Our second annual member only tournament was held at Chris’s Billiards in Chicago over three days, June 16-18. Chris’s was featured in the movie The Color of Money, and when you visit you can see why – it is classic poolroom – no jukebox, no video games, just pool and billiards!
Outside at Chris’s Billiards
Although we had a full field pre-registered — and even a waiting list – we lost a couple of players at the last minute, but still kicked off the tournament with 31 players. Our players literally came from all across the country – east coast, west coast, north and south – along with one player from Canada!
A very big thank you is in order for our onepocket.org member Matt Hilton and his wife Lizz – Matt for all the sign-up management and other pre-tournament help, and Lizz for being the onsite tournament director. Matt also again provided very nice tournament shirts at cost. Likewise our host Buddy, owner of Chris’s Billiards, could not have been more welcoming. Our fellow member the Ghost was also the de facto local onepocket.org one-man-information-center for all the player visitors, many of whom where there at Chris’s for the first time. Also a big thank you to Zach Goldsmith for traveling to Chicago on his own nickel to live-stream our tournament for the second year.
TD’s Matt and Lizz with John Crabb and Dave Gross
The tournament was again a highly competitive but always congenial test to see who was the best this year, at this site. The format was double elimination, race to three on both sides, but a single race to four in the finals. Many matches went hill-hill all weekend, including the finals! In fact, no one had more close matches than our 2017 tournament winner, Robert Newkirk, who went hill-hill in every match except one all the way to the finals.
The final prize pool was 3100 plus 2620 in our Calcutta. The tournament results and payouts were:
1 Robert Newkirk 1085+1048
2 Jim Tomassoni 775+655
3 Nick Bertanos 465+393
4 Bruce Perry 310+262
5/6 John Henderson 155+131
5/6 Dave Gross 155+131
7/8 Tom Wirth 77.50
7/8 Jason Moran 77.50