Pool table felt is the most boring purchase in the billiard business. That's exactly why it causes so many problems.
I manage cloth purchasing for a mid-sized billiard table manufacturer and service shop. We spend roughly $28,000 a year on cloth, and for the past six years I've documented every order, every re-felt callback, and every warranty visit tied to a cloth failure. The spreadsheet is not glamorous. It's also not subtle.
The loudest pattern in that data: customers who insisted on the cheapest pool table felt almost never saved money. They just prepaid for an expensive lesson.
How I got fooled by the low quote
In my first year, I approved a purchase order for 40 yards of a no-name “value” cloth. The price beat Simonis 860 by a wide margin—$8.40 per yard, which meant $336 saved on that single order. Looked like responsible procurement.
I even defended the decision when our lead installer raised an eyebrow. “It's new cloth,” I said. “It plays fine.”
Here's the thing: it did play fine. For about five months. Then the surface started to develop a shine along the line between the rack and the foot spot. Balls began to “ski” slightly on the nap. Customers didn't complain exactly—they just started playing worse and assuming it was their stroke.
Not slow, exactly. Inconsistent. That's worse.
What “budget felt” actually costs over time
Let me walk through the comparison we now run for every customer. I'll use numbers from our 2024 service log for a standard 9-foot table, installed by the same technician, in a home game room played two or three evenings a week.
Budget cloth route:
- Cloth: ~$110
- Labor: ~$190
- Total first installation: ~$300
- Typical lifespan in our records: about 3 years before the playing surface becomes noticeably inconsistent
- 7-year cost: installs in years 0, 3, and 6 — roughly $900
Simonis 860 Tournament Blue route:
- Cloth: ~$245
- Labor: ~$190
- Total first installation: ~$435
- Typical lifespan in our records: 7 years or more under the same usage
- 7-year cost: one installation — roughly $435
The difference is about $465 over seven years. That works out to less than fifty cents per playing session. For that, the table plays on tournament-grade worsted cloth instead of a fabric that starts misbehaving in year two.
Wait—I should be fair: sometimes the budget cloth lasts longer. We've seen a $110 cloth go four years on a table that only gets used on holidays. But that's the exception. If the table is played regularly, the ratio tends to hold. I don't have hard data on why every budget cloth wears the way it does—I'm not a textile engineer. What I can tell you anecdotally is that after six years of watching re-felt cycles, cheap cloth generally gets replaced about twice as often as Simonis 860. And every replacement carries the same labor invoice.
The labor invoice is the part people forget.
The cost that shows up on the second invoice
Ask any customer what they're paying for and they'll say “the felt.” But a huge portion of any re-felting job is the technician's time: pulling the rails, stripping the old cloth, cleaning the slate, stretching the new cloth evenly so the weave is square, stapling, trimming, reassembling. On a 9-foot table that's four to six hours of skilled work. It costs the same whether the cloth on the roll was $100 or $250.
So when you buy cheap cloth to save $135 today, you're not avoiding a cost. You're deferring it. The next re-felt comes sooner, and the labor portion of that invoice arrives in full. Hidden fees, I've learned, don't always look like fees. Sometimes they look like “we should have bought the better cloth the first time.”
Why do we keep falling for this? Because new cloth hides its quality. A freshly installed budget cloth plays okay. I mean, it's not terrible. It's only later—after the nap flattens in the wear zone, after the surface speed shifts from one end of the table to the other—that the difference becomes obvious. By then, the warranty is gone and the phone number of a table mechanic is on the fridge.
The deeper problem: you can't see nap wear in the showroom
There's a reason tournament cloth like Simonis 860 is made from worsted wool. The wool fibers are combed so they lie parallel, then twisted tightly and woven into a dense, smooth surface. Budget cloth is often made from bulkier yarns with a fuzzy, pressed-down nap. On day one, the fuzz hides the difference. But as the nap wears, the playing surface changes. Balls slow down, the roll gets wobbly, and shots that used to feel automatic start demanding extra concentration.
Worst part? The decline is gradual, so players adapt without noticing. They blame themselves. “I'm just off tonight.” Eventually the table gets blamed, and that's when we get the call.
If you're a dealer or installer, you've seen the other version of this: you installed the cloth, so the customer remembers your name when the surface goes bad. We had two callbacks in 2022 on the budget cloth we briefly stocked. The service visits cost us roughly $700 in tech time and goodwill. Add that to the spreadsheet and the “savings” become a rounding error.
Why Simonis 860 became our default
I'm not going to pretend Simonis 860 is the only good cloth in the world. It isn't. But it's the one that made sense on total cost, which is the only lens a procurement person should use.
Here's what I like about recommending it to customers:
- Consistent play over time. The worsted weave holds its surface characteristics far longer. Players get the same reaction in year five as they did in month one.
- Tournament Blue is a real standard. If you've watched professional pool in the last couple of decades, you've watched matches played on this color. There's a reason televised events don't use mystery felt.
- The labor math is honest. The more expensive cloth is often the cheaper one once you count installation and replacement cycles.
- Maintenance is straightforward. Regular brushing and an occasional cleaning with Simonis X1 keeps the surface playing right. We tell customers that no cloth lasts forever—but a well-cared-for 860 will outlive its budget counterpart, and it'll play better while it's here.
For customers who want a slightly different feel, Simonis 760 is also a solid option. But for most tables that get used more than once a week, 860 is where we steer people. Not because it makes us more money (the margin difference is modest), but because it makes our customers less likely to need us again for the wrong reason.
When cheap felt is actually fine
I should give the exception, because it's real. If the table is in a rarely used basement corner, or it's mostly a decorative piece with a cover on it, budget cloth is a defensible choice. That $110 roll will still play fine for years if it only sees twenty sessions a year.
But that's not the customer who calls us. The customer who calls us has a game room that gets used, or a bar with league night, or a club with regulars who take the game seriously. For them, cheap felt is the expensive option wearing a disguise.
The bottom line
I used to think cloth was the wrong place to spend money on a pool table. Six years of purchase orders and re-felt invoices changed my mind. Labor is fixed. Downtime is annoying. And the difference between a $110 cloth and a $245 Simonis 860 usually works out to pennies per game.
Those pennies buy you consistency, which is the entire point of a pool table.