A Purple Five Ball Makes No Sense to Me

pw98 said:
Maybe they did it so they could trademark/patent the color of the 5 ball so they have a monopoly on the colors used in the major events?
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Bonus Ball had a custom purple ball made specifically for them.

It’s a bad idea in any case to mess with traditional pool ball colors. It’s been established here on AZB and will soon become law.

Fatboy esq
 
sjm said:
Count me among those who had an issue with the ball colors. It did seem strange that ball colors in use for over a century would be changed. That said, Matchroom was one of many that tried different colors, and they were not the first. Aramith and Cyclops had already introduced balls having non-traditional colors. I wish that none of them had done so but we'll probably never get back to where we were.

At this point, isn't it best to just embrace (and, of course, memorize) the new colors? Is it really that difficult? My biggest hope, given where we are, is that they don't switch the colors again.
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Stu,

Serious question:

Did anyone shoot the wrong ball in this last MR event?

I think it was horrible with the balls, I kept getting it wrong watching it on a tiny screen. Playing I don’t think I’d get it wrong. Wonder if it happened.

Best
Fatboy 😀
 
Fatboy said:
Stu,

Serious question:

Did anyone shoot the wrong ball in this last MR event?

I think it was horrible with the balls, I kept getting it wrong watching it on a tiny screen. Playing I don’t think I’d get it wrong. Wonder if it happened.

Best
Fatboy 😀
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I think it actually may have happened once, but I'm not certain. I have certainly seen it happen on occasion over the years, regardless of which ball set was in use. That said, I don't reckon this will be a difficult transition for the players.

Amusingly, Bob Jewett was watching Allen Hopkins warming up for his first match at the 2021 US Open and, rack after rack, Allen was shooting the five-ball before the four ball. Bob couldn't help himself and approached him, asking him if he realized that the purple ball was the five ball, not the four ball. Allen's answer, of course, was "no".

Of course, Allen is an old timer who had probably never played with, or even seen, a purple five ball before.
 
The Mosconi Cup had it right. Don't change the balls. Change the table to gold. It provides dramatically more contrast. Mosconi preferred gold cloth for this reason.
 
I played 9 ball with a guy that owns a set of the blacks. He played shape on the 5 at least once maybe twice and I almost did a couple times.

It’s not a big deal, but still is anyway lol. It’s like a jarring little thing you have to think about during the game.
 
dnschmidt said:
OK, maybe purple isn't that good of a color for TV so change the four ball to pink to make it stand out more on TV. I'm OK with that.
A black and Yellow Nine Ball doesn't bother me either. Can't deny that it does stand out on the table.
HOWEVER, if purple sucked on the four ball why is it acceptable on the five ball? Orange is very vivid color and shows up great. DO THE CHINESE MASTERS AT PREDATOR HATE ORANGE? What other reason could Predator have to make this stupid change.
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It's something a class of 3rd graders would've come up with if given the assignment to change the color of pool balls.
 
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johnnysd said:
The Mosconi Cup had it right. Don't change the balls. Change the table to gold. It provides dramatically more contrast. Mosconi preferred gold cloth for this reason.
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When did the Mosconi Cup use gold cloth? Certainly not in recent years.
 
dnschmidt said:
DO THE CHINESE MASTERS AT PREDATOR HATE ORANGE? What other reason could Predator have to make this stupid change?
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Fwiw Predator has nothing to do with the purple 5 ball. Predators ball set the Arcos 2 has the traditional purple 4 and orange 5.
Matchroom events are the only ones using the purple 5, and Predator is just the title sponsor of Matchrooms PLP event.
But yeah, I totally agree the Aramith black set Matchroom uses with the purple 5 is dumb as hell.
 
And here’s how the new balls cloth look clearer on my screen at least. The better lighting helps too..

DBB7C537-003E-4B95-B1AB-2983CF6309A0.jpeg
 
I've suggested racking to an app at least a couple times so how about this one:

Get rid of the numbers. The app will tell you what ball is what. You could even do this _after_ the break. If you did this twice, once to rack and once after the break, I'd say that's random enough. It'll give the TV guys something to do figuring out how to display it.
 
The bottom line, like dnschmidt said that's VERY logical, and I quote:

HOWEVER, if purple sucked on the four ball why is it acceptable on the five ball?

I'd like to see someone answer the above statement with some reasoning, ANYONE......
 
johnnysd said:
Looks pretty gold to me. Did you miss the 2021 version?
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Thats grey brother. Get your eyes checked. It was Brunswick that pushed gold cloth back when all the post-'Hustler' rooms were opening. They didn't want their lily-white rec centers to remotely look like a poolhall. Had nothing to do with seeing the balls better.
 
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