The action room is being streamed by
http://www.poolactiontv.com
...pretty good quality and commentary so far. I enjoyed the Oscar vs. Boyes set.
Oscar kept it close, but seemed to fold up at the end...
two close sets (17-16, 17-14) followed by a semi-blowout (17-7).
If you trust the Fargo rating system (and so far I do) then he was a definite underdog. I respect that he gave it a shot.
The difference in their ratings isn't that huge - Karl = 783, Oscar = 768.
But the format guaranteed enough games to make that small edge build up over time.
The odds of Karl winning a single race to 17 with that kind of gap is already ~62%.
Make it best 3 out of 5, and he's at 71% to win the whole thing.
If they had changed it to a single long race, adding up all five races to 17 into a single giant race to 85....
then it would just make things worse for the underdog, that puts Karl at 75% to win the set.
Another way of looking at is that the predicted score, when Karl won his 51st game (that's 17 * 3) is that
Oscar should have won ~46 racks. But his rough performance in the final set left him with 37 wins at that point.
If he'd followed the same trend he had in the first 2 sets, he'd be right around 46.
I would have liked to see Oscar win one set, the mental edge might have made it so much closer,
especially if Karl somehow catches a negative attitude when he loses a close set.