It wasn't the scope of my original post to question a bias, but I'm going to give my two cents about that anyhow.
I've watched a lot of matches with Ken doing commentary. Quite a few of those have had SVB playing.
There is next to no doubt in my mind that Ken wants SVB to win his matches. The tone of kens voice, comments made, and stories told seem to lean towards him being a SVB fan. I used to think it was just a SVB thing. Some other matches that I've seen I've decided he's usually rooting for the American. Of course that's if they're playing someone foreign.
However, that isn't to say that Ken would intentionally try to effect a match in any way to aid his friend/who he hopes wins. I've found that honest people who have to officiate their friends usually lean on their friends harder, probably just over compensating. It's a bit tough in pool because things are usually black and white, but I'm sure anyone who's ran an event/reffed expects their friends to come correct in everyway.
I have a friend who's ran different types of events, and there's been moments I've wanted to cause a scene, but haven't simply because my friend was running the event, and I didn't want to put him in a tough spot.
There's a tone of SVB fans out there. I personnely believe that many overstate his greatness. However, I've never seen SVB do anything out of line. He seems to try and play hard, but not really ever get out of line. He seems like a good guy. It's because of that I have him the benifeit of the doubt that he didn't "try to cheat." I believe many other pros could have done the same thing with the 8 ball and would have been flamed for the next few months.
I personnely wish I had a line to Ken so I could just ask him the rules, and what his thoughts were during, and now after that incident. He may very well have done nothing wrong. Maybe no one did. Sometimes things just happen. I just think there should be rules to help those incidents be fixed if there is not.