He's missing the differentiation between strategy and execution when it comes to games. From what I understand of pool, the strategy isn't overly complicated

He's missing the differentiation between strategy and execution when it comes to games. From what I understand of pool, the strategy isn't overly complicated and, while the execution takes thousands of hours of practice to have the required manual dexterity, it is probably achievable by a good percentage of the population. However, lets look at something like basketball. The vast majority of the population, no matter how much practice, will never be able to dribble a ball as quick as Kobe Bryant, or jump five a five foot vertical, etc. Chess, on the other hand, has almost no 'execution' barrier to entry. Most everyone can move pieces around and understand the rules. However, the strategy and mental state one needs to be in takes a lot of both practice and innate ability. I'm sure if you took his experiment of seeing how much people practiced chess, the winner would not be the one who practiced the most.