It's been beaten to death. Posts here, also podcasts from Salotto themselves.
The short answer is the juice is not worth the squeeze.
You'd have to blow a lot of money entering tournaments, being on the stall the whole time, to get your rating low with enough robustness to be let into the big events. By the time that's over, you would have spent more money on the tournaments you dumped compared to the big one you "may" win.
With the Salotto app, the app itself is free. But to get a match entered into it, it cost about $3 for race to 5 or 7 (I forget exactly). The results from the app are also weighted less than tournament results, so you'd have to play a lot more app matches to have the same effect as a tournament match. Additionally, you'd have to find someone to "catch the dump" with you when playing the app. Because if you guys put in the wrong score on purpose (and don't even hit a ball), or, you purposely dump bad without your opponent in on it with you, your opponent's fargo will go up, while your's goes down. If two players are cheating the system, they'd BOTH want their scores to go down. That's simply not possible.
Also, pool players are cheap as dirt. How many players are actually going to pay $3 to have a race? I actually am looking for people to add the salotto app to our gambling sets, and no one wants anything to do with paying extra. Its like being charged $10 an hour instead of $7 an hour for the table time.
Also, salotto matches are all public. If someone was a 607 before a 599 event that had a 20k first prize, and then lost 20 salotto matches in a row to weaker players by scores of 7-1 to get to 599, the TD could see that and disqualify the player.
Disclaimer, I have yet to play a salotto match. I've been trying for a while, no one around me wants to.
