It only takes one pellet to break clay.
Sometimes. If you walk around on a target field, you'll pick up a surprising number of clays with one hole in them. Some with two. Very occasionally, 3. I don't think the guys who are shooting the top scores at the target games are counting on single pellet breaks. Especially not in American skeet, where if you don't go straight--especially with the gauges other than the .410--you aren't going to win.
Yeah, that is true, but you are really only inspecting whole clays. If you were looking for
almost whole clays you'd probably find just as many that only show a hit or two on the broken edge. For skeet a cylinder bore works great but in the real world of hunting you are rarely presented those perfect shots at almost the same range time after time after time and in the clay sports, even though a guy isn't counting on chips whether he's a pro or a beginner, even chipped target counts as a hit and you get the same point as if it were smoked. In the game fields a shot that would chip clay and go down as a hit on the score card will more than likely just result in an unrecoverd crippled game bird. My point is that shooting clay is only one facet of shotgunning and for the most part an all around shotgun really does benefit a choked bore.
