Start with 860 Tournament Blue for tables that need to play like a tournament table. Start with 760 for tables that get daily public use and need to survive. After six years of managing a 14-table room and a $180,000 maintenance budget, I can tell you the most expensive felt mistake is buying a premium cloth everywhere out of habit—not because the table needs it. That habit cost us about $1,100 in early replacement and labor before I changed our specification policy.
To be clear, this article is about pool table felt simonis—specifically 860 and 760—and what each one costs when you include installation, lifespan, and player complaints. If you landed here because you are looking for an inflatable pool with slide for a summer event, or a headset with mic for your receptionist, this is not that article. This is for the person who has to justify felt in a P&L meeting.
Why I lead with Simonis 860 Tournament Blue
860 Tournament Blue is the cloth I specify when the table's job is to play like a real tournament table. It is a worsted-wool cloth with a low-nap surface. That means the cue ball tracks consistently and there is less throw off the object ball than on a napped cloth. For a procurement manager, that is not just about player satisfaction. It means fewer callbacks, fewer arguments, and fewer 'table plays bad' complaints that get blamed on the facility.
The color matters too. Tournament Blue is not a generic blue; it is a specific Simonis production shade. Do not try to match it with a Pantone book. Pantone is for ink on paper, not dye lots on worsted wool. If the rails around the table need to match the cloth, get a physical swatch from your distributor and have the paint shop color-match the actual cloth. And when ordering multiple tables, ask for the same dye lot if they will sit next to each other.
When 760 is the smarter buy
But 860 is not the answer for every table. Simonis 760 is a wool-nylon blend. It is a little less expensive, it is slightly more forgiving in high-use settings, and in our experience it lasts longer when the table becomes a bar rail, a laptop desk, and sometimes a seat. If you run coin-op tables in a sports bar, or a rec center that is open 60 hours a week, 760 is likely the right call. I recommend 860 for performance-critical rooms, but if you are dealing with high-turnover public tables, you might want to consider 760.
On our six high-turnover tables, 760 lasted about 40% longer than 860 before showing wear. That is not because 860 is bad. It is because 860 was designed for a different environment. Put another way: you would not buy race tires for a delivery van. Same logic.
The durability myth that inflates budgets
Here is a misconception that keeps showing up in request forms: the more expensive the felt, the longer it will last. That is backwards. Premium cloth is about performance. Durability is a separate variable, and it often goes down when you add more worsted wool and remove nylon. The assumption is that tournament cloth is tournament tough. The reality is that 860 is tournament smooth. If heavy use is your problem, 760 or a different blend may serve you better.
This idea is also a historical leftover. Decades ago, wool cloth was napped, fuzzy, and slow. 'Wool is slow' became conventional wisdom. Modern worsted wool like 860 flipped that, but the old belief still makes people assume all wool blends are slow and all synthetic blends are fast. Use the modern product numbers, not the old folklore.
What is a full size pool table? Confirm before ordering
Now, a question that really matters when you are calculating cloth cost: what is a full size pool table? In commercial tables, the term usually means a 9-foot table. According to WPA equipment specifications (wpapool.com), a 9-foot table's playing surface is 100 × 50 inches. But some manufacturers and many homeowners mean an 8-foot table when they say full size. That is a big difference when the cloth order goes in.
So do not order by the phrase full size. Order by the actual playing surface dimensions. Measure the slate, not the wooden frame. A 9-foot cloth order will not fit an 8-foot table, and an 8-foot order leaves an installer with a bad choice: stretch it tight or refund the job. We learned this in 2022 when a new staff member ordered cloth for full size tables and two of them were 7-foot bar boxes. The restocking fee and rush reorder ate whatever we saved by buying felt in bulk.
What the TCO spreadsheet says
I know this sounds like overkill for felt. But after tracking 14 tables across six years, our spreadsheet tells a clear story. The initial cost of cloth is about 30-40% of the total re-felt job. Installation labor is the rest. So the question is not 860 vs 760 per yard. The question is how many times you will pay labor over 24 months.
In 2023, I compared quotes from 4 distributors for the same Simonis 860 Tournament Blue. The prices varied by 16%, which is way more than I expected for the same product. The cheapest quote had a shorter roll and a restocking clause that made it the most expensive option in practice. I almost went with the lowest price until I calculated the real cost. That is the kind of hidden cost that gets missed when you only compare per-yard prices.
I also have a cautionary tale about being penny-wise. A few years ago, I saved $27 per table by ordering a no-name felt for a private lounge. We re-felted three of those tables nine months later because of snags and a lifted seam. The labor plus rush shipping came to about $1,080. The savings was $162. The no-name felt looked fine in the warehouse; it did not survive the real world. I am not saying every brand without a recognized name is bad. I am saying we do not put unknown felt on our tables anymore without a trial run.
Do not skip the cleaner—yes, the X1
One more thing changed our numbers: maintenance. Simonis makes an X1 cleaner, and for two years I treated it as an upsell. Then we tracked our 2023 cleaning schedule. Tables that got a monthly wipe with X1 lasted about 14 months before showing visible wear. Tables in the same row cleaned with a gentle soap solution lasted closer to 10 months—actually, 11 months if you count the slower winter months. The cleaner did not save the cloth; it delayed replacement by a meaningful margin. For our 14-table operation, that delay was worth roughly $700 in deferred labor.
I am going to keep the maintenance part short. Oh, and while you are at it, brush the cloth in one direction, not back and forth. Do not use a vacuum attachment with a spinning brush. That advice alone has saved us more cloth than any discount code.
Where my advice gets more honest
If your room has three tables, the players are serious, and the experience matters more than the replacement interval, buy 860 Tournament Blue even on smaller tables. The cost difference per table is not huge, and the playing experience is real. I would not argue with that decision. This is not the highest-durability choice; it is the highest-performance choice.
This worked for our operation—a 14-table venue with predictable league play and a rotating schedule. If you run a seasonal setup, a temporary event space, or a table under a leaky roof, the calculus is different. In those cases, buy based on the specific risk. And before any order, verify current pricing with your distributor. This is based on quotes from Q4 2024, and the market changes fast.