Sorry the winner of the match will be the player whose main strengths lay in playing on tables with tighter pockets. For example, a loose player who is used to getting into a flow by moving the white around a regulation table when they play will be at a great disadvantage against a naturally methodical player who simply plays half ball on every shot which will favor the table conditions.
If a world class, top 10 professional on the planet who is normally loose and used to getting into the flow cannot manage it on this table it is because they have become far too acustomed to far too easy conditions for their level of the sport. If all of that loose and flowing game vanishes and they are unable to use it then they need to practice more on tight equipment. After all, Ronnie O'Sullivan has no problem being loose and flowing around the snooker table and running centuries despite the fact that the table he plays on is
3 feet longer and the pockets
way smaller relative to ball sizethen even this table. Running out the colors in a snooker table, even when they are not in the normal spots, is not something that he, Drago, Mark Sullivan, Higgins, and all of the other top pro snooker players have trouble doing.
Pools problem is we have had it too easy for too long and the pros in our sport have not been adequetly tested on proper difficulty equipment. IF the pros played on tables exactly like this one for the next 2 years this is how it would go...
Tournament 1: The pros would tighten up, they would be a little perplexed, some of the flashy players who flow would realize they are not actually accurate enough to do so and have to bear down.
Months 1-6: This would be the learning stage, the players would start practicing on tables like this knowing that this is what is now the standard of their profession. Some would pick up on it and get more comfortable with it as they start shooting in thousands of shots in practice and re-learning "where the pocket is" on the new equipment.
Month 6-18: By this time some players are getting comfortable with the new pocket size, their games which might have been loose start to work back to their old state although now with built in accuracy improvements and probably more controlled straighter strokes. By this point we start to see that players who we once all thought were bunched up at the top as "the best players in the world" actually had levels within that group, we could just not see them. Some of the "top pros" are shown to be about 10-15 in the world according to the new game and there are players who have managed to clearly show they are in the top 3 players on the planet. Something pool has not actually been able to do for a long, long time.
Month 24: The game is being played at a level not seen in pool in decades, likely not seen since the change from 10-foot tables in the era of straight pool played on slow nap cloth. The top player in the world is becomming clear, he is now winning far more tournaments then he was before because the break factor and luck has been diminished to a huge degree. The pros are now more impressive then ever, they are running racks on tables that the average player has trouble making 3 consecutive balls on, now when the fans watch pros playing they KNOW that the pro is doing something special, instead of watching the pro's play on tables that they themselves have run an occasional 4 or 5 pack on. Pool also starts to gain huge amounts more respect from the snooker fans and the snooker community and we start to get some cross viewing, with the new tables and pockets the game is now seen as comparable in the cue sport world to snooker, instead of the "easy by comparison" bastard cousin of snooker.
On a one off event like this they might look tight, but that is not the tables fault, the players are simply not used to playing on tables that should in fact be the norm. IF they played on tables exactly like this all the time they would play extremely well on them.