Bamacues said:

I have been at this game for over 60 years.

Pretty much all I ever heard or saw was "nickel or dime" shaped playing tips.

Recently, it appears that some of the top-level players are using tips that are almost totally flat.

Some even (especially snooker players) appear to have intentional "mushroom" built into their tip install.

Am I imagining things? Is there a particular logic to the cue tip shapes that I am not getting?

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I mentioned this awhile back that I had noticed a lot of the better players tips being quite flat in the center and was basically told by a poster on here that they were wrong in doing that. Maybe, maybe not, but I would venture to say some of those players with flatish tips, were probably better players than the person that insinuated they were wrong.
Was it the tip that made them good, I doubt it, but they were very good players. Personally I'm not sure it matters, but I see a lot of really good players that don't seem to worry about their tips as much as lesser players do.

lfigueroa said:

One of the things I do when I go to a tournament and play the occasional champion is to sneak a peek at their cue tips.

And my observation has been that you are indeed correct with all of them playing with pretty flat tips, like a nickel or maybe even a quarter radius.

Lou Figueroa

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As they should be.

Kris_b1104 said:

He did elaborate. It's not his equipment, it's someone named Del Sim's camera who is there onsite in NYC. Dunn is commentating remotely from Florida. Del Sim is unavailable today to record the 3rd set, hence no stream.

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del sim is/was a solid player, nicknamed the highlander. new yorker originally from scotland. also the tallest man on earth

The Wolverine said:

Have been completed. And they all finished 6-2. The commentators just said it was 15 million to 1 odds as a parlay.

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If you had to pick the correct winner at 6-2 as opposed to just the correct score, the odds get a lot worse. Like 256 times worse. But those are not the odds that a bookie would offer. I suspect that bookies were offering 7-1 for a 6-2 score by a particular player, which would give the 15 million to one parlay.

The Wolverine said:

Have been completed. And they all finished 6-2. The commentators just said it was 15 million to 1 odds as a parlay.

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If we assume that the players are of equal ability, we will get the smallest chance that the score will be that lop-sided, but let's go with that to start.

In a single match between two equal players, the chance that Player A will win 6-2 is 2^(-8) * 7*6 /(1*2). Explanation:

The 2 to-the-power-minus-8 is because we have 8 things happening that each has a chance of 1/2

7*6 is from the fact that the two wins by the loser can appear in 7 locations for the first and 6 locations for the second. Neither loss can be the 8th game. Example: WWLWLWWW -- how many different possible strings of W and L are there for 6-2? The answer is 21

The divide by 1, divide by 2 is because the two losses by the winner are indistinguishable.

That gives a chance of Player A winning 6-2 of 21/2^8 or 21/256 or 0.08203125 or a little over 8%

But Player B has the same chance, so the chance that one of them will win at 6-2 is twice or 21/128 = 0.1640625

For that to happen 8 times in a row is that raised to the 8th power or in 1 in 1905133.