Lots of people here obviously also think this, but I maintain that they're wrong. Consider what the Wired article you linked actually says:
> In a 1993 study, he found that hand-eye coordination deteriorated immediately after a player's first drink, but balance and accuracy improved at a BAC of 0.02 (beyond that, performance fell off).
A BAC of 0.02 is like, I dunno, less than half a beer? (And even then the article suggests a mixed bag.) I have no trouble believing that very small doses of alcohol could relax the imbiber in a way that's useful. But I suspect most of the people here who think I'm wrong are referring to larger doses not measured in fractions-of-a-single-beer.
And, again, I very much doubt it.
Your ability to do almost anything falls off beyond the 0.02 point mentioned in the article. What's actually on display here is that people are very bad at evaluating how alcohol affects them. None of the claims here would survive unbiased testing.
.02 BAC is about a 12oz beer for the average male. Given that there is a lag between drinking that first beer and having the alcohol absorbed into the bloodstream, I find it entirely plausible that 1.5 pints in could correspond with a pool player's peak performance.
They've already consumed enough alcohol to move past the sweet spot but it isn't yet affecting their performance.
> In a 1993 study, he found that hand-eye coordination deteriorated immediately after a player's first drink, but balance and accuracy improved at a BAC of 0.02 (beyond that, performance fell off).
A BAC of 0.02 is like, I dunno, less than half a beer? (And even then the article suggests a mixed bag.) I have no trouble believing that very small doses of alcohol could relax the imbiber in a way that's useful. But I suspect most of the people here who think I'm wrong are referring to larger doses not measured in fractions-of-a-single-beer.
And, again, I very much doubt it.
Your ability to do almost anything falls off beyond the 0.02 point mentioned in the article. What's actually on display here is that people are very bad at evaluating how alcohol affects them. None of the claims here would survive unbiased testing.