So I am watching this, there are thousands of people watching it also, live in the stands. It is also being seen LIVE on TV in many countries and is being watched by a huge number of people.
The game is not a runout fest, each shot is tough, there is considerable safety play, the players can and do miss. The table is brutally tough, more so then any pool table, and the players shoot fast.
The crowd is not drunk out of their tree and screaming at the players and making a general ruckus like a soccer game or a Mosconi Cup, they are quiet when the players shoot and on occasion they clap when they feel it is justified but not every shot.
The announcers occasionally discuss questionable shot selection, sometimes they mention an open ball in the pack, they are quiet as often as not simply watching the game and letting the viewers do the same. They are not trying to anylize the entire runout and guess which balls the player is going to shoot for the next 5 shots, they are not talking about this one story they heard about Ronnie playing for $5,000 a game in a pub and going off on a tangent.
This single match JUST past it's 5 hour mark as well, in a snooker best of 35 final race to 18 that has the potential to be over 10 hours long.
I am watching this and so many things people say pool needs to become popular, the soccer hooligan fans, the easy tables and constant runouts. People say the game does not work as a spectator sport, and yet spectators for this event are HUGE. People say it does not work because you cannot get many people around a table to see it, and yet thousands are watching this live in person with the help I am going to guess of giant screen TV's for the viewers. People say matches must be fast to "keep" the fan interest and that long sessions simply wont work.
I watch this as it is presented and I think to myself "this game is going to take over from pool in Asia and pool is going to be a dead second rate game world wide". Not because the game of pool does not have the potential to be huge, but because the people in the game of pool trying (or not trying) to promote the game don't have a clue, and the snooker promotors "GET IT" more then ANYONE trying to promote pool today does or anyone who has tried to promote pool in close to a century.
If you think about it, if snooker had loosened up the pockets so more people could compete, so that dominance in the sport was impossible, so that strong amatures had a chance to beat top pros simply because everyone runs out now. If they let those amatures simply pay $2000 to play in a pro event against the pros, and tried to sell THOSE matches to the public with amatures running racks on an easy cut table against pros, do you think the public would buy it? Do you think snooker would be where it is today if they had of compromised the game like that? But in pool we argue that it is imperitive we do this?
The whole of pool is a mess, and ANY and EVERY pool promotor should be watching this as "How to promote and present cue sports 101".
