From a player's perspective.
Every room should have 1 or 2 tight tables with 4.25 to 4.5 or so pockets. This is for 1 pocket. I match up in one hole all the time, and 2 of the rooms I really like to play in are excluded from being a host because they don't have any tight tables.
Also lots of people like to match up on tight tables playing 9 ball as well.
So the only ones who will even notice the pockets are different are the players and gamblers. The bangers are going to miss by 3 feet each shot, so the pocket size won't make any difference to them.
One room I go to has a real nice arrangement. They have 18 pool tables. 3 of them are triple shimmed. 7 of them are double shimmed. And the rest are not shimmed. This room has a lot of players, so they have their choice what to play on. And there are plenty of bucket tables for the bangers in the back. And the bangers by nature like to go in the back, while the players like to play in the front, where the tighter tables are.
But again, the bangers won't notice the difference anyway.
One other room I go to has 12 tables, all no shims. The owner (a non-player) had the tables redone a few months ago. She told me "look, I had them shim up this table for you guys to practice on". Unfortunately, there is only one shim, so it went from like a huge bucket to maybe a 4.9 inch pocket. Still way to big to play one hole. So it was a waste.
So in summary it probably won't make too much of a difference either way, but from a players standpoint we like playing on buckets at times and on 4" pockets at other times. So please make at least one or two tables triple shims for 1 hole, and a few others double for 9 ball. The rest can be buckets.
