them yourself. On top of that, if your league gives out more money, then you can get professional mentor/coach.

This makes sense yeah, I was thinking on the amateur literal bullshitter scenario though, person who plays pool once week for 2h isn't "practicing". But on the other hand if you're at a point you're committed to actualy playing and even join a league then yes its different I agree.

At school I remember the boys could play a game of touch rugby (a bit like flag football) against the girls team, and pretty much walk past them using passing and schoolyard tricks. It wasn't a strength or speed thing. It was that the boys had all been playing around with a rugby ball since they were 8 years old, while most of the girls had only started playing at the age of 15-16. The boys were essentially fluent in rugby. The girls could run all the training drills they wanted - drills can't teach you the game psychology that thousands of hours of game time can. Even if they played every day, it could take them years to catch up. It's different for pool as it's arguably less nuanced than a team game, but still, comparisons can be made.

Ok I'll rephrase it, the specific reason I mentioned the 10k hour myth is this scenario:

Person that thinks they'll have an "advantage" learning to play piano as an adult because they had like 1 lesson a week for 2h during for a couple of years back in highschool or whatever. Unless you actualy reached a profficient level before that it is almost negligible or we can pretend it is. That versus an adult complete beginner age 25-35.

The first person will have an advantage maybe for a the very basic stuff(again assuming the first person didn't actually achieve anything, its why I said "BS around") that takes maybe a few dozen hours to catch up, it would make no actual meaningful difference towards becoming a pro.

The biggest sin of the 10k myth is bad practice e.g just repeating and playing the same song over and over. It wont make you better no matter how much you do it. Worse than that without an actual teacher we often just keep practicing bad habits and mistakes become even harder to fix compared to a complete beginner.

This is what that 10k hour myth was all about. People in general tend to behave as if just "doing it" is good enough and end up making exaggerated goals and expectations, but also neglecting the need for real teachers and a real planned and effective practice method/schedule.

Your example is a good point because there is no "wrong way" to play that game, everything they did was useful and a learning experience. This is not true for some other sports and definitely not true for a lot of hobbies etc. You can and most people indeed do spend a lot of time doing stuff that doesn't improve their skill. I think a blanket statement of "I spent X hours doing Y before therefore I have an advantage" is possibly disingenuous without clarification, like what did you actually do with that time?