Most European 3C players start out on 8 foot tables. When I went to the 3C World Championship in Bordeaux I met a guy from Holland who told me that hed́ been playing 3C for years but had only been allowed to play on a 10 foot table for the last couple of years. In his club you have to achieve a certain average (0.5?) before you are allowed to move up from 8 ft. to 10 ft. In Europe they also have serious tournaments with well known players on 8 footers. And I just posted a Caudron run of 32 on an 8 footer. If it is good enough for Freddie . . .
Your comment is akin to saying if you can´t buy a 9 foot Diamond pool table don´t bother getting anything. Snobbishness of the highest degree.
Plus, I go back to the fact that you can find places to play pool pretty easily, but having even an 8 foot carom table is a wonderful rare thing.
some years ago in France, about straight rail ranking, when playing on small tables (9' aka 2m80) you had to reach >20.00 general average in a round robin official tournament (game in 200 points , big corners) during a season to be able to compete the next year on 10' tables aka 3m10 .
Believe me or not , to reach 20 general average isn't easy (!!!) in a 8 player round robin tournament . ( 20.00 average meaning 200 points in 10 innings ). It took me years of daily training and some tournaments ...
Many players never reach this average, because it soooo hard to learn the technics, the tactics and to pratice a lot . And you have to find good partners to play/train in your poolroom ! Straight rail is an extremely difficult discipline IMHO , and that's why small games are slowly dying in Europe...IMHO.
(at 3 cushion, if my memory is good, 25 years ago you had to reach 0.600 general average on 9' tables (30 points) to be able to compete the next season on 10')
8' or 9' carom tables are perfect to train at straight rail and balkline when you are a "normal" player !
(except when you are Belgian or Dutch , so, not a normal player then
<-- Belgians are incredibly strong small games players )