You can certainly buy the ball sets and shoot the game in the proper way with the 2 1/4 ball sets on a 9 footer but this not very representative of the game with the smaller balls, bigger tables, and much smaller radiused pockets. I have a 10 footer with the 2 1/8" ball set, which is pretty much the american version of the game and quite fun. As Scaramouche mentioned, most around here like to play 10 reds, which speeds up play a bit.