There's a storm brewing in the pool world. At its eye is an upcoming match between Donny Mills of Clearwater, Florida (USA) and Siming Chen of Shanghai, China.

Who are these players and why is it a big deal?

Siming Chen

At 25-years old and at a rating of 783, Siming is the highest rated female in the world and has many women's titles under her belt, including World Games, Amway Cup, All Japan, and China Open. To put Siming's performance into perspective, she has, for the past four years, an overall winning record against each of Kelly Fischer, Allison Fisher, Jasmin Ouschan, and Karen Corr and a combined record of 112 to 91 against these opponents.

Donny Mills

Donny is a US pro-level player distinguished by (1) having a full-time job outside the pool world, and (2) being known to summon a high level game when it counts. He reached 82 in a race-to-100 9-ball match against Shane Van Boening, and at one US Open 9-Ball event he plowed through a number of champions (Boyes, Appleton, Kennedy, Morris) with lopsided scores only to lose two hill-hill heartbreakers against Morris and Immonen to reach the finals. Last year he beat Melling, Orcollo, and Bergman at Derby City Classic 9-Ball.

Women vs men

Few issues generate as much intense discussion as women vs men at pool. Opinions on the issue are strong, confident, and divergent. There is no debate there are many more high level male players than female players. The debated issue is why this is so.

To be fair, it is uncontested there is a large participation difference between men and women in pool. And given that, it is not clear it is even reasonable to seek explanations for performance differences. After all, if somebody points out the Ukraine has many more high level chess players than does Japan, nobody feels compelled to examine cognitive differences between Ukranians and Japanese. Or if someone points out Norway has many more high level hockey players than does Portugal, we don't feel compelled to examine the role of size or strength or speed differences in the populations or other biological factors.

In fact if you asked,

"why does Ukraine have better chess players than Japan?" or

"why does Norway have better hockey players than Portugal?"

you might expect a sarcastic response like,

"Duh... Is this a serious question? Maybe it is because they actually PLAY chess (hockey) in Ukraine (Norway)?"

And yet here, with pool and sex, we find despite clear participation differences a firehose of biological rationalizations.

Our view is explanations of male/female performances differences in pool are premature, that we need considerable more data to even begin to make conclusions about whether there is a performance difference to explain. Our view is also that results of this one matchup, as exciting as the matchup is, provide no answers to such questions.

But we are riveted nonetheless.

The match

Siming and Donny will play best of 3 sets 9-ball races to 21 games with the first set on Saturday February 23 and the conclusion on Sunday. The games will be winner breaks (from the box), rack your own with the 9-ball on the spot.

Fargo Ratings

One issue on some minds is whether Fargo Ratings for men and women are comparable. The concern is top women generally are rated using games played against other women, and top men generally are rated using games played against other men. We believe this is not a problem, and several tests with the data support our view. Still, the connections are indirect, and we are relying on a large number of individually weak connections. The kinds of connections that tend to match things up are, just making up an example,

• Siming tends to beat Mary 7 to 3

• Mary tends to play even with Victor

• Victor against Donny tends to be 4 to 7

In this scenario, Siming is outperforming Donny by a bit. That is a weak thread, no doubt. But if that thread is a single strand of a rope, the connection can be strong.

Siming Chen has a Fargo rating of 783, and that puts her around world top 50, even though she essentially doesn't play opponents around her in rating. Donny Mills has a Fargo Rating of 749, and that puts him around top 20 in the United States.

It would be nice to be able to see this match as a test of Fargo Ratings. But unfortunately 100 or so games is just not enough. It requires 200 games before a player even has a Fargo Rating. It is not uncommon to see a player perform 50 points high or low for a string of 100 games. Still, these issues are on peoples's minds and that makes this match fascinating.

Prior matchups

While Siming has--at least on our radar--played little against men, she has played Donny Mills once before, a 10-ball race to 15 at Griff's in Las Vegas last summer. Siming won that match 15-13. Siming also entered the Austria Open about a year ago, where she lost 9-5 to Albin Ouschan (802) and won 9-5 against Daryl Peach (746).

The break

There is a lot of discussion about the break and break rules. When the one-ball is racked on the spot and players can make a wing-ball consistently, the objective is to have a shot on the one-ball, which banks near the side pocket and toward the head of the table. That makes 9-ball too easy at a high level. The rules here, following the International 9-Ball Open and the Derby City Classic, are to rack the 9-Ball on the spot and require three balls to pass the headstring. Here a wing-ball is tougher to make. Pocketing the the one-ball in the side is perhaps easier, but then the first shot is on the 2-ball and so control is lost.

Donny is known for figuring this kind of thing out effectively. Given that, his comment after the last match that Siming outbroke him is interesting. Is Siming good at figuring out the break? We don't know. But she has some pretty sporty hosts this week in Northern Virginia, and we might guess that besides she and her mom enjoying good hospitality and getting accustomed to the time change, there is some attention being paid to the break.

You can watch this match

This match is made possible by Roy's Basement, who have arranged to stream it for a modest fee so we can all see it. You can watch it here.

We are thankful to Roy's Basement for bringing this match to the world. Near as we can tell, Donny Mills and Siming Chen are great people, great players, and great ambassadors for our sport. Let's all watch this match!