Moica Webb (USA), who was gunning for her third title in a row on the Classic Tour, was ousted in the last 24 by England’s Kim Shaw.
Ouschan’s triumph takes her from 17th to third in the rankings. Kelly Fisher moves to first place, tied with former No.2 Ga Young Kim (South Korea).
The event took place from 17-21 June 2009 at the Blue Chip Casino, Michigan City, Illinois, USA. It was the second of six events on the 2009 Classic Tour. Next up is the US Open, at the Riverwind Casino, Norman, Oklahoma, USA, 29 July - 2 August 2009.
Hogan defeated fellow Irishman Mario Fernandez 7-4 in the final of the men’s event while home favourite Jans whitewashed Anna Mazhirina (Russia) 5-0.
Hogan blanked Germany’s Sascha Lippe in the semis while Fernandez beat yet another Irishman, Brendan O’Donoghue, 6-2.
In an all-Belgian semifinal Evans eased past Caty Dehaene 4-1. Mazhirina edged Latvia’s Inese Lukashevska 4-3.
This was Hogan’s first major title. Jans won the European title three years in a row from 2004-2006. She also captured the 2006 IBSF World Amateur Championship.
With this victory Hogan won a spot on the 96-man 2009/2010 Main Tour.
Defending champion David Grace (England) lost 5-2 to O’Donoghue in the quarterfinals. 2008 Ladies champion Reanne Evans (England) did not participate in this year’s event.
Former top pro Darren Morgan (Wales) won the Masters division. In the final he beat 2000 winner Joe Delaney (Ireland) 6-3. Morgan also won in 2007. He opted for the Men’s event last year though, where he made it to the semifinals.
Tony “Tornado” Drago from Malta had the highest break of the tournament with a 139.
The event was held 3-13 June at the Crowne Plaza, Duffel, Belgium.
The European Main Tour play-offs (International Open) was played just before the tournament. Drago won the event to reclaim a place on next season’s Main Tour.
In the final she defeated two-time world 9-ball champion Shin-mei Liu (Taiwan) 10-4 to grab the $20,000 first prize and become the first world champion in women’s 10-ball. Liu received $9,000 for second place.
Amit defeated Japan’s Akimi Kajitani 9-6 in the semifinals. Liu beat Jasmin Ouschan (Austria) 9-6.
This was Amit’s first world title from her second final. She finished second to Xiaoting Pan in the 2007 World 9-ball Championship. It was also the first win by a woman from the Philippines.
Unfortunately the event was surrounded by some controversy. Read Sarah Rousey’s blog post for more.
The tournament ran from June 2-6, 2009, at the SM Mall North, Manila, Philippines.
In the final he edged Belgium’s Frédéric Caudron 3-2. The set scores were 15-11, 2-15, 15-2, 9-15 and 15-13. Torbjörn Blomdahl (Sweden) and Tayfun Tasdemir (Turkey) shared third place.
The final was a relatively low-scoring affair with Sánchez averaging 1.435 and Caudron 1.473.
This was Sánchez’ third European title from three finals. His previous wins came in 1997 and 2000. In addition he has four bronzes.
Defending champion Dick Jaspers from the Netherlands was beaten 3-1 by Caudron in the quarterfinals.
Jaspers had the highest tournament average with 1.933. Blomdahl had the best single match average with a 3.750 against Kostas Papakonstantinou (Greece) in the group stages. In that match he also made a perfect 15, to share the high-run honors with Dion Nelin (Denmark).
Sánchez moves up to No.2 in the World Players Ranking. The list is still topped by Jaspers, with Blomdahl in third.
The event took place May 21-24 2009, in Sportshallen, Odense, Denmark.
So some of my readers may be wondering where I was over the weekend. The source of my silence was linked to my American Poolplayer’s Association pool league. As I have mentioned in the past, I play in the Central New York APA. My team in 8-ball and 9-ball represent the Guys & Dolls pool hall in Endicott NY.
Since my team has been formed, we have won the 2007, 2008, and 2009 season playoffs, which gave us the opportunity to play in the regional matches against all the season winners from the leagues in Binghamton, Ithaca, and the other surrounding areas for Central New York. The winner of this Championship Playoff gets a trip to Las Vegas to play in the National APA Pool Tournament. That takes place in August, and has some several hundred teams from across the nation competing for cash and pride.
Sadly, while my teams have always made the regional competition and gone to the final match, we had not won. Which is a tough feeling, as we have become odds on favorites to win every time we arrive. There is nothing like having to battle through multiple teams and hours of matches, to arrive at the key game and then not get to move forward.
That completely changed this year, as the Pandemic team out of Guys & Dolls for 8-ball won the Championship and will be going to Las Vegas this year, along with Dysfunctional Fighters who also qualified. I must admit that there was a good chance for the team to spend 10 days in Las Vegas and play both the 9-ball and 8-ball Nationals. But the week prior we had again played thru the pack right up to the final and missed the critical win.
Still I have no complaints. It was a long weekend, with massive competition. There were several very good teams, each with multiple great players, that we had to defeat. I commend every one of them. This was no cake walk, and any one of the teams could have gone to Vegas and represented our area with pride.
How well did our team do? Well we had one player moved up a rank before the final match. 3 out of 8 of team were at 67% in the competition, with another 3 that went 100%. So that gave the entire team an 83.5% win percentage over the competition.
So for a little heads up to our competition in Las Vegas, I give you the members of my team. [Yes we all look tired, it was a long weekend.]
Team Captian - Gregg Cordero
“Panama” Grabow
Gary Hinkley
Gauge Majka
Zachary Majka
John Miller
Robert Miller
Michael Vass
Oh, I am working on the video as we speak. It’s a lot to edit, and may wind up being several videos. But give me a little time for that.
Again I salute all the other teams we played. They gave it their all and we had a great time playing them all. I am sure that in next year’s competition we will see them all again.
In the final Souquet defeated England’s two-time ET winner Imran Majid 8-4 to claim the €5000 first prize. Majid received €3300 for second place.
Souquet defeated countryman and defending champion Thomas Engert 8-3 in the semifinals. Majid edged surprise man Michal Czarnecki (Poland) 8-6.
This was the first ever 10-ball event on the Euro Tour and what could be more fitting than the all-time leader taking the title. This was his 16th win from 26 finals. Fellow German Oliver Ortmann is second on the list with 13 wins.
The German legend is on an amazing run. His last six finishes on the Tour is 5th, 1st, 1st, 5th, 3rd, 2nd and 1st.
Souquet extends his already massive lead in the Euro Tour Ranking. Majid improves from seventh to fourth. The Dutch pair of Niels Feijen and Nick van den Berg hold on to second and third place respectively.
The tournament was played 21-23 May at Billiard Cafe Die Drei, Sindelfingen, Germany. It was the third event of seven on the 2009 Euro Tour. Next up is the Patricks Austria Open which runs from August 20-22 2009. It will be the 100th event on the Euro Tour.
In the final Horn defeated fellow Dutchman, and last season’s Tour champion, Dick Jaspers 3-1. The frame scores were 15-13, 7-15, 15-11 and 15-14. Torbjörn Blomdahl (Sweden) and Frédéric Caudron from Belgium lost out in the semifinals.
Horn received € 5.500 for his first victory and Jaspers got € 3.500 for second place.
Caudron had the highest general average among the 54 competitors with 1.713. Savas Bulut (Turkey) had the highest single match average of 2.307. Frenchman Jeremy Bury’ perfect 15 was the highest run of the tournament.
Horn moves from 17th to second in the World Cup Ranking. Jaspers improves seven places to fifth. Caudron stays on top and Jozef Philipoom (Belgium) drops from second to third.
The winner jumps to sixth in the World Players Ranking. Jaspers, Blomdahl and Caudron remains the top three.
The event took place 4-10 May 2009 at the Otium Hotels Sun Zeynep, Antalya, Turkey. It was the second of four events in the 2009 World Cup. The next event is in Suwon, Korea, 16-21 November.
In the final he overwhelmed England’s 2005 world champion Shaun Murphy 18-9.
Neil Robertson (Australia) and Mark Allen (Northern Ireland) lost out in the semifinals.
Higgins received £250,000 for the victory and Murphy got £125,000 for his runner-up spot.
Stephen Hendry (England) won the £157,000 high break bonus after compiling his ninth career maximum break, and second at the Crucible. It was the ninth 147 made in the world championship. In total there were a record 83 centuries in this year’s event.
Defending champion Ronnie O’Sullivan (England) lost 13-11 to Allen in the second round. The last player to successfully defend his world title was Hendry in 1996.
This was the third world title for Higgins, having also lifted the trophy in 1998 and 2007. It was his second ranking title of the season and 20th of his career.
With this win Higgins will improve from fifth to fourth in the new world rankings. Murphy will keep his third place from last season.
O’Sullivan and Stephen Maguire (Scotland) will still be Nos 1 and 2. Graeme Dott is the only player to drop out of the top 16. Mark J Williams regains the spot he lost last year.
The event took place Apr 18 - May 4, 2009 at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, England. It was the last of eight ranking tournaments on the 2008/2009 Main Tour.
Ouschan took golds in 8-ball and 9-ball, and silver in straight pool. In 8-ball she also won in 2007 and 2008.
Jouni Tahti from Finland rolled away with gold in both wheelchair events.
None of the other defending champions managed to retain their titles and no other players reached more than one final.
Here are the results:
Men
8-ball: Andreas Roschowsky (Germany) bt Nikos Ekonomopulos (Greece)
9-ball: Nick van der Berg (Netherlands) bt Ruslan Chinahov (Russia)
14.1: Dimitri Jungo (Switzerland) bt Niels Feijen (Netherlands)
In the final she beat compatriot Maria Catalano 5-2 to pocket the £800 winner’s cheque. Catalano got £400 as runner up.
Catalano recorded the highest break in the event, a 94 in the group stages.
It was a record fifth world title in a row for Evans. In 2005 she defeated Lynette Horsburgh (Scotland) 6-1, in 2006 she beat Emma Bonney (England) 5-3 in 2007 she won 5-3 over Katie Henrick (England) and last year she beat Emma Banks (England) 5-3.
By capturing the title she also ended the season on top of the WLBSA official rankings.
June Banks (England) beat countrywoman Jenny Poulter 3-0 in the seniors final. 12-year-old Hannah Jones (England) retained the juniors title by defeating Joanne Davies (England) 2-1 in the final.
Jones also teamed up with Jaique Ip Wan In (Netherlands) to beat Chris Sharpe (England) and So Man Yan (Hong Kong) 2-1 in the ladies doubles.
Evans and Michael Holt (England) won the mixed doubles event, beating another English pair, Leah Willett and Joe Perry, 3-2 in the final.
In the final of the english billiards event Emma Bonney (England) retained her crown be beating Chitra Magimairaj (India) 272-118.
This championship is organized by the World Ladies Snooker & Billiards Association. It must not be confused with the IBSF World Championship. Evans is a also the defending champion in that event.
The tournament was played at the Cambridge Snooker Centre, Cambrigde, England, 4-9 April, 2008.
In the final she edged 2004 world champion Ga Young Kim (South Korea) 7-5. Jeanette Lee (USA) and Gerda Hofstätter (Austria), finished joint third.
Defending champion Allison Fisher (England) lost 9-8 to Hofstätter in the final 16.
This was Webb’s second title in a row on the Classic Tour, having taken her very first win in the 2008 WPBA Championship. She is also unbeaten in these two events.
In the rankings all players start off with zero points. Therefore Webb will be the first leader in the rankings. She ended up in fourth place last season.
The event took place from 1-5 April at the Viejas Casino, Alpine, California, USA. It was the first of six events on the 2009 Classic Tour. Next up is the Great Lakes Classic, at the Blue Chip Casino, Michigan City, Indiana, 17-21 June 2009.
In a very close final he defeated Scotland’s two-time World Champion John Higgins 10-8.
Tournament surprise Stuart Pettman (England) and Ryan Day (Wales) lost out in the semifinals.
Ebdon received £52,000 for the victory and Higgins got £25,000 for his runner-up spot.
Higgins and Ricky Walden (England) shared the £2,000 high break bonus after compining matching 140s.
Defending champion Stephen Maguire (Scotland) crashed out 5-0 to Dave Harold in the first round.
This was the eighth ranking title for Ebdon but first since the 2006 UK Championship. Higgins was looking for his 20th title and second of the season.
Higgins’ final loss means the seven ranking events of the season have been won by seven different players.
Ebdon leapt from 17th to 12th in the provisional rankings. Higgins advanced two places, from seventh to fifth. Pettman jumped from 48th to 37th. Ronnie O’Sullivan (England) and Maguire retain the top two positions. Shaun Murphy (England) overtook Allister Carter (England) to claim third place.
The event took place at the Beijing University Students Gymnasium, Beijing, China Mar 30 - Apr 5, 2009. It was the seventh ranking tournament of eight on the 2008/2009 Main Tour. Next up on the snooker calendar is the Betfred World Championship which starts 18th April 2009.
David Alcaide from Spain won the 2009 Italy Open for his first ever Euro Tour title.
In the final Alcaide defeated Germany’s all-time Euro Tour leader Ralf Souquet 9-5. The victory was worth €5000 with Souquet getting €3300 for second place.
The semi-finals saw Alcaide trounce England’s Craig Osborne 9-2 and Souquet scrape past countryman Marko Vogel 9-4.
Alcaide’s previous best on the Euro Tour were three semi-final spots. It was Spain’s second win with Samir Kaddur winning the 2004 Denmark Open. This was Souquet’s 25th final, of which he has won a Tour-leading 15 times. The German legend is on a terrific run. His last six finishes is 5th, 1st, 1st, 5th, 3rd and 2nd.
Defending champion Darren Appleton (England) lost 9-6 to Mateusz Sniegocki (Poland) in the last 32.
The win took Alcaide from 15th to fourth in the Euro Tour Ranking. Losing finalist Souquet improved from second to first. Former leader Niels Feijen (Netherlands) dropped to second after a disappointing 9th place and Nick van den Berg (Netherlands) stayed in third.
The tournament was played 26-28 March at the Holiday Inn, Castel Volturno, Italy. It was the second event of seven on the 2009 Euro Tour. Next up is the German Open which runs from May 21-23 2009. It will be the 99th event on the Euro Tour but the first with 10-ball.
In a high-quality final world No.1 Jaspers defeated defending champion Torbjörn Blomdahl (Sweden) 50-39. Blomdahl went out in front early helped by a run of 11, but Jaspers rebounded with some excellent play. His final average was 2.63 compared to Blomdahl’s 2.05.
Belgians Frédéric Caudron and Roland Forthomme tied for third.
This win must have bee extra sweet for Jaspers as he lost to 50-26 to Blomdahl in the final of last year’s first running of the event.
Including bonuses Jaspers earned €20.550 for the victory. Blomdahl took home €14.450.
Players earned bonuses for runs of 10 or more and games won in 25 innings or less. Prizes were also awarded to the three players with highest general averages.
Jaspers had the highest run of the tournament with a 20 in the qualifying rounds. Caudron’s 15 was the highest in the final stages. Kyung-Roul Kim had the highest general average of 2.043. Of those reaching the final stages Jaspers’ 1.954 topped the list. Eddy Merckx from Belgium won two matches in only 17 innings, resulting in the highest special average of 2.94.
The event’s final stage took place 12-15 March 2009 at the AGIPI Auditorum, Schiltigheim, Franc and was televised live on Eurosport.
The winning team once again consisted of Torbjörn Blomdahl and Michael Nilsson. In the final they won 2-0 over Belgium (Eddy Merckx and Roland Forthomme).
Germany and South Korea tied for third place in an event with teams from 18 countries.
Blomdahl has played on all the nine winning teams. Nilsson has “only” seven golds.
Sweden had a perfect 10-0 record in the event. They also had the highest general average of 1.769.
Of all the players Blomdahl had the highest general average of 1.969. He also had a 3.333 to top the single game averages. Belgium’s Roland Forthomme had the highest run with 14.
The tournament was played 5-8 March at Festhalle Viersen in Viersen, Germany.
Billiard Pulse is a gargantuous three years old today!
.. or rather yesterday, but I’ve been a bit lazy.
The biggest change since the second anniversary is the addition of polls. Other than that the concept is the same as one year ago:
Provide links to current and upcoming events
Write short reports from major events with references to related material
Cover the billiard blogosphere and maintain a list of billiard blogs and other billiard related sites
This blog is still a “labour of love” for me. I hope you find it useful.
Thanks for visiting!
State of the blog
In total there’s been 196 posts since the start and 56 in the last year.
They have been tagged 1306 times with 132 different tags. 98 (28 in the last year) posts have been tagged with pool, 44 (12) with snooker and 31 (10) with carom.
The link list in the right menu now contains 179 links, of which 123 are blogs. That’s a slight increase since last year when the numbers were 170 and 118 respectively. I had to retire a fair share of those though.
We downplay winning in all cases except when WE are the Winner. We tell ourselves that it’s really all about how well we play the game. We offer up all sorts of excuses for winning that invalidate the win, such as Luck (lucky roll, lucky draw…), just as we excuse ourselves for losing; and thereby negate the importance of competition completely.
In fact, we say that competition is essential in order to improve. And of course, competition is all about Winning and Losing. The loop of madness continues.
I like how we even create special rewards for Not Winning, such as Rookie of the Year, Sportsmanship Award, Miss Congeniality, Hall of Fame, Lifetime Achievement Award, and one of the cruelest: Finalist.
All of this philosophy comes during the celebration of Darwin’s contribution to the theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest, natural selection. And this is even more support for the essential nature of competition, essential to the survival of the human species! Competition has been built into our DNA, it is our life force, it keeps us moving forward.
We can tell ourselves all we want that it is all about how well we play, but when a man approaches the table with cue in hand, he is on a mission of domination, or he is meat.
I must compete.
Competition is meaningless.
Therefore my life is meaningless.
All right, now that I have all that sorted out, I can get back to practicing those IPAT drills.
I have been looking forward to restarting these drills because it is a form of Competition but without all the accoutrements of competition, such as the inconvenient opponents, bad food, filthy toilets, bad equipment… I could go on and on, but why drag this party down any more than I have so far. Suffice it to say that the IPAT drills. have all of the chewy goodness of competition without all the stick-in-your-teeth nastiness of competition.
The name IPAT could be mistaken for one of many products made for the iPhone, but no! It’s the new name for what used to be simply PAT, which in turn is the acronym for Playing Ability Test (for pool). I think PAT was designed for the European market and IPAT is the product for the USA. It’s all the same, as far as I know right now.
We don’t know why they changed the name, but we do know it’s THE BEST test for pool playing ability that I have yet seen. Last spring and summer I was very focused on practicing with the PAT drills.
What makes these drills so effective is when you actually keep score the way they suggest so that you can measure your progress over time. There is nothing else out there that covers such a wide variety of shots, and such a wide variety of skill levels, from rank beginner to world class tour player. This allows you to see not just your own progress but also how you rate against other players all over the world, shooters who you would never be able to play in person!
While I was using the PAT tests I noticed one severe flaw in the entire system was the need to do a lot of arithmetic to figure the scores. And that leads to a lot of simple mistakes, which gives scores that are wrong, and it’s just not FUN to do all that number crunching.
So, being the compulsive inventor that I am, and a giver, I wrote an Excel spreadsheet to make it dirt simple. No arithmetic at all. Just enter the number of shots made for each drill, and my spreadsheet takes care of all the rest.
Problem solved, right?
Not so fast, FastMikie!
Now, out of nowhere, there’s this IPAT which seems to be a minor repackaging of the PAT product. Thorsten Hohman, the world champion, does the shots in the drills on the videos included with the product. I bought my copies of the PAT from him, on his eBay store. He told me that the product would be repackaged for the USA market.
Check it out. I’ll be doing a lot more posts and videos about this great product in the future as I explore the differences and the drills and the improvements it brings to my game.
His opponent Joe Swail (N.Ireland) took the early lead with 5-2 before Carter stormed back with seven frames on the trot to win 9-5.
Anthony Hamilton (England) and Neil Robertson (Australia) lost out in the semifinals.
Carter received £35,000 for the victory and Swail got £17,500 for his runner-up spot.
Marco Fu (Hong Kong) had the highest break of the tournament with a 142. That earnt him £2,000.
Defending champion Mark Selby (England) lost 5-3 to Hamilton in the quarterfinals.
This was the first ranking title for Carter. Swail was also looking for his first title. The popular Irishman will be happy to finally have reached a final though. This was his 10th(!) semi-final appearance.
Carter improves from fourth to third in the provisional rankings. Swail jumps eight places, from 28th to 20th. The top two remain the same. Ronnie O’Sullivan (England) stays on top, followed by Stephen Maguire (Scotland).
The event took place at the Newport Centre, Newport, Wales 16-22 February, 2009. It was the sixth ranking tournament of eight on the 2008/2009 Main Tour. Next up on the snooker calendar is the Honghe Industrial China Open which starts 30th March 2009.
I’m not at all happy with this runout, but I sent it in to cuetable.com anyway, just so I could be one of the first five people to submit a video and earn a polo shirt.
The 1-ball was really an ugly shot, and because of it, I got poor shape on the 2-ball. However, I stroked the 2 very nicely, even if I do say so myself, hitting it almost full and giving lots of low right on the cue ball. This spins the 2 into the pocket and holds the cue ball from getting on the wrong side of the 3-ball. From there on it was a piece of cake. The shot on the 6-ball was weak, as I wanted to get a lot closer to the 7-ball, but I recovered. The rest was easy.
In the background you hear Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13 “Pathétique”: II. Adagio cantabile, mixed with a little bit of garbage disposal noise from the cook.
Check out http://cuetable.com for other entries, other contests.
Submitted by Pool Shooter Blog
You gotta see this:
From Italy, a billiard table cover system that is so simple and effective, you’ll wonder why it hasn’t been done a hundred years ago!
gave an interesting example of the complexity of life and the impossibility of predicting future events. It used the actions of billiard balls on a table as an example. Here is the example given, on page 178 of the hardcover book:
“This multiplicative difficulty leading to the need for greater and greater precision in assumptions can be illustrated with the following simple exercise concerning the prediction of the movements of billiard balls on a table. I use the example as computed by the mathematician Michael Berry.
If you know a set of basic parameters concerning the ball at rest, can compute the resistance of the table (quite elementary), and can gauge the strength of the impact, then it is rather easy to predict what would happen at the first hit. The second impact becomes more complicated, but possible; you need to be more careful about your knowledge of the initial states, and more precision is called for.
The problem is that to correctly compute the ninth impact, you need to take into account the gravitational pull of someone standing next to the table (modestly, Berry’s computations use a weight of less than 150 pounds). And to compute the fifty-sixth impact, every single elementary particle of the universe needs to be present in your assumptions! An electron at the edge of the universe, separated from us by 10 billion light-years, must figure in the calculations, since it exerts a meaningful effect on the outcome.
Now, consider the additional burden of having to incorporate predictions about where these variables will be in the future. Forecasting the motion of a billiard ball on a pool table requires knowledge of the dynamics of the entire universe, down to every single atom!
We can easily predict the movements of large objects like planets (thought not too far into the future), but the smaller entities can be difficult to figure out - and there are so many more of them.”
So, the next time you miss a shot, you can blame it on some electron at the edge of the universe, or more likely, that Fat Bastard sitting on the bar stool nearby. In any case, beware of combination shots, and don’t run into any balls that are not absolutely necessary.
“Fat Bastard” a villian in the movie
“Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me”
(and my nemesis in the 2007 US Amateur Championship)
Niels Feijen from Netherlands captured the 2009 French Open for his second Euro Tour win in a row.
In the final the merited Dutchman player defeated 15-year old Mario He (Austria) 9-4. The victory was worth €5000. Mario got €3300 for second place.
The semi-finals saw Feijen defeating Poland’s Thomasz Kaplan 9-4. Mario overcame Tour legend Ralf Souquet (Germany) by the same score.
This was Feijen’s first win in the French Open and fifth Euro Tour win overall, from ten finals. It moves him into fourth in the all-time list, only behind the German trio of Souquet, Oliver Ortmann and Thomas Engert.
It was Feijen’s second straight win, having also lifted the trophy at the 2008 Costa del Sol Open. Souquet won the two events leading into that event. Before that Johnny Archer (USA) was the last man to win back-to-back titles, in 2000.
Defending champion Tony Drago (Malta) lost 9-8 to Rafael Guzmann (Spain) in the Losers Qualification.
The win took Feijen from second to first in the season’s first Euro Tour Ranking. Losing finalist Mario improved from 184th to 96th. Former leader Souquet dropped to second and Nick van den Berg slipped to third.
The tournament was played 12-14 February at the Leader Billard Club, Paris, France. It was the first event of seven on the 2009 Euro Tour. Next up is the Italy Open which runs from March 25-28 2009.
The tournament is comprised of three events. Brumback was first in bank pool, top-ten in one pocket and 9th in 9-ball. He bested Johnathan Pinegar (USA) with only half a point, 175.5-175.
Here are the final results, with field sizes:
Bank pool (398): Winner: John Bruckman (USA), $?; Runner-up: Rodolfo Luat (Philippines), $? One pocket (333): Winner: John Schmidt (USA), $?; Runner-up: Scott Frost (USA), $? 9-ball: (341) Winner: Shane Van Boening (USA), $16,000; Runner-up: Lee Van Corteza (Philippines), $?
All-around title (Master of the Table):
Bruckman, $20,000
Pinegar, $5,000
Luat, $?
This was Bruckman’s first all-around-title and also his first bank pool crown. Earlier he had finished runner-up twice in banks. Schmidt and Van Boening also lifted their first trophies in the event.
Francisco Bustamante (Philippines) was the defending over-all champion but ended outside the top four this year.
During the week there were several more events being staged. For instance, Danny Harriman (USA) beat defending champion Darren Appleton (England) in the final of the Straight Pool Challenge.
The tournament ran from January 23-31 at the Horseshoe Casino and Hotel, Elizabeth, Indiana, USA. It was the 11th edition of the event.
Disclaimer:
Billiards Blog is owned by 1800blogger which is a (for) profit organization. We are not a charity. If you send any money through this button, please understand that the money is being used for working capital for Billiards Blog and 1800blogger. Please check with your accountant to see if this is a tax-deductible contribution.
David Hogan (Ireland) and Wendy Jans (Belgium) won gold medals in the 2009 European Snooker Championships.
I must admit that there was a good chance for the team to spend 10 days in Las Vegas and play both the 9-ball and 8-ball Nationals. But the week prior we had again played thru the pack right up to the final and missed the critical win.
