Actually I think there were many players who were burned by it and considered it the last straw in taking pool seriously vs trying some other kind of pursuit. I think in that way it had a negative influence.
That should have been obvious to me. Thanks for pointing this out.
I knew the AZ community could sort out this mystery for me.
The PBT, although it had a bad ending, it was probably a net positive when it came to creating pool players. The IPT on the other hand, was a net negative. Makes sense to me.