HUH??? If it wasn't for Hearn&Co. and the 'beebs 'PotBlack' snooker would still be stuck away in shitty old parlors at the end of some alley in Shitshire England. All the guys that became wealthy should send him xmas/birthday cards for life.
WPA Bans 245 Players
- Thread starter Bob Jewett
- Start date
Oh the pain……….
I got no beef with MR, except for the ball colors
From what i've been told Emily got REAL tired REAL fast from all the ball complaints but they've stuck with them.
Yikes!
sudocrushms
Well-known member
Can we at least agree that the black-freckled cueball is better than the measles cueball?
(For the love of god though, anything but a CB with a single f-ing dot on it...)
I'd prefer the classic blue-circle that comes with Centennials. No one cares about those fkng dots/spots/flecks. Just another sales gimmick aimed at suckers.
Then again snooker could have been this, now, if the audience hadn't rejected it:
Last edited:
Yes it’s much better. I like that CB a lot. The balls are good, the colors are the issue.
Wow, that is nuts. That's like Bonus Ball. A bunch of stupid rules, and can't be played by normal people at a club.
sudocrushms
Well-known member
I really like the 6-spot cueball. Gives me a better visual of what it's doing. I keep my Tournament Black CB in my case and use it everywhere i go.
Not a huge fan of the appearance of the Arcos II balls, but i've never played with them either.
I would be shocked if this dispute ends soon or easily, absent a near full surrender by the WPA. Wishful thinking imo.
The WPA has said the dispute is not about sanctioning anymore, if I recall correctly, and whatever the case, the standoff really revolves around control/calendar.
By sanctioning tournaments, the WPA has some control over the dates that promoters can use. That's a powerful tool.
Matchroom doesn't want to cede that control. It's tour is big and growing, and is complicated to set up: The venues, the broadcast partners, the marketing. Especially while it is young and growing, MR needs flexibility to stage its events, and naturally it wants the best dates possible.
Just look at how difficult it was for MR to set up the Reyes Cup. Ideally it would not have started two days after the Hanoi Open, but that's how it ended up. I would guess MR got penned in by the complexity of the matter.
Giving the WPA a big say in the calendar limits MR's flexibility, all to appease other promotors who are effectively competitors who invest far less in the game.
Most of the other promoters aren't really doing anything to try to grow the game and bring in a new audience. Pro pool needs broader media reach to achieve more success and can't be stuck on just Youtube and obscure pay-for websites. MR gets it.
EDIT: I forgot to add, WPA wants calendar control to get sanctioning money from OTHER promoters.
What good is its sanctioning authority, however, if MR ignores the WPA and schedules events when it wants. Other promoters could lose out and then question why they are paying the WPA sanctioning fees themselves.
Last edited:
Well you know what they say..."any press is good press" and there's no doubt that it caused discussion. As much as I hate the purple five (like, I'm up there with Fatboy on my hatred of it), I'd have to disagree with you on it being a f$% up. I think it's served its purpose.
Jaden
Well and that's the reality. So long as MR is the big dawg and putting the money for promotion, payouts, etc, everyone needs to move their schedule around them and really that's just the way it is.
The one's with the cash will win out in the end if their model is viable at all and considering what they did with snooker, it appears to be.
Jaden
What major sport is not at the mercy of a private, commercial entity? The Premier League is private. All major U.S. leagues are compilations of privately owned teams.
Why should pool be any different? Is there a popular sports league that is publicly owned or owned by a nonprofit group? I am unaware.
All these sports, by the way, have constantly made changes in the rules. And sometimes very big ones. Soccer is the most conservative, but now they use goalline technology and five subs.
The game of pool still looks pretty much the same to me in MR tourneys. Color of the balls? Please. A cosmetic issue. Breakbox? Great idea. Tighter pockets? OK, but only up to a point. I'd be fine with 4 or 4 1/4 inch. Players are adapting just fine.
Poor, poor Emily, my heart bleeds purple for her. Well not really because of the way she effed up the color of the balls. But here is the thing that gets me, she effed up the colors for absolutely no reason or benefit, who does that???
Exactly. People keep whining about schedule slots. Wake the hell up folks, its competition for market share. WTF would MR give two shits what Predator wants as to choice scheduling slots?? If Pred's product gets good enough then they'll land their spots but right now MR is swinging the biggest bat.
I don't know one player that uses the spots to judge what they're doing. You can tell simply by how the ball reacts. The whole reason measel balls were invented was to 'supposedly' allow viewers to tell. The jury is still out on that. Another sales gimmick. People played for a LONG time with no spots with zero ill effects. I've used them and have never paid any attention to how the spots move relative to how i hit it.
Still, the bottom line is without MR the purses would be way smaller and much less attention paid to the game. I'll take your word for all of this as i can watch about an hour of snooooooooker before i'm dead asleep. Only thing more boring is Chinese8ball. Its close tho. If O'sullivan isn't playing i even have less desire to watch these young robots drone on. Pool is getting same way. Must be against the rules these days to have any personality.
I'm riding free this year
..... still even the $250 a year is stealing for all this pool plus some boxing