Certainly I agree with to each their own, and I wouldn't want my post to be interpreted as downing anyone who does anything they want to their own table.
I imagine how crazy it would make me, and how it would get in my head, if in a tournament on a tapped table, my CB rolled on top of an OB because it took that extra turn into a ding, so I'd hate to see that become the norm for racking.
I guess there is just a part of me, being the old fashioned type, not wanting 14.1 to morph into some other kind of game and I think that while it's absolutely great to see the younger players becoming interested in the game, I really hope it maintains its classic style.
What with the rule changes, talk of ball in hand after fouls, outlining balls for no real purpose relative to the playability of the 15th ball, holding 14.1 tournaments and not outlining the tables at all, tapping dings in the table, I guess I hate to see the game change for the sake of being fashionable.
Oh well, someone great once said, "Forgive them for they know not what they do."
On a tapped table, the indentions made by tapping are sloped, and are very small, so a ball must be moving very slowly to be deflected and it must hit a very small target. With a foot spot you have a much longer edge that is not sloped and will easily deflect a slow rolling ball and is a bigger target than all the small indentations put together. With the sticker systems you also have a wider sticker to deflect balls as well as a hole for them to sit in, neither of which are sloped to minimize deflection.
Once in a while, a ball will roll into an indentation and settle there. It just happens way less often than most people would believe that don't have experience on tapped tables. I've had many tournament matches affected by deflection from spot stickers in the past and seen it many times with others playing. You just don't really see the same type of deflection with tapped tables that you sometimes get with a spot sticker where a slow rolling cueball catches the edge of the spot and takes a turn and travels the wrong direction for the last four or five inches of roll.
A tapped table also will not get grooves in it caused from rolling the rack forward and backward trying to find the sweet spot to rack, so it actually can leave the racking area much less plowed up than normal racking.
The European Championships were completed last week, once again using tapped tables for 8 ball, 9 ball, 10 ball, and straight pool. No spots, no racks and no complaints with the most tournament tested tight rack system in the world.
Of course you can easily use a rack with a tapped table playing straight pool. Just throw the balls into the rack, shove them up loosely into place and let them settle as a unit instead of trying to squeeze them together.
