Agreed.
With the UK Championships being on TV right now (snooker) what struck me most about the difference between watching pool and snooker, is the feeling of inevitability pool can have at the highest levels. You'd think it would be the other way around, with snooker being a scoring game and the money ball being everything in nine-ball, but it's not.
With the table and pocket sizes in snooker, when a player is on their way to winning a frame, the smallest of twitches on a shot can result in a (potentially catastrophic) miss. But with pool, and especially with how often the pros maintain practically perfect position throughout a rack, most game winning shots (and the one or two preceding them) are harder to miss than they are to make.
This format doesn't change that, but what it does do is it gives you a back and forth struggle prior to the inevitable running of the balls - which means that the inevitable running of the balls doesn't feel too easy or unfair, it feels deserved. The nervy play at the beginning of each frame builds to a release when someone finally comes with a big shot or someone else messes up a safety gives us drama, and the players running out off the back of that gives us the chance to appreciate how easy they make the game.
I'm enjoying things so far.
