I tend to agree with you here Stu. The biggest and most important pool events are all 9-Ball, so it is the accepted test for greatness in pool today. That said, Ten Ball is a more difficult game and there should be a place for it in pro pool. Greg Sullivan and I created the Bigfoot with just that in mind. He wanted to promote his ten foot tables and I wanted to promote Ten Ball. I also felt that playing Ten Ball just like 9-Ball, with the same rules, was the right way to go. We went round and round about letting the ten ball count on the break and finally agreed that it wouldn't count in the bottom two corner pockets. I still don't like that rule. You see how often the ten ball is made on the break. Maybe once on a good day!
The Bigfoot, with all the elite players, quickly became the most popular event at DCC and still is to this day. That is unless Efren is playing someone One Pocket. The pool world turned out for his big matches at DCC!
Agreed that ten ball is a little tougher, but my philosophy is that if pro pool is to be successful in drawing the amateurs as fans, the game played must be one with which the amateurs are greatly familiar. To me, that leaves eight ball and nine ball, and at least for me, where Kevin Trudeau and the IPT had it right was playing eight ball (yes, they were wrong in countless other ways), the game best known to amateurs and the only game that many who play solely in bars have ever seen.
As a fifty three year veteran of the pool halls, I have rarely seen ten ball played other than by highly accomplished players, and even then, I have rarely seen it played at all. Played Texas Express, ten ball is at least intelligible to those that play nine ball, but add "call shot", "ten ball last", "money ball doesn't count on the break" or, worst of all, "call safe", the first two of which are required under WPA rules, and the casual fan is quickly disenfranchised.
Our beloved former poster Edwin Reyes, to paraphrase, said "if it's good for the players, it's good for pro pool." With due respect for a highly respected, and sorely missed AZB poster, Edwin was mistaken. In truth, what's good for pro pool is whatever keeps the fans interested enough to watch it.
The typical amateur has never even heard of ten ball and even fewer know it as played under current WPA rules. As we saw with Bonus Ball, a game of great skill and intrigue, give the fans a game they don't know or play and not that many of them will choose to watch.
Ten ball with call shot has its place in our game as a big action game because the big action matches attract a very different type of fan. Ray Hansen and many others have offered countless exciting ten ball matches for this kind of fan, who tends to be a serious player very familiar with all games played on a pool table.
All that said, although Eurotour plays nine ball, Europe, a few years ago, added ten ball as a discipline in the European Championships. It is possible, though in my view improbable, that this will popularize ten ball among the European amateurs, but only time will tell.