First, I'll get my opinion out of the way: For short sets of long games and point races, like 1-pocket or american rotation, I think alternate breaks make sense. For longer sets of short win/lose games like 9-ball, I prefer winner breaks format, but understand choosing alternate breaks for some tournaments to increase participation or create tension with matches that seem closer than they are.
Now, a couple interesting notes about alternate break vs. winner break...both of which assume that you can assign each player two separate probabilities of winning a rack with and without the break, without considering the psychological impact of the match score or results of previous racks:
1. Any time that the games needed to win the match by each player is equal, the probabilities of winning the match from there are equal in either format.
2. When the number of games needed to win the match are unequal, the player with fewer games needed to win the match benefits from alternate breaks as compared to winner breaks (unless their opponent has a 100% probability of winning on all of their breaks, in which case both formats produce identical odds of winning the match).
This makes handicaps stronger in alt. break tournaments; exactly how much stronger depends on how much of an advantage/disadvantage the break is. This also means that making a comeback in an alternate break format is much more difficult in games where the break is a more significant advantage, such as when the pros are playing 8-ball or 9-ball. The most extreme example is when the trailing player in a winner breaks match wins a game off their opponent's break then runs out the rest of the set; there's no way to do that in alt. breaks, so the pressure of that possibility is still on the leader. Sure, they could be playing alternate breaks and just not make a ball on any of their breaks while their opponent runs out everything, but at least then it feels like it was "fair" right?
